In this installation of the P.O.P video series, Jacqueline Jones LaMon reads Cornelius Eady’s poem "Why Do So Few Blacks Study Creative Writing?" and her own poem "Who Are You and Whom Do You Love?" She also discusses her different approaches to writing poetry and prose.
LaMon chose to read Eady’s poem, she says, “because it gives me permission—it gives all of us permission—to write of our own experiences, not only toward the historic but to the personal, that which we claim, and to honor it.”
Produced by poet and photographer Rachel Eliza Griffiths, P.O.P (“Poets on Poetry”) is a video series featuring contemporary American poets reading both an original poem and a poem by another poet. Each poet then reflects on these poems and answers a question provided by a previous participant in the series. What results is an evolving, multifaceted conversation among poets about the art form. The Academy of American Poets has partnered with Griffiths to release the P.O.P video series on Poets.org, alongside Rachel Eliza Griffiths’s essay on the project: "Poets on Poetry: A Virtual Village of Discovery and Poetics.”