Terrance Hayes and Danez Smith, two of the most exciting voices in American poetry, share poems of rage and tenderness, and talk about Trump and race, oppression and love.

Terrance Hayes' American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin is a sequence of 70 sonnets written during the first two hundred days of the Trump presidency. These are poems haunted by the USA’s past and future eras and errors, its dreams and nightmares. Danez Smith's work explores blackness, queerness, violence and love.

Terrance Hayes is the author of six poetry collections, including American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin, How to Be Drawn, which received the 2016 NAACP Image Award for Poetry and Lighthead, which won the 2010 National Book Award for Poetry. Other honors include a Whiting Writers Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a United States Artists Zell Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship.

In September 2018, Danez Smith became the youngest ever winner of the Forward Prize for best poetry collection, for their book Don't Call Us Dead. Danez is also the author of two chapbooks, hands on your knees (2013, Penmanship Books) and black movie (2015, Button Poetry), winner of the Button Poetry Prize. They are the recipient of fellowships from the Poetry Foundation and the McKnight Foundation.

Presenter: Paul Farley
Producer: Mair Bosworth Show less