In the latest edition of “Village Voice,” Boston Public Radio’s recurring conversation about how poetry can help us understand the news of the day, poet Richard Blanco celebrates Black History Month with poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, Terrance Hayes, Danez Smith, and Lucille Clifton.

He spoke about the form invented by Terrance Hayes called “The Golden Shovel.”

“Take a line of poetry from someone else’s poem and use each word in that line as the end word in each line of your own poem. So it’s like there’s a ghost in the poem. If you read the end word of each line, it reads one of the lines from the poem that it originated from. Hayes uses Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “We Real Cool.” Brooks was the first black person to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1950! read more…

In this year’s first episode of Village Voice, I spoke with Jim and Margery about Amanda Gorman, the sixth and youngest Inaugural Poet, the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate, and Harvard graduate! I couldn’t be happier with this choice! We need young voices, now more than ever.

Amanda said of inaugural poets Elizabeth Alexander and myself, “The three of us are together in mind, body, and spirit.” (That we are!) My partner likes to say, “More people have been to the moon than have been an inaugural poet!”

Learn more about Amanda Gorman and read along with the poems listed below! read more…

Enjoy this video recording of the live concert performance of my poem “The Declaration of Inter-Dependence!”

Tom Davis, a retired minister of music created a musical score for my poem, “Declaration of Inter-Dependence” with a trio of musicians who play jazz, funk, and hip hop compositions. It was such a joy and honor to hear 30 local voices, accompanied by a string quartet from The Portland Symphony Orchestra, with collaborating musicians on the piano, Native American drum, flute, and keyboard, perform this poem as a song in our little town of Bethel! Read the poem (copied below) and sing along! I hope you enjoy this recording as much as I do! read more…

A Poetry Song to kick start our New Year’s Eve celebrations! All my gratitude to Tom Davis, a retired minister of music who created a musical score for my poem with a trio of musicians who play jazz, funk, and hip hop compositions. It was such a joy and honor to hear 30 local voices, accompanied by a string quartet from the Portland Symphony, with collaborating musicians on the piano, Native American drum, flute, and keyboard, perform this poem as a song in our little town of Bethel! Shout out to keyboardist @AnnaSysko, who co-wrote the music for this piece with Davis, rap soloist @JustinBondeson, and drummer @RileyKern. Happy New Year, Everyone! Let’s usher in 2021 with poetry, music, a sense of communion, and “Inter-Dependence!” read more…

In this edition of the Village Voice, Richard Blanco recited poems for Healing and Renewal.

“I’m thinking about the holidays, but this isn’t the usual matching sweater holiday! I want us to reflect on new meanings of gratitude, renewal, healing.”

Blanco read “Holding the Light” by Stewart Kestenbaum, “Letter to My Body” by Joy Ladin, and “When Giving Is All We Have” by Alberto Ríos. He shared news of the Inaugural Poem Project for students and his hopes to pass the baton to the next inaugural poet. read more…

In this edition of the Village Voice, Richard Blanco recited some poems about American hope in the face of turmoil.

“Poets when things seem to be going well they’re looking under the hood seeing what’s not working and then when things aren’t working they try to find some hope in life.”

Blanco read his poem “America The Beautiful Again,” ”America The Beautiful” by Alicia Ostriker, “A New National Anthem” by Ada Límon, and “Let America be America Again” by Langston Hughs. read more…

In the latest edition of “Village Voice,” Jim and Margery celebrate poetry by Naomi Shihab Nye with poet Richard Blanco.

“I thought we’d highlight her work because there’s just so much going on, everything has been so overwhelming lately. Her work has a spiritual and ethereal quality that I thought might serve as a counterbalance to some of the madness out there.”

Tune in to hear the discussion and read along with the poems listed below! read more…

On latest episode of Village Voice, I joined Jim and Margery on Boston Public Radio to share a couple poems of remembrance: “Photograph for September 11” by Wislawa Szymborska, translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh, and “That Day: When We Were One” — my first 9/11 poem.

Click to hear about the experience of writing an Occasional Poem, and how Horace Mann School, charities, and organizations such as: Grab The Torch, Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund, 9/11memorial, and Howard Lutnick, inspired this poem which became a more hopeful reminder that we can once again reunite as a nation. read more…

On the latest episode of the Village Voice, I spoke about the joys and challenges of translating poetry into different languages.

“[Translation] is an art. There are whole conferences, associations and societies, …In some cases you have a ghost translator. What that means is that someone will take the text and translate it word-by-word, pretty much. And then you have the poet, who doesn’t even know the original language, and works with that language, so that in a way the poem becomes a reflection of the poet who was working with the building blocks of language. I’ve heard that those are the most successful translations because they’re not just trying to be literal…There are some things that cannot be translated…”

Tune in to hear the poems listed below in English and Spanish! read more…