The New Yorker: Poetry

Adrian Matejka joins Kevin Young to read “Against the Encroaching Grays,” by C. D. Wright, and his own poem “Almost Home.” Matejka is the author of several poetry collections and the graphic novel “Last on His Feet.” He has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, served as the poet laureate of the state of Indiana from 2018 to 2019, and is editor-in-chief of Poetry magazine. His new collection, “Be Easy: New & Selected Poems,” will be published in March. He lives in Chicago.

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April Bernard joins Kevin Young to read “A Worldly Country,” by John Ashbery, and her own poem “Beagle or Something.” Bernard is the author of two novels and six poetry collections—including “Blackbird Bye Bye,” which won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, and “The World Behind the World,” which was published in 2023. She’s a professor of English and creative writing at Skidmore College, in Saratoga Springs, New York. 

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Patricia Lockwood joins Kevin Young to read “In the Waiting Room,” by Elizabeth Bishop, and her own poem “Love Poem Like We Used to Write It.” Lockwood is the author of the novels “No One Is Talking About This” and “Will There Ever Be Another You,” along with two poetry collections and a memoir. She has won the Thurber Prize for American Humor and the Dylan Thomas Prize, and she’s a contributing editor at the London Review of Books.

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Traci Brimhall joins Kevin Young to read “Refrigerator, 1957,” by Thomas Lux, and her own poem “Love Poem Without a Drop of Hyperbole in It.” Brimhall is the author of five poetry collections, including “Love Prodigal” and “Our Lady of the Ruins,” which won the Barnard Women Poets Prize. She has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Park Service—and she is the poet laureate of Kansas and the 2025 Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. 

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Henri Cole joins Kevin Young to read “Vita Nova,” by Louise Glück, and his own poem “Figs.” Cole is the author of many poetry collections, including “The Other Love.” He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of honors such as the Thom Gunn Award and the Jackson Poetry Prize. 

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