OZY - Poetry

Intellectual heavyweight Jean Genet wrote powerfully about a friend's prison death. A French singer took the words and made them a song.

It involves laugh bags, vampire teeth and a king who rises from the dead. What is it with Sweden?

A professed lover of literature makes a case for book burning.

Jacob Kushner remembers a Ghanaian poet, two years after the terrorist attack that killed him.

Fifty years after Eliot's death, the sound of the 20th century's great conservative poet can still conjure St. Louis, Great Britain and the impending fog of war.

The nation that has birthed a bevy of literary talent has one more treat for us.

A hip-hop artist and slam poet's debut novel hits the U.S. this year - and we peg him as a new great.

This island nation's literary scene remains limited and guarded today. But Cuban literature holds remarkable promise.

Hold your engines, NASA. Mars needs intellectuals and thinkers on board spaceships, too.

We spoke with playwright Kathleen Warnock about her reading series, which has been running monthly since 2004.

Ethio-jazz singer-songwriter Meklit is using birdsong and science to craft intricate melodies and create a sound all her own.

Booker-shortlisted author, musician and poet Jeet Thayil sounds like Burroughs and Baudelaire embraced.

Emi Mahmoud, winner of the 2015 Individual World Poetry Slam, turns tragedy into art.

Singaporean poet Alvin Pang has a rare flair for the relevant and lyrical alike. Hear him read on race, fathers and the concept of success.

National Poetry Month is full of all manner of love of metered verse. Yep. Full of it.

You don't have to be a depressed celebrity to find solace in one of the Sufi mystic Rumi's most unforgettable poems.

She might be the next Calvino - except she's got one more language on him. Meet a strange and beautiful poet and writer.

Francophone poet, novelist and scholar Abdourahman Waberi jokes that he's the "Dante of Djibouti." Which is a surprisingly big job.

Meet the chatty writer behind Microsoft's artificially intelligent bot.

Putting truth to power, even in verse, can lead to revolution.

There have been many fantastic girl-on-girl novels written over the years. Here are five of the best.

As African literary magazines spring up, the continent's writers are finding a new freedom to tell their stories in their own voices.

Following Frost is an exercise in suspending skepticism to reach deeper truths.

To understand the tumultuous era of Mugabe's leadership, give these a read.

The Best Sh*t of 2017: These short reads on everything from lost embraces to the P-word are both fiery and cool.

Amanda Gorman is the first U.S. Youth Poet Laureate and now an OZY Genius Award Winner

Here are a dozen great books that speak to our times.

Emily Jungmin Yoon weaves together strands from Korea's brutal past with contemporary issues of race, gender and sexual violence.

These books by LGBTQ authors shine a light on key historical moments.

In addition to performing and composing, the polymath Stephen Hough has found time to write a novel about faith and desire.

Children's author Shel Silverstein was once a cartoonist at Playboy and a regular in Hugh Hefner's pleasure dome.

This Prussian baroness wrote erotic poetry and mainlined morphine - until Nazis took exception to her decadence.

Susy Delgado has helped reclaim Guarani, the best preserved native language of the Americas once considered dirty.

The father of the rapper and actor was a star basketball player who struggled to get involved in his son's life.

Jamaican poet, actor and folklorist Louise Bennett-Coverley overturned a colonial legacy and fostered cultural pride.

Chadian millennials use poetry to stir debate on unemployment, corruption, pollution and inequality.

Only a few can tell the Epic of Manas, the spiritual tale of an ancient Kyrgyz warrior. We spoke to one about dreaming his way to enlightenment.

Who better to represent a country's cultural history and legacy than its literary giants?

Doing something extraordinary using totally ordinary means is a magic we should all be lucky enough to master. Enter poet Gwendolyn Brooks.

This is what happens when a Persian woman brings insight to an ancient poet's words.

At 21, Mecca Verdell is at the forefront of Baltimore's thriving slam poetry scene. Is it too far too fast?

It ran for just two years in the early 1920s, but The Brownies' Book altered the landscape of Black children's literature.

They've made pretty salty contributions to English language and culture, starting with some well-known profanity.

The social platform is an ideal forum, but algorithms are commodifying Instapoetry.

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