The Interconnectedness of Poetry and Societal Issues

In a special episode of the Poetry Podcast, Tracy K. Smith, Marilyn Nelson, and Terrance Hayes join Kevin Young to read their work, and to discuss its relationship to protest and liberation.

Tracy K. Smith served two terms as a U.S. poet laureate, and has won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and a Pulitzer prize. Her latest collection is “Wade in the Water.” Marilyn Nelson writes poetry for adults, young adults, and children. Her honors include a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, an N. S. K. Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, and a Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America. Her new books, “Papa’s Free Day Party” and “Lubaya’s Quiet Roar,” are forthcoming. Terrance Hayes, a former MacArthur fellow, has won a Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism, a Hurston/Wright Award for Poetry, and a National Book Award in Poetry. His most recent publications include “To Float In The Space Between: Drawings and Essays in Conversation with Etheridge Knight” and “American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin.”