Video: Poet Terrance Hayes Reads at Cave Canem 2012

On June 21, Cave Canem, in partnership with City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, presented a free reading on Pittsburgh’s Monterey Street where Terrance Hayes read, along with poets Nikky Finney, Thomas Sayers Ellis, and Angela Jackson.

Terrance Hayes is the author of four collections of poetry, including Lighthead (Penguin, 2010), winner of the 2010 National Book Award; Wind in a Box (2006), named one of the Best 100 Books of 2006 by Publishers Weekly; Hip Logic (2002), which won National Poetry Series, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and runner-up for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets; and Muscular Music (1999), winner of both the Whiting Writers Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The 2011 USA Zell Fellow for Literature, he has been a recipient of many honors and awards, including two Pushcart selections, four Best American Poetry selections, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Guggenheim Foundation.

He is Professor of Creative Writing at Carnegie Mellon University and a Cave Canem faculty member.

Poems

1. “The Rose Has Teeth” (0:00)
2. “New York Poem” (3:44)
3. “How To be Drawn to Trouble” (5:44)
4. “The Deer” (11:12)
5. “When Given a Choice” (14:16)
6. “Wigtastic” (18:25)