LISTEN NOW

Geffrey Davis selects recordings that reveal the bold, risky, and relentless work of attention and connection that poetry undertakes. He shares Lisel Mueller pushing against the limits of human understanding (“What the Dog Perhaps Hears”), Carl Phillips exploring change as more than calamity (“Continuous Until We Stop”), and Ross Gay asserting that pain and grief live alongside gratitude (“Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude”). Davis closes by reading his poem “Inside the Charged Dark,” paying tribute to his mother as the model of inquiry in his life.

Find the full recordings of Mueller, Phillips, and Gay reading from the Poetry Center on Voca:

Lisel Mueller (October 28, 1981)
Carl Phillips (November 1, 2012)
Ross Gay (January 19, 2017)

Voca is now fully captioned, with interactive transcripts and captions available for all readings! Read more about the project here, or try out this new feature by visiting Voca.

____

Poetry Centered features curated selections from Voca, the University of Arizona Poetry Center’s online audiovisual archive of more than 1,000 recordings of poets reading their work during visits to the Center between 1963 and today. In each episode, a guest poet introduces three poems from Voca, sharing their insights about the remarkable performances recorded in our archive. Each episode concludes with the guest poet reading a poem of their own.