Favorite Poems: Browning, Keats

Sandra Beasley and Chen Chen

At the 2015 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference this year, our team at tatestreet.org were excited to kick off a new collaboration between Tate Street, Robert Pinsky, and the Favorite Poem Project (favoritepoem.org). The FPP was created by Robert Pinsky during his time as Poet Laureate (1997-2000) of the United States to celebrate and document the role of poetry in the lives of Americans. Tate Street filmed a new and more informal branch of the FPP’s online collection of short video documentaries. These videos showcase individuals reading and speaking personally about their favorite poems. Robert Pinsky, the Favorite Poem Project and Tate Street selected a diverse group of readers from the writing conference—composed of editors, translators, educators, fiction writers, and poets—to participate at AWP 2015.

Read “To Autumn” by John Keats.

Chen Chen’s work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry, The Massachusetts Review, Narrative, DIAGRAM, [PANK], Best American Poetry 2015, among others. Recent honors include being a finalist for Narrative’s 30 Below contest and the second place winner in the Joy Harjo Poetry Prizes, from Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts. Chen has received scholarships and fellowships from Kundiman, Tent: Creative Writing, and the Saltonstall Foundation. He is currently finishing an MFA at Syracuse University, where he is a University Fellow and a Poetry Editor of Salt Hill.

Website: http://chenchenwrites.com
Twitter: @chenchenwrites

Read “Sonnet 43” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Sandra Beasley is the author of Count the Waves (W.W. Norton, forthcoming 2015); I Was the Jukebox (W.W. Norton, 2010), winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize; Theories of Falling (New Issues, 2008); and Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life (Crown, 2011). She lives in Washington, D.C.

Website: http://SandraBeasley.com
Twitter: @SandraBeasley