The Massachusetts Poetry Festival 2016

"Happy Valley" is local vernacular for the surrounding Northampton area of Western Mass. But Happy Valley can be a misnomer. This diverse group of poets is deeply committed to the act of writing as a social movement, whose common goal of merging the personal with the political into a growing 21st century narrative tradition. Some us might identify as “spoken word” poets, some of us might say “page poets” but all four of us come from Open Mic/Slam culture where the goal is to create the kind of writing that is both highly engaging and elegantly crafted, always with the audience/reader in mind. We are Tara Jean Bernier, Robbie Dunning, Adam Grabowski, and Lauren Singer. We are teachers, social workers, mothers, fathers, and caregivers. You will hear poems about identity, loss, sexuality, river jumping and other forms of rapture. You will leave happy.