Jun 2, 2023
Rowan Ricardo Phillips — Never Again Would Birds’ Song Be the Same
Have you ever had a private moment — perhaps in the middle of the night — in a large city? When it just seems like it’s you and the great dreaming metropolis? Rowan Ricardo Phillips brings us into a memory he can’t forget, complete with a Wu-Tang Clan soundtrack.
Rowan Ricardo Phillips is a highly acclaimed, multi-award-winning poet, author, screenwriter, academic, journalist, and translator. His poetry collections include _The Ground_ (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), _Heaven_ (2015), _Living Weapon_ (2020), and the forthcoming _Silver__ _(2024). He is also the author of _When Blackness Rhymes with Blackness_ (a new, forthcoming edition from Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and the nonfiction book _The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey_ (Picador, 2019). He has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Nicolás Guillén Outstanding Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry, a Whiting Award, and the GLCA New Writers Award.
Phillips is a regular contributor to_ The New York Times Magazin_e, the president of the board of the New York Institute of the Humanities, and the poetry editor of The New Republic. Phillips received his doctoral degree in English literature from Brown University.
Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.
We’re pleased to offer Rowan Ricardo Phillips’s poem, and invite you to connect with _Poetry Unbound_ throughout this season.