Poetry in the Archives: Oral Histories as Inspiration
Five poets from Hanging Loose Press respond to archival audio from Brooklyn oral history collections, exploring how the recorded past catalyzes contemporary creative expression.
Why we picked this
This is genuinely unusual programming: poets select archival audio that moves them, then perform original work written in response. It's a live experiment in how the documentary past reshapes the literary present.
Five poets published by Hanging Loose Press gather at the Center for Brooklyn History to participate in a structured encounter between archive and imagination. Each poet has selected audio clips from CBH’s oral history collections — recorded voices from Brooklyn’s past — and written original poems in response. The evening moves between listening and reading: the audience hears the archival recording first, then the poem it produced, then discussion of how one became the other.
The poets include Kimiko Hahn, one of the most formally adventurous poets working in American literature today, alongside Jiwon Choi, Miguel Coronado, D. Nurkse, and Rebecca Suzuki. Hanging Loose Press, a Brooklyn-based independent publisher operating since 1966, has long been a home for poets who resist mainstream categorization. Special Collections Librarian Kevina Tidwell provides context on the oral history collections before each segment, situating the archival voices in their historical moment.
The program arrives during National Poetry Month and makes an argument — through demonstration rather than assertion — about why archives matter to living artists. As the program notes put it: “As we listen first to voices and then to verse, the past becomes a catalyst for contemporary creative expression.” The subsequent audience discussion invites participants to consider their own relationship to recorded memory and how proximity to a community’s documentary record might change what an artist makes.