The Massachusetts Poetry Festival 2016: Full Schedule

1:15pm EDT

Perspectives on the Short Poem

In a reading/discussion, four colleagues at Suffolk University--David Ferry, Fred Marchant, Dan Carey, and Jenny Barber—will read some of their own very short poems as they examine the ways that intense focus on a single moment or on a very few moments can suggest a larger framework. They will also discuss how specific stanza shapes and line-lengths, and the use of the white space surrounding the poem on the page, can spread a wider horizon of meaning and feeling.

Moderators

Fred Marchant

Emeritus Professor of English, Suffolk University

Fred Marchant has authored five books of poetry, the most recent of which, Said Not Said, was named an Honored Book by the Massachusetts Book Awards. He has edited Another World Instead: The Early Poetry of William Stafford, and, co-translated (with Nguyen Ba Chung) works by several... Read More →

Speakers

Jennifer Barber

Scholar in Residence/Editor, Suffolk/Salamander

Jennifer Barber teaches literature and creative writing at Suffolk University in Boston, where she is also founding and current editor of the literary journal Salamander. Her poetry collections are Works on Paper, which received the 2015 Tenth Gate Prize (The Word Works, 2106), and... Read More →

Dan Carey

David Ferry

Friday April 29, 2016 1:15pm - 2:15pm EDT
Salem Five Community Room 210 Essex Street, Salem, Massachusetts

Group Reading

1:15pm EDT

College Slammers

Spoken word is thriving on today’s college campuses, and it is changing the way poetry is written, taught, and understood. This program features college slammers from Salem State University and Merrimack College, students who are tapping into the spoken word movement to express, explore and assert identity, as well as to engage with the political and social issues of the day. Come check out some dynamic performances and get a first hand look at the Massachusetts college poetry scene in action.

Moderators

Kevin Carey

Kevin Carey is the Coordinator of Creative Writing at Salem State University. He's published five books, three books of poetry from CavanKerry Press, a chapbook of fiction and a recent crime novel Murder in the Marsh. Kevin is also a filmmaker and a playwright, and a lifelong fan... Read More →

Danielle Jones

Danielle Jones holds an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Massachusetts Boston, and is assistant director of the Writers House. Her poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2014, Beloit Poetry Journal, Southern Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2014 Rona... Read More →

Friday April 29, 2016 1:15pm - 2:15pm EDT
Old Town Hall 2nd Fl 32 Derby Square, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading Performance

1:15pm EDT

Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand: Poetry and Science Fiction

The overlaps of poetry and genres like essay or autobiography remain contested but acknowledged territory; less discussed are the depths traversed by both poetry and science fiction. They share a drive to build the world and the word anew time and time again, to situate society and self and language in strangeness. How can poets use science fiction to extrapolate from the known to chart the unknown? Panelists will read poems and discuss applying SFF tropes and themes to writing.

Moderators

Heather Hughes

Heather Hughes hangs her heart in her native Miami and her current town of Somerville. Her poems have recently appeared in The Adroit Journal, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, Prelude, Sidereal Magazine, and others; and her reviews have featured in venues such as The Rumpus. She is a... Read More →

Speakers

Sam Cha

Sam Cha was born in Korea. He has an MFA from UMass Boston. He is the author of The Yellow Book (Pank, 2020) and the chapbook American Carnage (Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs, 2018). Other work has appeared in apt, Assay, Best New Poets, and Boston Review. He lives with his family in... Read More →

Jade Sylvan

Friday April 29, 2016 1:15pm - 2:15pm EDT
Hawthorne Library Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Panel Discussion

1:15pm EDT

"What You Have Heard is True": Teaching Poems of Witness in the High School Classroom

Limited Capacity filling up

In light of racial & social justice issues that have occurred in Sanford, Florida, Ferguson, Missouri, Baltimore, Maryland & elsewhere, poetry of witness continues to thrive under heated political & social climates involving young people as reactions & activism reach public presentation. By examining & discussing poems of witness, past and present, through writing exercises and hands-on activities we can learn to broaden our discussion with youth & further consider developing tolerance & positive activism within the classroom & beyond. Participants will receive a full packet with poem copies, lesson plans, & articles.

Poems for Discussion:

The Colonel by Carolyn Forche (1981)
Otherness by Tony Brown (2015)
Still I Rise by Maya Angelou (1978)
Accountability by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Political Poem (for Basil) by Amiri Baraka (1995)

Moderators

Heather Macpherson

Speakers

Lea C. Deschenes

Rushelle Frazier

Friday April 29, 2016 1:15pm - 2:15pm EDT
Hawthorne Pickman Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Workshop

1:15pm EDT

Volta-cize your Turn!

Limited Capacity full

“Love is not all…” writes Millay in one of her best-known sonnets. Six lines later, starting with the word Yet, she begins a damning rebuttal in defense of love. How do you create that turn, the volta as it is called in the sonnet, the fulcrum on which a poem is balanced? How does the turn work to give both formal and free verse poetry tension and conflict? How can you use it to give an out-for-a-stroll poem the energy of an Olympic wrestling match? In this workshop we will examine the turn: how poets create and use it; where to place it; and how to set it up. We will look at the work of a small, but diverse group of poets. Then—it’s your turn! In an exercise that will put a swerve in your verse, you’ll practice writing your own turns.

Moderators

Dawn Paul

Writing/Interdisciplinary Faculty, Montserrat College of Art

Dawn Paul teaches writing and literature at Montserrat College of Art. She has two novels, The Country of Loneliness, and Still River. Her newest book, What We Still Don’t Know, is a collection of poems about scientist Carl Linnaeus. She is a frequent performer on the Improbable... Read More →

Speakers

Cindy Veach

Cindy Veach is the author of Her Kind (CavanKerry Press, forthcoming 2021); Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press; named a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, and a ‘Must Read’ by The Massachusetts Center for the Book; and the chapbook, Innocents (Nixes Mate). Her poems... Read More →

Friday April 29, 2016 1:15pm - 2:15pm EDT
Hawthorne Essex Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Workshop

2:30pm EDT

Gail Mazur and Joyce Peseroff: New Books from Common Threads Poets

2012 Common Threads poets Gail Mazur and Joyce Peseroff read from their new collections, Forbidden City and Know Thyself. Forbidden City, Gail Mazur's seventh book of poems, builds a meditative structure upon the elements of mortality and art. At the collection’s heart is the poet’s long marriage to the artist Michael Mazur (1935–2009). The Judges' Citation for the 2001 National Book Award praises Mazur as “Colloquial as well as eloquent, pitch-perfect no matter how delicate her material…Full of warmth, humor, and a dry-eyed toughness, her work is a superb personal and civic achievement.” Know Thyself, Peseroff's fifth book of poems, teases the nature of self-knowledge from a world where identity is fluid, character fragmented, landscape overwhelmed, and culture riven. As Donald Hall writes, "She brings up together with down, as the human psyche does--and as poetry must do to be true and beautiful together."

Moderators

Joyce Peseroff

My fifth book of poems, Know Thyself, is available from Carnegie Mellon University Press. I have poems forthcoming in Consequence, New Ohio Review, and Plume. I'm reading with Gail Mazur at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival Friday, April 29, at 2:30 pm.

Speakers

Gail Mazur

GAIL MAZUR is author of seven books of poems, including Forbidden City, Figures in a Landscape, Zeppo’s First Wife, winner of the Massachusetts book Prize and finalist for the LA Times Book Prize; and They Can’t Take That Away from Me, finalist for the National Book Award. She... Read More →

Friday April 29, 2016 2:30pm - 3:30pm EDT
Salem Five Community Room 210 Essex Street, Salem, Massachusetts

Group Reading

2:30pm EDT

The Bravest Women in the World: Afghan Women Speak Out Through Poetry

Founded in 2009 by American journalist Masha Hamilton, the Afghan Women’s Writing Project strives to give women the basic human right to tell their own stories – a right that has often been denied because of the long Taliban rule and the history of oppression in Afghan culture. Through online writing workshops led by international writers, educators, and journalists, AWWP empowers women in seven of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. For security reasons, the identities of the writers are not fully disclosed. Pat Mottola and Nancy Antle, who mentor Afghan women writers, joined by two Afghan writers, will read from Washing the Dust from our Hearts, a bilingual book (English and Dari) published by Grayson Books in cooperation with the Afghan Women’s Writers Project. Following the reading they will lead a discussion of the role of poetry as a “human right” and answer questions.

Moderators

Ginny Lowe Connors

publisher, Grayson Books

Ginny Lowe Connors runs a small poetry press, Grayson Books. Connors is the author of Toward the Hanging Tree: Poems of Salem Village, The Unparalleled Beauty of a Crooked Line and Barbarians in the Kitchen, as well as a chapbook, Under the Porch, winner of the Sunken Garden Poetry... Read More →

Speakers

Nancy Antle

Executive Mentor, English, Afghan Women's Writing Project

Nancy Antle wrote short stories, books and poems for children and young adults for 30 years. She started writing for an older audience when she earned her MFA in fiction writing in 2013. She's worked with AWWP since 2009 as a mentor/writing instructor and has recently moved into the... Read More →

Pat Mottola

Co-President, Connecticut Poetry Society

Award-winning poet and Pushcart Prize nominee Pat Mottola teaches Creative Writing at Southern Connecticut State University, where she earned both an M.S. in Art Education and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing. In addition to working with students at S.C.S.U., she is thrilled to teach... Read More →

Friday April 29, 2016 2:30pm - 3:30pm EDT
Hawthorne Pickman Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

2:30pm EDT

voices: (implicit) and EXPLICIT!

Do you self-censor on the page or perhaps before you write on the page? Do you reveal or say or tell too much? Do you vacillate between gradations of these contrasting positions in the same poem? Using a relaxed definition of the implicit (suggested, indirect) and explicit (clear, direct) speaker and voice, this workshop will explore what this can mean to the audience and ultimately one’s own voice and one’s own writing. Through handouts, Q&A and a writing prompt, we will discuss and address how poets can better help themselves understand the voice (or voices) that they can become. In essence, we will be asking the audience and discussing the question “who do you want to write like?” And ultimately the answer is: yourself (or yourselves).

Moderators

Kevin McLellan

Kevin McLellan is the author of Hemispheres (Fact-Simile Editions, forthcoming), Ornitheology (The Word Works, 2018), [box] (Letter [r] Press, 2016), Tributary (Barrow Street, 2015), and Round Trip (Seven Kitchens, 2010). He won the 2015 Third Coast Poetry Prize and Gival Press... Read More →

Speakers

Doug Anderson

Melissa Hotchkiss

Melissa Hotchkiss is a poet, editor, photographer and performer. Her first book of poems, Storm Damage, was published by Tupelo Press. Melissa’s poems and prose have appeared in numerous publications such as The American Poetry Review, Green Mountains Review, Free Inquiry, Women’s... Read More →

Soraya Shalforoosh

Soraya Shalforoosh’s first collection of poetry, This Version of Earth was published by Barrow Street in November 2014. Soraya has been a featured poet in the Journal of the Academy of American Poets Emerging Poet Series, and has had poems and reviews in Tribes.org, Good Foot, Taos... Read More →

Friday April 29, 2016 2:30pm - 3:30pm EDT
Old Town Hall 2nd Fl 32 Derby Square, Salem, MA 01970

Panel Discussion

3:30pm EDT

Poetry Meet-up at Howling Wolf

Get your mingle on at Howling Wolf! Rub elbows and wax poetic with poets and festival organizers, including Executive Director January O’Neil, Program Director Sara Siegel, and Festival Cofounder Michael Ansara, among others.

Speakers

Michael Ansara

January O'Neil

January Gill O'Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University, and the author of Rewilding (2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009), all published by CavanKerry Press. From 2012-2018, she served as the executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival... Read More →

Sara Siegel

Friday April 29, 2016 3:30pm - 5:00pm EDT
Howling Wolf Taquera 76 Lafayette St, Salem, MA 01970

Gathering

3:45pm EDT

North of Boston: Poetry from the Granite State

For five years, the Hobblebush Granite State Poetry Series has been dedicated to publishing New Hampshire poets who deserve a national audience. Although these poets differ in many ways—their upbringings, writing styles, ages (from 31 to 78), writing careers—the roots of their poetry dig deep in the Granite State. Join us as five of the nine Granite State Poetry Series poets—Maudelle Driskell (Talismans), James Fowler (Falling Ashes), Henry Walters (Field Guide A Tempo), Becky Sakellariou (Earth Listening), and J. Kates (The Briar Patch)—read their work.

Moderators

Sidney Hall Jr.

Speakers

Maudelle Driskell

James Fowler

J. Kates

J. Kates is a poet, literary translator and the president and co-director of Zephyr Press, a non-profit press that focuses on contemporary works in translation from Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia. He has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship... Read More →

Henry Walters

Friday April 29, 2016 3:45pm - 4:45pm EDT
Hawthorne Pickman Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

3:45pm EDT

Bone by Bone: Rewriting the Body

What is part of the body and what isn't? How do we contend with loss, growth, love, harm—both inside and outside the body? Why not say “bodymind” instead of separating the two? What’s behind that separation? This panel insists on connections between the body and history, the body and mythology, the body and language. Think "corporation," think "student body." Think of the particular gendered and racialized bodies facing institutional violence every day. The writers on this panel are doing urgent work that wrestles with representing, expanding the body. We are interested in what is private vs. public, the strangeness of “having” a body at all, and how poetry can investigate these borders, this strangeness. Drawing on our own work and work by Bhanu Kapil, Frank Bidart, Joan Brady, Louise Glück, among others, we invite festival participants to join us in a conversation on how to rewrite, re-embody the body.

Moderators

Chen Chen

Chen Chen is finishing his MFA in poetry at Syracuse University, where he is a University Fellow and a Poetry Editor of Salt Hill. New work is forthcoming in Poetry, The Massachusetts Review, Best American Poetry 2015, among others. Recent honors include being named a finalist in... Read More →

Speakers

Duy Doan

Duy Doan is the author of We Play a Game, winner of the 2017 Yale Series of Younger Poets (Yale University Press 2018). His work has appeared in Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Slate, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. A Kundiman fellow, he received an MFA in poetry from Boston University.

Sophia Holtz

Sophia Holtz is a writer, performer, and sometimes-illustrator. She has featured in bars, colleges, and the occasional basement throughout the United States, and was a member of the 2015 Boston Poetry Slam team. Her work has appeared in RHINO, decomP, H_NGM_N, and other journals... Read More →

Jessica Smith

Friday April 29, 2016 3:45pm - 4:45pm EDT
Old Town Hall 2nd Fl 32 Derby Square, Salem, MA 01970

Panel Discussion

3:45pm EDT

Received and In-Progress: Demystifying Submissions and the Publication Process

For all levels of experience with publishing. We’ll discuss researching journals and how to decide if your poems are a good fit; good submission practices; cover letters and follow-up inquiries; how editors read submissions and communicate with submitters; the usefulness of rejections and what to do when you receive “we’d love to see more of your work” rejections; how journal issues are crafted; and literary citizenship. Panelists include poets who have also worked as editors and are able to share insight from both sides of the publishing equation. Discussion will be shaped by audience questions.

Moderators

Karen Skolfield

Karen Skolfield’s Battle Dress (W. W. Norton) won the 2020 Massachusetts Book Award in poetry and the Barnard Women Poets Prize. Her book Frost in the Low Areas won the 2014 PEN New England Award. Skolfield is a U.S. Army veteran and the current poet laureate for Northampton, M... Read More →

Speakers

Brandon Amico

Brandon Amico is from Massachusetts. His poems have appeared in The Adroit Journal, Booth, The Carolina Quarterly, The Cincinnati Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hunger Mountain, Phoebe, New Ohio Review, Sixth Finch, Slice, and Verse Daily; he has also written reviews that have been... Read More →

MRB Chelko

MFA Faculty Mentor, New Hampshire Institute of Art

MRB Chelko is the recipient of a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship for Manhattations (PSA, 2014). Her work has appeared in many journals and chapbooks – recent publications include Black Warrior Review, The Cincinnati Review, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, Slice, and Poetry... Read More →

Friday April 29, 2016 3:45pm - 4:45pm EDT
Salem Five Community Room 210 Essex Street, Salem, Massachusetts

Panel Discussion

3:45pm EDT

Creating collaborative spaces: Tips from the Tin Box for critique circle success

Every poet needs a circle of trusted readers, individuals whose insight into your work helps to refine, polish, and prepare it for publication. But where are these amazing people? And once you find them, how can you cultivate an ongoing working relationship with them? For more than 20 years, the Tin Box Poets have met at a local coffee shop to gently critique and encourage each others' love, not only of poetry, but of the poetic craft. During this session participants will: Learn tips to start a critique group of their own; identify simple tips to reinvigorate existing circles; understand how to navigate group dynamics; and learn how to focus critique on grammar, craft, and substance with kindness. Attendees are welcome to bring copies of their own work to share in a critique role-play exercise at the close of the session as well.

Moderators

Melissa Varnavas

Poet. Yeah, that's right. I've had poems published in The New Guard, Margie, Oberon, Blast Furnace, among other journals. I have a couple of New England Press Association, a couple of Massachusetts Press Association awards, and one on investigative journalism from the Specialized... Read More →

Speakers

Lee Freedman

Paul J. Lahaie

Clem Schoenebeck

Friday April 29, 2016 3:45pm - 4:45pm EDT
Hawthorne Library Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Panel Discussion Workshop

7:30pm EDT

Sandra Beasley, Martha Collins, and Ocean Vuong

Limited Capacity filling up

This is a reading you won’t want to miss. Join us for an extraordinary night of poetry with Sandra Beasley, Martha Collins, and Ocean Vuong.

Speakers

Sandra Beasley

Sandra Beasley is the author of Made to Explode; Count the Waves; I Was the Jukebox; Theories of Falling; and Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, a disability memoir. She also edited Vinegar and Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. She lives in... Read More →

Martha Collins

FIELD magazine; Oberlin College Press

Martha Collins’s ninth book of poetry, Night Unto Night, was published by Milkweed in 2018. Her earlier books include Admit One: An American Scrapbook (Pittsburgh, 2016), Day Unto Day (Milkweed, 2014), White Papers (Pittsburgh, 2012) and Blue Front (Graywolf, 2006). She has also... Read More →

Ocean Vuong

Ocean Vuong is the author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press, 2016). A 2014 Ruth Lilly fellow, he has received honors from Poets House, The Civitella Ranieri Foundation, The Elizabeth George Foundation, The Academy of American Poets, and a 2014 Pushcart Prize. His... Read More →

Friday April 29, 2016 7:30pm - 9:00pm EDT
PEM Atrium Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Headline Event

9:45pm EDT

Mortified

What’s more hilariously cringe-worthy than angsty/angry/adorable/atrocious teen love poems? Watching grown-ups share them with an audience of strangers. Mortified is thrilled to bring our carnival of teen angst to the 2016 Massachusetts Poetry Festival! One by one, brave men and women will take the stage to relive their tortured adolescence by sharing their very raw, very real, very funny teenage poetry. Prom drama! First kisses! Awkward flirting! Mortified tackles it all, one hilarious performer at a time.

Hailed a "cultural phenomenon" by Newsweek, and celebrated for years by the likes of The Today Show, The Onion AV Club, This American Life, and Entertainment Weekly, Mortified is a comic excavation of the strange and extraordinary things we created as kids.

Moderators

Mortified Boston

The largest and longest-running project of its kind, Mortified produces comedic content for the stage, the screen, the page, and the web. Be sure to check out “Mortified Nation,” a documentary about this groundbreaking show, available now on Netflix, and the Mortified podcast... Read More →

Friday April 29, 2016 9:45pm - 11:00pm EDT
Sea Level Oyster Bar 94 Wharf St, Salem, MA 01970

Performance

9:30am EDT

'She was come back to her early sea-town home:' Sylvia Plath & the North Shore

Limited Capacity filling up

If we are culturally obsessed with Sylvia Plath, then we are more culturally obsessed with her death, and the famous "Ariel" poems of that time. But less is known, or discussed, about Plath's origins in Winthrop, Massachusetts, where she lived until she was 8 years old, and which occupied a permanent, and enormous, place in her poetic imagination. This panel discussion will examine the rich and complex role the landscape, mythology, and culture of Massachusetts' North Shore played in Plath's life, and life's work, with at least the partial intention of refocusing the cultural discussion from Plath's tragic death to her remarkable life. Panelists include Karen V. Kukil, the curator of the Smith College rare book room, and the editor of the acclaimed edition of Plath's Unabridged Journals.

Moderators

Emily Van Duyne

Assistant Professor of Writing, Stockton University

I am assistant professor of Writing at Stockton University, where I am also affiliated faculty in the Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program. I write regularly about poetry, feminist theory, single motherhood, and the plight of contingent faculty in academia. My work has appeared... Read More →

Speakers

Kathleen Aguero

Kathleen Aguero’s most recent book of poetry is After That. She has also co-edited three volumes of multi-cultural literature for the University of Georgia Press. She teaches in the low-residency M.F.A. in creative writing program at Pine Manor College and in Changing Lives through... Read More →

Emma Bolden

Karen V. Kukil

Karen V. Kukil curates the Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath collections at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She also teaches in the Archives Concentration program and is the editor of the Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000) and coeditor of the forthcoming Letters... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 9:30am - 10:30am EDT
Hawthorne Library Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Panel Discussion

9:30am EDT

Embodied Creativity: Writing with the Self as Witness

Limited Capacity full

"Forget about enlightenment.
Sit down wherever you are
And listen to the wind singing in your veins."
~John Welwood

A workshop to awaken the explorer, the witness, and the unique human being in all of us. We will learn how to weave our individual life experiences into engaging and evocative poems and stories. We will use gentle movement & light yoga as a way of awakening our embodied creativity, and we will dialogue with the body's voice. We will use the breath for intentional focus and presence, and guided prompts and sense-bound writing to assist us in creating descriptive, image-rich detail as our anchors on the page. We will learn new ways of engaging our readers and ourselves, and illuminate the anatomy of our poems. We will learn how to create a relationship with the inner "seer"-the Self as Witness-in order to work with the alchemical writing material offered up to us in our daily lives. What stories are living in your elbows and toes?

Moderators

Lindsey O'Neill

Poetry, Self as Witness, Yoga, Contemplative Creativity, Health & WellnessLindsey is an Integrative Vinyasa and Restorative Yoga Teacher, Yoga and Writing Workshop Facilitator, and Wilderness Poetess. She believes both yoga and creative self-expression to be indispensable art forms... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 9:30am - 10:30am EDT
Hawthorne Pickman Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Workshop

9:30am EDT

Everyone Loves Some One's Repeating: Using Repetition To Make A Poem

Limited Capacity full

As Gertrude Stein has made us aware, we are our repeating. And, in truth, repetition (whether of sound, as in rhyme, or phrases, as in the use of refrain) is also an essential element in many poems, giving them their music. But beyond obvious (and over-used) forms, like pantoums and sestinas and villanelles, we'll discover patterns in free verse poems that can show us different ways to use repetition as a construction-method for poems on any subject we want to address. We'll look at some of these, and each of us will build a new poem using one or another of these patterns.

Moderators

Alan Feldman

Saturday April 30, 2016 9:30am - 10:30am EDT
Hawthorne Essex Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Workshop

10:00am EDT

Random Acts of Poetry

Mass Poetry brought you the festival, now we’re giving you the chance to bring your poetry to the streets of Salem. Drop in to be part of this interactive poetry experience where you can make a broadside; write a poetry letter; phone-a-poem; or follow our map of writing prompts around the city to write your own Salem-inspired poem. Pop-up readings and surprises promised. Come help us get words off the page and into the world! Sponsored by the Writers House at Merrimack College.

Moderators

Danielle Jones

Saturday April 30, 2016 10:00am - 2:00pm EDT
PEM Atrium Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Poetry with Visual Art

11:00am EDT

All That You Touch You Change: Mother Poets Read Poems About Change

Poetry can react to and process change or itself be a force for change in the world. Mothers are both agents of and witnesses to change. In this reading, poets who are mothers explore personal and political change, changes in children and others, changes of mind, body, heart. The reading will be followed by a brief discussion and Q and A centering on the relationship of change of poetry, both in terms of subject matter and craft. Mom Egg Review is a literary journal focused on work by or about mothers.

Moderators

Marjorie Tesser

Editor in Chief, Mom Egg Review

Marjorie Tesser is the editor in chief of Mom Egg Review, author of poetry chapbooks THE IMPORTANT THING IS (Firewheel Chapbook Award), and The Magic Feather (Finishing Line), and co-editor of the anthologies Bowery Women and Estamos Aquí: Poems by Migrant Farmworkers (Bowery Books... Read More →

Speakers

Alice B. Fogel

NH Poet Laureate

Alice B.Fogel, Walpole, NH, is New Hampshire's poet laureate (2014-2019). She is the author of several books of poems, most recently Interval: Poems Based on Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” which won the Nicholas Schaffner Award for Music in Literature. Her third collection, Be... Read More →

Jennifer Jean

Co-director, Morning Garden Artist Retreats

Jennifer Jean’s collections include OBJECT LESSON and THE FOOL. She’s authored OBJECT LESSON: a GUIDE to WRITING POETRY. Her poems and co-translations appear in Poetry, Waxwing, Rattle, The Common, and Salamander. She’s an organizer for the Her Story Is collective and the program... Read More →

Lori Lamothe

Lori Lamothe is the author of three poetry collections, Trace Elements and Happily (Aldrich Press 2015 and 2016, respectively) and Kirlian Effect (FutureCycle Press, forthcoming 2017). She has also published several chapbooks, most recently Diary in Irregular Ink (ELJ Publications... Read More →

Jennifer Martelli

Vox Editor, The Mom Egg

Author of "My Tarantella," (forthcoming from Bordighera Press), "The Uncanny Valley," (BigTable Publishing), and "After Bird" (Grey Book Press).Her work has appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Cleaver, Glass Poetry Journal, and The Baltimore Review. She is a recipient of the Massachusetts... Read More →

Colleen Michaels

Founder/Host, Improbable Places Poetry Tour

Colleen Michaels’s poems appear in journals and anthologies and have been commissioned as installations for the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, the Peabody Essex Museum, and The Trustees of Reservations. She directs the Writing Studio at Montserrat College of Art where she has hosted... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 11:00am - 12:00pm EDT
Hawthorne Library Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

11:00am EDT

Over the Border: Three Vermont Poets

Across the Connecticut River, poets Elizabeth Powell, Kerrin McCadden and Karla Van Vliet have been writing in community with each other for almost twenty years. Based in the Champlain Valley of Vermont, their work is rooted in the landscapes and communities they inhabit and imagine.

Moderators

Elizabeth Powell

Speakers

Kerrin McCadden

Kerrin McCadden is the author of Landscape with Plywood Silhouettes, inaugural winner of the Vermont Book Award and the New Issues Poetry Prize, chosen by David St John. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship... Read More →

Karla Van Vliet

Van Vliet Arts / Dreams as Source

Karla Van Vliet is the author of two collections of poems, From the Book of Remembrance and The River From My Mouth. She is an Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize finalist, and a two-time Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. Her poems have appeared in Poet Lore, The Tishman Review... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 11:00am - 12:00pm EDT
Hawthorne Essex Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

11:00am EDT

Poetry and Religion

From five perspectives on religion—Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Atheist—panelists will read from their own and others’ work to show how poetry, itself, serves the better functions of religion: promoting empathy, community, service, awe, and joy.

Moderators

Susanna Rich

Founding Producer and Principal Performer, Wild Nights Productions, LLC

Poet and songwriter, Susanna Rich is an Emmy Award nominee and a Fulbright Fellow in Creative Writing. Founding producer and principal performer of Wild Nights Productions, LLC, Susanna's repertoire includes the new poetry musical Shakespeare's *itches: The Women Talk Back; ashes... Read More →

Speakers

Faleeha Hassan

Faleeha Hassan, who currently resides in the United States, was born in Najaf, Iraq, in 1967. She is affectionately known as the for her prolific writing skills. She is one of the most widely published women in Iraq, perhaps in the entire Middle East, and is a pioneer bringing... Read More →

Susan Jackson

Marilyn Mohr

Madeline J. Tiger

Saturday April 30, 2016 11:00am - 12:00pm EDT
The Bridge at 211 211 Bridge Street, Salem Massachusetts 01970 (Formerly First Universalist Church)

Group Reading

11:00am EDT

Poetry, Memory, and Salvaging: A Kundiman Reading

What do we choose to value? What do we choose to record? What do we choose to keep, toss, guard, or put on display? Six Asian American poets, Tamiko Beyer, Duy Doan, Joseph O. Legaspi, Vikas Menon, Sejal Shah, and Yim Tan Wong, whose works range from writing about history, the environment, the politics of labor, to music, place, and the body, will present an ekphrastic reading at the Peabody Essex Museum. Presented by Kundiman, an organization that serves Asian American writers.

Moderators

Joseph O. Legaspi

Speakers

Tamiko Beyer

Tamiko Beyer is the author of two poetry collections from Alice James Books, Last Days (forthcoming), We Come Elemental, and two chapbooks. Her work has been published in Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, Georgia Review, Literary Hub, the Rumpus, Hyphen, Dusie, and elsewhere... Read More →

Duy Doan

Vikas Menon

Yim Tan Wong

Yim Tan (Lisa) Wong is a Kundiman Emerging Asian American Poets Fellow and holds an MFA from Hollins University. She hopes one day (soon!) to publish her first poetry collection, which has been a finalist for Four Way Books’ Levis Prize as well as the Alice James Books/Kundiman... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 11:00am - 12:00pm EDT
PEM Bartlett Gallery Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

11:00am EDT

This is a Mighty Room: Poetry Written in Emily Dickinson's Bedroom

In 2014, the Emily Dickinson Museum invited over 40 poets into Emily Dickinson's bedroom, the creative space where she wrote nearly all of her poems. The room was in the midst of a restoration that had stripped away the 20th century additions, leaving bare walls, the wood floors Dickinson had walked on and which had been covered by other flooring for nearly 100 years, and the outline of the original door to the room, plastered over in 1855. The space, while dilapidated, was as close as possible as anyone would ever get to Dickinson's own creative space. We wanted poets to experience this raw, powerful space, before the room was fully restored, and offered each an hour to write there. A book of those poems, A Mighty Room, will be coming out later this fall or early next winter, and we would love to premiere it at the festival.

Moderators

Michael Medeiros

Public Relations Coordinator, The Emily Dickinson Museum

Michael Medeiros is the public relations coordinator at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA. He is a member of Northampton poetry, and recently edited A Mighty Room, a compilation of poetry by contemporary poets written in Emily Dickinson's bedroom.

Speakers

Lloyd Schwartz

Frederick S. Troy Professor of English, University of Massachusetts Boston

Lloyd Schwartz is Frederick S. Troy Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston and teaches in the MFA program. He is a commentator on music and the arts for National Public Radio's Fresh Air, Senior Editor of Classical Music for New York Arts, and Contributing... Read More →

Susan Snively

Ellen Steinbaum

Poet, Journalist, Blogger

Ellen Steinbaum is the author of three poetry collections, "Afterwords," "Container Gardening," and "Brightness Falls." Her work has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is included in Garrison Keillor’s “Good Poems, American Places” and “The Widows’ Handbook... Read More →

Donald Vincent

Saturday April 30, 2016 11:00am - 12:00pm EDT
PEM East India Marine Hall Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

11:00am EDT

Ada Limon and Gregory Pardlo - Headline Event

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Join us for an afternoon headline event with Ada Limon and Gergory Pardlo.

Speakers

Ada Limon

Ada Limón is the author of four books of poetry, Lucky Wreck, This Big Fake World, Sharks in the Rivers, and Bright Dead Things. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from New York University where she studied with Philip Levine, Sharon Olds, Mark Doty, and Marie Howe among... Read More →

Gregory Pardlo

Teaching Fellow, Columbia University

Gregory Pardlo's collection Digest won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Digest was also shortlisted for the 2015 NAACP Image Award and was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His other honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 11:00am - 12:00pm EDT
PEM Morse Auditorium Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Headline Event

11:00am EDT

Legal Issues for Poets and Publishers

Poets and publishers are confronted with a number of legal issues, including intellectual property rights and estate planning issues, often without realizing it. Poets need to be aware of the panoply of rights they have in their works so that they may adequately protect them, both now and in the future. Relatedly, publishers need to understand what rights they are obtaining when they agree to publish an author's work. Common issues include: What exactly is copyright and how does it apply to poets and publishers? When can a writer publish the same poem in more than one publication? What rights do workshop participants have in the other participants' draft works? Can a publisher sell broadsides or other items with published works on them?

Moderators

Eric Karlberg

Speakers

Peter J. Caruso, II, Esq.

Saturday April 30, 2016 11:00am - 12:00pm EDT
Old Town Hall 2nd Fl 32 Derby Square, Salem, MA 01970

Panel Discussion

11:00am EDT

Place/Displace: Poems of Home and Exile

Every day huge numbers of refugees cross national borders to escape war, famine, poverty, and injustice in search of the basic rights that allow humans to feel at home — to feel safe, fed, clothed, and cared for. Meanwhile people from all corners of the globe are more closely connected than ever before — and yet still people feel alienated in their own communities or even in their own skins. We intend to explore this dialectic between home and exile, place and displacement. Is home a tent, a McMansion, an apartment, a room? And conversely what external and internal forces drive people into exile from their own land, their people, their families, even from themselves? We will investigate poetry that expresses the belonging and rootedness of home against the angst and displacement of exile, illustrated with our own poems and those of others.

Moderators

Janet MacFadyen

Managing Editor, Slate Roof Press

Janet is author of four works, most recently Waiting to Be Born (Dos Madres Press 2017) and In the Provincelands (Slate Roof Press 2012). Her poetry has been nominated the Forward Prize (UK), and twice for a Pushcart. It has appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, The Southern Poetry Review... Read More →

Speakers

Dennis Pollock

Cindy Snow

member, Slate Roof Press

Cindy Snow’s writing has appeared in the Massachusetts Review, Peace Review, Worcester Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart, and she is the recipient of writing residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Cill Rialaig. Slate Roof Press will publish... Read More →

Catherine Stearns

Anna M. Warrock

Slate Roof Press

Anna M. Warrock’s latest book is From the Other Room, Slate Roof Press Chapbook Award winner. Besides appearing in The Sun, The Madison Review, Harvard Review, Poiesis, and other journals; and anthologized in Kiss Me Goodnight, writing by women who were girls when their mothers... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 11:00am - 12:00pm EDT
Charter School 2 Museum Place Mall, 2nd Fl, Salem, MA 01970

Panel Discussion

11:00am EDT

A License to Steal

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You have the time, the desk, and the notebook, and you can’t wait to write some new poems. But then. . . nothing happens. Zero, nada, zilch. You have absolutely nothing to say. Does that day sound familiar? Do you complain of writer's block? This workshop is designed to arm you with a set of burglar’s tools that will enable you to break into other poets’ poems, pilfer from them, and turn what you’ve taken into your own new poems. All perfectly legal! You will leave with several drafts in progress and strategies that make the day with nothing to say a thing of the past.

Moderators

Diane Lockward

Editor and Publisher, Terrapin Books

Diane Lockward is the author of The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop and four poetry books, most recently The Uneaten Carrots of Atonement. She is the recipient of the Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize, a poetry fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and a Woman of... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 11:00am - 12:00pm EDT
Charter School 1 Museum Place Mall, 2nd Fl, Salem, MA 01970

Workshop

11:00am EDT

Firmament of Waters: The Sea as Subject

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Bound for a Nantucket whaler, Ishmael states, “Whenever it is a damp, drizzly, November in my soul..then I account it is high time to get to water as soon as I can.” In this workshop we will do just that, get to water, at least with our words. We will look at the sea, specifically the Massachusetts Atlantic coast, as a source for language, experience, metaphor and inspiration, that temperamental surface under which truth may be revealed. We will consider the sea as our shared biosphere where fishermen grind out a living on dwindling catches, where surfers slip into winter wetsuits to take on Nor’easter swells, where summer sand castles topple with the tide, where lovers hold out for the promise of sunrise. And culling from our intimate relationship with the sea, we will generate and share poems of our own.

Moderators

Matt Miller

Faculty, Phillips Exeter Academy

Matt W. Miller is the author of the collections The Wounded for the Water (Salmon Poetry), Club Icarus, selected by Major Jackson as the winner of the 2012 Vassar Miller Poetry Prize and Cameo Diner: Poems. He has published poems and essays in Birmingham Poetry Review, Harvard Review... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 11:00am - 12:00pm EDT
Hawthorne Pickman Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Workshop

11:00am EDT

Presenting Poetry with a Personal Touch: Keepsake Books to Make and Share

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Want to share small keepsakes with attendees of your poetry readings? Looking for a way to present your poems as gifts to friends and family? If so, this hands-on workshop is for you. You’ll learn how to make 3 simple book forms that require no special materials, tools, or technical skills. They can be produced as one-of-a-kinds or printed in small editions. You’ll get advice on page layout, paper choices, and be ready to continue making simple books on your own.

Moderators

Susan Kapucinski Gaylord

Award Winning Artist

I am artist living and working in Newburyport. I am inspired by nature, both wild and cultivated, and the beauty and power of words. I began with calligraphy and then moved into making books, slowly transitioning from books with text to wordless ones with natural materials. I am dedicated... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 11:00am - 12:00pm EDT
Charter School 3 Museum Place Mall, 2nd Fl, Salem, MA 01970

Workshop

11:00am EDT

Witch City Poetry Slam Showcase

A showcase of local slam poets from Witch City Poetry Slam (Monday nights, Village Tavern, Salem). Eight poets exemplifying the spirit and skill of slam poetry. Poets will battle head to head in a bracket style slam, five lucky members of the audience will be awarded the honor of judging these poets based on performance, content, and originality. And excellent chance to see performance poetry in action and be a part of the slam poetry scene!

Host:
Brenda Snyder

Slam Participants
Veda Leone
Lauren Singer
Tara Jean Bernier
Robbie Dunning
Micheal Medeiros
Lauren Mercer
Spencer Burchill
Oliver Prato
Rebecca Gualtieri

Moderators

Brenda Snyder

Teacher, Witch City Poetry Slam

Residing on the rocky New England coastline, Brenda Snyder proudly lists being a full time poet/organizer and a part time waitress on her resume. She will be the first person to tell you to tip your servers, and the last person to leave the bar on a weeknight. She began and single... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 11:00am - 1:00pm EDT
Village Tavern 168 Essex St, Salem, MA 01984

Performance

11:00am EDT

Poetry Circus

Come one! Come all! Festival goers will enter small booths and tents to listen to the poetry of the lost souls, bright-eyed stars, and seasoned veterans of the Dime Museum and Carnival circuit. They may have their fortune told through poem, overhear the inner monologue of a bearded woman, or help complete the thoughts of an amphibious young man. A few performers will circulate outside the tents, engaging passersby and entreating them to enter the tents while dancing or juggling. The strange and vibrant world of the traveling circus come to life in the center of the Poetry Festival, allowing festival goers to stop by between panels or stay all day if they choose. This multi-disciplinary, multi-sensory event will be fun and inspiring for all ages.

Moderators

Shari Caplan

Shari Caplan is the author of “Advice from a Siren” (Dancing Girl Press, 2016). Her work appears in Zoetic Press, Drunk Monkeys, and Deluge and is forthcoming from Blue Lyra Review and The Rhylsing Anthology, a publication of Rhylsing Award nominees. A graduate of Lesley University’s... Read More →

Speakers

Be "Brenda" Be

Gideon Burdick

Kolleen Carney

Mariya Deykute

co-founder, Boston Poetry & Jazz Salon

I am a Russian-born poet, writer, teacher & performing artist. I have taught courses to the homeless, undergraduates, prison inmates, elementary school kids, high school students & seniors throughout Massachusetts. I've performed my work at the Somerville Center for the Arts, the... Read More →

Jessica Lynne Furtado

JJ Lynne is the pseudonym of Jessica Furtado, a poet and photographer who makes a living as owner of the popular Etsy featured shop All You Need is Pug. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Hobart, apt, A Narrow Fellow, Rust + Moth, Spry, and Stirring, among others. Her micropoem... Read More →

Joseph Gould

Joey Gould is a tutor, poet, & deckbuilder who loves creating improv poetry & walking through Audubon sanctuaries. He has helped facilitate four poetry festivals & was only picked up by the police once.

Leo Loginov Katz

GennaRose Nethercott

CJ Rizzo

beatnik bohemian poet, artist, musician, bmxer, surfer, gypsypiratewitch, health inspector, paranormal investigator, fire spinner, filmmaker, photographer, tarot reader, minstrel street performer, merry prankster, shaman, philanthropist, Jedi, and human being from Salem, Massachusetts... Read More →

Casey Roland

Casey Lynn Roland grew up on the North Shore of Massachusetts and currently resides in Beverly. Casey began writing poetry in high school, but didn’t take it seriously until working towards a BA in English at Salem State University, where she became the first graduate with a concentration... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 11:00am - 4:00pm EDT
Armory Park Across from the Peabody Essex Museum

Presentation

11:00am EDT

Small Press and Literary Fair

Visit exhibitors at the Small Press and Literary Fair outside of the Peabody Essex Museum along the pedestrian mall. Over 25 presses signed up alread and more expected!

Saturday April 30, 2016 11:00am - 5:00pm EDT
Pedestrian Walkway outside of the PEM

Small Press Fair

12:15pm EDT

Cave Canem Fellows

Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady founded Cave Canem in 1996 with the intuition that African American poets would benefit from having a place of their own in the literary landscape. Over the past 16 years, that intuition has become a conviction. In Cave Canem, emerging poets find sustenance, a safe space to take artistic chances. The organization's community has grown from a gathering of 26 poets to become an influential movement with a renowned faculty and high-achieving national fellowship of 344. Our Cave Canem roster features mostly poets who have not yet made appearances at this event. We will have fresh faces and fresh voices to present at this year's festival.

Moderators

Jarita Davis

Jarita Davis is a poet and fiction writer with a B.A. in classics from Brown University and both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. She was the writer in residence at the Nantucket Historical Association and has received fellowships... Read More →

Speakers

Antoinette Brim

Associate Professor of English, Capital Community College

Antoinette Brim, author of These Women You Gave Me, Icarus in Love and Psalm of the Sunflower, is a Cave Canem Foundation fellow, a recipient of the Walker Foundation Scholarship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her poetry, memoir and critical... Read More →

Treasure Shields Redmond

Founding Writer, Feminine Pronoun Consultants, LLC

Treasure Shields Redmond is a St. Louis metro-area based poet, speaker, diversity & inclusion coach, and social justice educator. Her book, chop: a collection of kwansabas for fannie lou hamer (Argus House Press, 2015) focuses on the life of civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer. Over... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 12:15pm - 1:15pm EDT
PEM Bartlett Gallery Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

12:15pm EDT

Outlaw Poets: Sibling Rivalry Press Reading

The only press to have ever won both Best Gay Poetry and Best Lesbian Poetry, SRP takes its mission directly from Adrienne Rich’s call for outlaw poetry: “There’s a lot of what I would call comfortable poetry around. But then there is all this other stuff going on….It’s intellectual and moral and political and sexual and sensual — all of that fermenting together. It can speak to people who have themselves felt like monsters and say: you are not alone, this is not monstrous. It can disturb and enrapture.” Whether exploring queer identity in the Peace Corps, social fragmentation, or family ghosts the four poets today are outlaws of form and subject. Join us as we share our monsters on the page and work towards creating a literature of connection.

Moderators

Emily Jaeger

Poet, Editor, Window Cat Press

Emily Jaeger is an MFA candidate at UMASS Boston and co-editor/co-founder of Window Cat Press. A Literary Lambda and TENT fellow, her poetry has appeared in Four Way Review, Soundings East, and Rust + Moth among others. Her chapbook The Evolution of Parasites is forthcoming from Sibling... Read More →

Speakers

Theresa Senato Edwards

Theresa Senato Edwards’ poetry books include Voices Through Skin, (Sibling Rivalry Press), a poem from this book entitled “Her Rituals” was a poetry finalist for the OCD Foundation’s Dare to Believe Contest; Painting Czeslawa Kwoka ~ Honoring Children of the Holocaust, a full-color... Read More →

Matthew Hittinger

Matthew Hittinger is the author of The Erotic Postulate (2014) and Skin Shift (2012) both from Sibling Rivalry Press, and the chapbook Pear Slip (2007), winner of the Spire Press Chapbook Award. He received his MFA from the University of Michigan where he won a Hopwood Award... Read More →

Michael Klein

Faculty, Hunter College

MICHAEL KLEIN is a five-time Lambda Literary Award finalist and has won the award twice in poetry. In addition, his books of prose are "Track Conditions" and "The End of Being Known" both from the University of Wisconsin Press. He teaches at Hunter College and in the low residency... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 12:15pm - 1:15pm EDT
The Bridge at 211 211 Bridge Street, Salem Massachusetts 01970 (Formerly First Universalist Church)

Group Reading

12:15pm EDT

Cape Cod Poetry Review: A Reading and Discussion of Lit Journals on a Shoestring

The program will begin with a brief introduction of the genesis behind the Cape Cod Poetry Review, a regional literary journal which aims to showcase writers from the Cape and Islands. The first part of the discussion will center around the connected history of the lit journal's origins within open mics throughout the mid-Cape, the journal's subsequent birth, and its struggles for funding throughout the three issues. Editors M.L. Wolters and John Bonanni will then introduce short readings from five poets who have been featured in the journal: Alice Kociemba, Gregory Hischak, Lauren Wolk, Mary Ellen Redmond, and Barry Hellman.

Moderators

John Bonanni

Editor, Cape Cod Poetry Review

John Bonanni lives on Cape Cod, MA, where he serves as editor for the Cape Cod Poetry Review. He is the recipient of a scholarship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a residency from AS220 in Providence, RI. His work has appeared in CutBank, Assaracus, Verse Daily... Read More →

Speakers

Alice Kociemba

Founding Director, Calliope—Poetry for Community

Alice Kociemba is a co-editor of From the Farther Shore: Discovering Cape Cod and the Islands Through Poetry (Bass River Press, forthcoming) along with Robin Smith-Johnson and Rich Youmans. She is founding director of Calliope Poetry and is the author of Bourne Bridge (Turning Point... Read More →

Mary Ellen Redmond

Maddie Wolters

Editor, Cape Cod Poetry Review

Word nerd. Bookseller. Editor of the Cape Cod Poetry Review.

Saturday April 30, 2016 12:15pm - 1:15pm EDT
Hawthorne Essex Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading Panel Discussion

12:15pm EDT

Charles Simic, David Rivard, Laurin Becker Macios

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Join us for this Saturday headline event with Charles Simic, David Rivard, and Laurin Becker Macios.

Speakers

Laurin Becker Macios

Laurin Becker Macios was born in Miami, Florida and raised just short of everywhere (Florida, Germany, North Carolina, Colorado, and Holland). She earned her MFA in Creative Writing Poetry from the University of New Hampshire and is Programs Associate of Poetry Society of America... Read More →

David Rivard

David Rivard was born in 1953 in Fall River, Massachusetts, and is the author of five books of poetry: Otherwise Elsewhere, Sugartown, Bewitched Playground, Wise Poison, winner of the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets in 1996 and a finalist for the Los Angeles... Read More →

Charles Simic

Charles Simic is the author of numerous collections of poems, among them, The Lunatic, Master of Disguises; Selected Poems: 1963-2003, for which he received the 2005 International Griffin Poetry Prize; The World Doesn’t End: Prose Poems, for which he received the Pulitzer... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 12:15pm - 1:15pm EDT
PEM Morse Auditorium Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Headline Event

12:15pm EDT

Small Press, Big Love: Publishing Poetry Collections with Independent Presses

As the publishing landscape transforms, and the writing population expands, the role of small presses is becoming increasingly more significant. Join us as we talk with the founding editors of three independent presses about the kind of work they’re looking for; the relationships they cultivate with their authors during the revision and publication process; their innovative strategies for getting poetry out in the world; and the ways they’re actively working to increase diversity. Panelists include Carissa Halston and Randolph Pfaff of Aforementioned, Liz Kay and Jen Lambert of Spark Wheel Press, and Enzo Silon Surin of Central Square Press.

Moderators

Danielle Jones

Speakers

Carissa Halston

Fiction writer

Carissa Halston is a fiction writer, book designer, and editor. Her award-winning short fiction has appeared in Willow Springs, Fourteen Hills, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. She is the Editor-in-Chief of apt, a literary journal devoted to longform work, and Co-founding... Read More →

Liz Kay

Editor, Spark Wheel Press

Liz is a founding editor of Spark Wheel Press and the journal burntdistrict. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Beloit Poetry Journal, Sugar House Review, Nimrod, and Willow Springs. Her debut novel, MONSTERS: A LOVE STORY, about a widowed poet, a novel-in-verse, and a toxic... Read More →

Jen Lambert

Editor, Spark Wheel Press

Jen Lambert is a founding editor of Spark Wheel Press and burntdistrict magazine. She received an MFA from the University of Nebraska, and her work has appeared in journals such as Pank, The Los Angeles Review, Sugar House Review, and Redactions, among others.

Randolph Pfaff

Co-founding Editor, Aforementioned

Randolph Pfaff is a poet, editor, and visual artist. His work has been featured in Poet Lore, Barrelhouse, PANK, H_NGM_N, and a number of other magazines and anthologies. He is a founding editor of Aforementioned, an independent press based in Boston.

Enzo Silon Surin

Editor/Publisher, Central Square Press

Enzo Silon Surin is a Haitian-born poet, publisher, advocate and author of the chapbook Higher Ground (Finishing Line Press). He was recognized in 2015 by PEN New England (New England’s chapter of PEN American Center) as a Celebrated New Voice in Poetry. His work has appeared in... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 12:15pm - 1:15pm EDT
PEM East India Marine Hall Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Panel Discussion

12:15pm EDT

The Full Catastrophe: Poets on Motherhood

Three poets from western MA will look at how contemporary women poets use a variety of approaches to navigate the territory of "mother-poet." These poets and their poems fall all along the aesthetic continuum, and their work takes different approaches to the “condition” of motherhood. Using their own experience, as well as examples from other poets, they’ll talk about the struggle to find time and focus for their writing; the challenges of writing and parenting in a rural area; how motherhood is or isn’t present in their own work; the issue of including their children in published work; and whether the awareness of writing about motherhood has constrained or freed them in any way. They’ll also look at the distinction between motherhood as subject, and the impact of motherhood on creative process and formal strategies. The discussion will include poems as handouts for audience members and time for audience questions.

Moderators

Marie Gauthier

Director of Sales & Marketing, Tupelo Press

Marie Gauthier is the author of Hunger All Inside (FLP, 2009). Her poems have appeared in The Common, Cave Wall, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. A 2008 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize recipient, she lives with her family in Shelburne Falls, MA where she works for Tupelo Press... Read More →

Speakers

Amy Dryansky

Amy Dryansky has two poetry collections; Grass Whistle (Salmon Poetry), winner of the Massachusetts Book Award for poetry, and How I Got Lost So Close to Home (Alice James). She’s a Massachusetts Cultural Council Poetry Fellow, and former poet laureate of Northampton, MA. You can... Read More →

Sarah Sousa

Sarah Sousa is the author of the poetry collections See the Wolf (2018): Split the Crow (2015) and Church of Needles (2014) She also edited and transcribed The Diary of Esther Small, 1886 (2014) which won the New England Book Festival Award for Regional Literature. Her poems have... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 12:15pm - 1:15pm EDT
Charter School 4 Museum Place Mall, 2nd Fl, Salem, MA 01970

Panel Discussion

12:15pm EDT

Verse and Diverse Walk Into a Bar: A Conversation With Solstice’s Editors on Varied Voices

Solstice is one of the leading literary magazines when it comes to publishing diverse voices and reaching diverse audiences. Four of its current and past editors (Danielle Legros Georges, Dzvinia Orlowsky, Regie Gibson and Ben Berman) – whose interests range from spoken word to translation, formalism to the experimental – will discuss what it means for a journal to focus on diversity and will read some of their favorite selections from past issues. Kathleen Aguero, a consulting Solstice editor and one of the first anthologists of multi-cultural literature, will moderate this panel. 30/4/16 Hawthorne Library,

Moderators

Ben Berman

Author, THEN AGAIN

Ben Berman’s first book, Strange Borderlands, chronicled his time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Zimbabwe and won the 2014 Peace Corps Award for Best Book of Poetry and was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Awards. His second book of poems, Figuring in the Figure, turned its... Read More →

Speakers

Kathleen Aguero

Danielle Georges

Professor, Lesley University

Danielle Legros Georges is a writer, poet, editor, and translator. She is the author of two books of poetry, Maroon and The Dear Remote Nearness of You, the chapbook Letters from Congo, and is the editor of City of Notions: An Anthology of Contemporary Boston Poems. She teaches at... Read More →

Regie Gibson

Regie Gibson is a poet, songwriter, author, workshop facilitator, and educator. Gibson and his work appear in the film Love Jones, based largely on events in his life. In 1999 he performed for the award-winning Traffic Series at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater where he adapted the... Read More →

Dzvinia Orlowsky

Dzvinia Orlowsky is a poet and translator. She is the author of five collections of poetry published by Carnegie Mellon University Press including A Handful of Bees, reprinted in 2009 as a Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporary; Convertible Night, Flurry of Stones, recipient of a 2010... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 12:15pm - 1:15pm EDT
Hawthorne Library Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Panel Discussion

12:15pm EDT

Metaphor Unmoored: A Participatory Exhibition Inspired by the Fan Collages of Poet Alice Notley

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Poetry and collage overlap in mysterious, interior ways. There’s something similar about the process of working, the space that opens in the mind, some alchemy created as metaphor unmoors the relationships between ideas and objects, creating surprising meaning.
In this drop-in workshop, participants will transform plain paper fans using words, images and decorative papers. Materials will be provided but feel free to bring your own if you like.
Notley says of her fans, “…each one was some sort of meditation on what I was working on as a poet, without my knowing what I was thinking about.”
Fan makers are invited to enter that rejuvenating meditative state to create a work that gives a nod to Notley as well as to PEM’s Asian collections. And as they move about the festival carrying their fans, participants will create a wandering exhibition.
To learn more about Notley and her collages: http://bostonreview.net/poetry/lindsay-turner-alice-notley-interview-feminism-mojave-collage; http://www.thevolta.org/tremolo-issue16-anotley.html

Moderators

Trish Crapo

I'm a writer and photographer who freelances as a journalist and book reviewer. In my role as journalist, I cover writing and the arts. I'm interested in 'zines and small press publishing and the overlap of visual arts and poetry. Photographically, I'm interested in portraiture as... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 12:15pm - 1:15pm EDT
Old Town Hall 1st Fl 32 Derby Square, Salem, MA 01970

Poetry with Visual Art

12:15pm EDT

Seriously Funny: A Workshop on Humor in Poetry

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Poetry is seldom stand-up comedy, but many poets use wry humor, irony and wit in the service of serious subjects. We’ll look at five short poems: by Shakespeare, John Berryman, Denise Duhamel, Charles Simic, and Thomas Lux. Their techniques include creating a self-deceiving or a ludicrous character, hyperbolic understatement, mockery, surreal storytelling, and mixing ordinary but contradictory elements. The workshop will break into small groups to brainstorm ideas about using the techniques of each poem. The class will then be given 15 minutes to begin writing a poem. Before leaving, the group will share what they have achieved (as time permits). We'll also share email addresses for mutual encouragement in completing our poems. Each participant will be given a short pamphlet with other poems – including those by James Tate, Mary Jo Bang, Wislawa Szymborska, and Tony Hoagland -- and ideas for using them as models.

Moderators

Jacquelyn Malone

Jacquelyn Malone’s work has appeared in Poetry, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cortland Review, Poetry Northwest, and Ibbettson Street as well as other publications. Two of her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. One was featured on the website Poetry Daily. Her chapbook All... Read More →

Speakers

Claire Keyes

Claire Keyes has published reviews and poems in The Women's Review of Books, The Georgia Review, Calyx and Rattle, among others. On-line, you can find her work at Tattoohighway.org,Poemeleon.org, and poetrymagazine.org. She recently won the Robert Penn Warren Award (First Prize) from New England Writers. Her poetry collections include The Question of Rapture and What Diamonds Can Do. She lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts and teaches in the Lifelong Learning Program at Salem State College... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 12:15pm - 1:15pm EDT
Hawthorne Pickman Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Workshop

2:00pm EDT

LOL: Poetry That’s Funny, A Reading by Jamaica Pond Poets with Open Mike

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese,” said G. K. Chesterton. Jamaica Pond Poets have cheese poems to read and will expand the spread to other humorous subjects and styles. Members of the weekly workshop will read a selection of theirs or someone else’s poems to tickle the funny bone. Then, attendees will be invited up to the mike to read a humorous poem. Someone once said, “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” Maybe, but sharing funny poems results in group laughter every time (and maybe some ideas for new poems). To borrow a phrase from a recent episode of NPR’s “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” this LOL program promises to “taste so Gouda.”

Moderators

Sandra Storey

Sandra Storey is the author of the poetry collection, Every State Has Its Own Light, a finalist for the May Swenson Poetry Award, published in 2014 by Word Poetry imprint of WordTech Communications. Her poetry has appeared in New Millennium Writings, Windfall and the New York Quarterly... Read More →

Speakers

Carolyn Gregory

Published two full length books, "Open Letters" and "Facing the Music". Poems and music reviews published in American Poetry Review, Seattle Review, STYLUS. Community activist and former member of the Occupy Movement. Involved in stricter gun control movement in America and civil... Read More →

Audrey Henderson

OutdoorsRx Manager, Appalacachian Mountain Club

Susanna Kittredge

Susanna Kittredge is a proud member of the Jamaica Pond Poets and a regular participant in the Brighton Word Factory. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Her self-published chapbook is titled Dear Pigeons, and her work has appeared... Read More →

Jennifer Markell

Jennifer Markell's first poetry collection, Samsara, (Turning Point, 2014) was named a “Must-Read Book” by the Massachusetts Book Awards in 2015 and was a Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Markell received the Barbara Bradley and Firman Houghton awards from the... Read More →

Alan Smith Soto

Saturday April 30, 2016 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
The Bridge at 211 211 Bridge Street, Salem Massachusetts 01970 (Formerly First Universalist Church)

Group Reading

2:00pm EDT

Poets at the Bar

Five Massachusetts attorneys, who practice the art and craft of poetry, as well as that of the law, read from their published and unpublished verse.

Moderators

John L. Holgerson

John L. Holgerson is the author of two books of poetry, Unnecessary Tattoo and Other Stains on a Stainless Steel Heart (Finishing Line Press, 2016) and Broken Borders (Wasteland Press, 2012). His work has appeared in literary journals such as Modern English Tanka, Shadow Quill Poetry... Read More →

Speakers

Matthew C. Brenneman

Not altogether successfully, Matt Brenneman tries to balance a lifelong devotion to poetry with the happy demands of fatherhood and a solo corporate and transactional law practice based up the road in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Matt was born and raised in Connecticut and received... Read More →

James Decoulos

Jessica Fjeld

Jessica Fjeld is the author of the chapbooks The Tide (2010) and On animate life (2006), for which she received the Poetry Society of America's Chapbook Fellowship. Her poems have appeared in Conduit, Fou, iO, jubilat, Poetry, and elsewhere. In 2015, she was awarded a "Discovery... Read More →

Amy Demas Grunder

Director of Legislative Affairs, Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Advocacy Coaliton

I write poetry and fiction, live in Cambridge, and work as a legislative advocate for a non-profit advancing and defending the rights of immigrants and refugees in Massachusetts. My writing has been published in Consequence Magazine and Nashville Review.

Saturday April 30, 2016 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
PEM Bartlett Gallery Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

2:00pm EDT

Populating our Poems: A reading of Persona Poems and Poems of Place

Four award-winning emerging poets will read from their new and recent books, all of which are infused with voice and place: Rebecca Morgan Frank’s The Spokes of Venus (Carnegie Mellon) channels the voices of art makers; Megan Grumbling’s Booker’s Point (University of North Texas) is a portrait-in-verse of an old Maine woodsman; Rachel Richardson juxtaposes the quests of Ahab and Melville against the daily voices of wives and mothers in The Hundred-Year Wave (Carnegie Mellon); and David Roderick conjures myriad voices in the patchwork identity search of The Americans (PITT). Through their work and commentary, they will demonstrate the possibilities of the persona poem and poetry of place, drawing on the physical, literary, and artistic landscapes of New England and beyond.

Moderators

Rebecca Morgan Frank

Editor, Memorious: A Journal of New Verse & Fiction

Rebecca Morgan Frank is the author of The Spokes of Venus (Carnegie Mellon 2016)and Little Murders Everywhere (Salmon 2012), finalist for the 2013 Kate Tufts Discovery Award; her third collection, Sometimes We're All Living in a Foreign Country, is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon... Read More →

Speakers

Megan Grumbling

Rachel Richardson

Contributing Editor, Memorious

Rachel Richardson has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Wallace Stegner Program at Stanford University. She is the author of Copperhead (2011) and Hundred-Year Wave (forthcoming in 2016) both from Carnegie Mellon University... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
Hawthorne Library Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

2:00pm EDT

UMass Poets: Sandra Lim, Maggie Dietz, and Jill McDonough

An homage to Berryman and Bradstreet, poems about Zoloft and in the style of Lyle Lovett, villanelles about American drones and their operators--some of the variety you'll hear from these three award-winning poets and professors in the University of Massachusetts system. Sandra Lim, Maggie Dietz, and Jill McDonough, present poems from recent, new, and forthcoming books, respectively. Lim will read from The Wilderness, which was selected by Louise Gluck for the Barnard Women Poets Prize and published by Norton in 2014; Dietz will read from her long-awaited second collection, That Kind of Happy, just out from The University of Chicago Press; and McDonough will read from Reaper, her groundbreaking book forthcoming next fall from Alice James. Together the three present widely varied approaches to the art of poetry. Q&A to follow reading.

Moderators

Maggie Dietz

Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Maggie Dietz’s is the author of the newly released That Kind of Happy and Perennial Fall, which won New Hampshire’s Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry in 2007 (both from The University of Chicago Press). The former director of the Favorite Poem Project, Dietz is... Read More →

Speakers

Sandra Lim

Assistant Professor of English, University of Massachusetts, Lowell

Sandra Lim is the author of two collections of poetry, Loveliest Grotesque (Kore Press, 2006) and The Wilderness (W.W. Norton, 2014), winner of the 2013 Barnard Women Poets Prize, selected by Louise Glück. Her work is also included in the anthology Gurlesque (Saturnalia, 2010). She... Read More →

Jill McDonough

Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Three-time Pushcart prize winner Jill McDonough is the recipient of Lannan, NEA, Cullman Center, and Stegner fellowships. Her most recent book is Reaper (Alice James, 2017); Here All Night, her fifth collection, is forthcoming from Alice James Books. She teaches in the MFA program... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
PEM East India Marine Hall Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

2:00pm EDT

What the World is Saying: Contemporary Poets in Translation

This session will showcase translators (and their authors, where possible) exploring meaning across languages and cultures. Themes of intimacy, loss, temptation, unexpected pleasures, and subversive declamations form the nucleus of multiple bodies of poetic work across the globe. Works in Bengali, Catalan, Chinese, English, Korean, and Spanish will be read, where possible, with accompanying music as composed or identified by the poets of origin. Certain poems have been published as part of a series of broadsides or in anthologies that pair poetry with visual image.

This program reveals insights into and celebrations of human feeling across cultures and languages. Bilingual readings punctuated by music composed or identified by the poets of origin and/or by visual works of art offer yet another dimension to the expression of life.

Moderators

Kristine Doll

Professor, World Languages and Cultures, Salem State University

Kristine Doll (Boston, MA, USA) is the author of the poetry collection Speak to Me Again (Feral Press, 2014). “My Friends” from this book was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry. She is also a translator of Catalan poetry, including her translations into English of Joan... Read More →

Speakers

Hassanal Abdullah

Editor, Shabdaguchha

Hassanal Abdullah is a poet, novelist, critic, translator and the editor of Shabdaguchha, an International Bilingual Poetry Magazine. He has introduced a new sonnet form, Swatantra Sonnet, with seven-line stanza-pattern and abcdabc efgdefg rhyming scheme. He also wrote a 304-page... Read More →

Hong Ai Bai

Hong Ai Bai, PhD in Linguistics, teaches English Writing courses at English Department of Long Island University Post Campus, New York. She published a book, Deviation in Advertising Language: A Functional Analysis (2009), three English textbooks, and ten academic articles. As part... Read More →

Peter Thabit Jones

Founder and Editor, The Seventh Quarry Press

Peter Thabit Jones was born in Swansea in Wales and is the author of thirteen books, several of which have been reprinted and four published in Romania. His work has been translated into over twenty-two languages.In 2008 Peter’s American publisher, Stanley H. Barkan, organised a... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
Hawthorne Essex Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

2:00pm EDT

Women Poets of Tupelo Press

While the VIDA Count has revealed major imbalances regarding the state of women in literature, such has never been true of Tupelo Press: 68% of our titles are by women. Lyrical, experimental, eclectic, all of them extraordinary, we present here several of the excellent women poets Tupelo is fortunate to call our own.

Moderators

Marie Gauthier

Director of Sales & Marketing, Tupelo Press

Speakers

Jennifer Militello

Jennifer Militello is the author, most recently, of A Camouflage of Specimens and Garments (2016) and Body Thesaurus (2013), both from Tupelo Press. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and Best New Poets. She teaches... Read More →

Kathy Nilsson

Kathy Nilsson earned a BA from Mount Holyoke College and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her book The Infant Scholar was published by Tupelo Press in January 2015 and won Honorable Mention, Berkshire Prize for a first or second book chosen by Tupelo Press Editors. Her... Read More →

Lee Sharkey

Saturday April 30, 2016 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
Old Town Hall 2nd Fl 32 Derby Square, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

2:00pm EDT

Edward Hirsch - Saturday Headline Event

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Join us for a reading and talk with with Edward Hirsch.

Moderators

Edward Hirsch

Edward Hirsch is a celebrated poet and peerless advocate for poetry. He was born in Chicago in 1950—his accent makes it impossible for him to hide his origins—and educated at Grinnell College and the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a Ph.D. in Folklore. His devotion... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
PEM Morse Auditorium Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Headline Event

2:00pm EDT

Master/Mistress/Mystery: The Poetry of Gender Nonconformity

The freedom to define what gender means has expanded greatly over the past century, with fashion, feminism and LGBTQ liberation each opening new doors. Psychology recognizes that gender identity is not always guided by appearance, while surgical procedures and hormonal therapies allow those of us who make that choice to express our gender identities in physical terms. How do poets explore and reveal gender in these changing times? Can imaginative use of poetic tropes help us as individuals and as a society better understand masculine and feminine, and their every combination, even as each generation redefines these terms? Four gender nonconforming poets (CA Conrad, Joy Ladin, Steven Riel, Pilar Quintana) will read from their works as they discuss how poetry interprets otherness, revealing the individual behind outward appearances and actions, allowing for understanding and acceptance, and enabling us to define who we are for others, and for ourselves.

Moderators

Steven Riel

I am the author of one full-length book of poetry (Fellow Odd Fellow, published by Trio House Press) as well as three chapbooks, with the most recent, Postcard from P-town, selected as runner-up for the inaugural Robin Becker Chapbook Prize and published by Seven Kitchens Press. My... Read More →

Speakers

CA Conrad

CAConrad’s childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He is the author of eight books of poetry and essays, the latest ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness (Wave Books) is the winner of the 2015 Believer Magazine... Read More →

Joy Ladin

Professor, Yeshiva University

I am the author of nine books of poetry, including Lambda Literary Award finalists Impersonation and Transmigration, and last year's Fireworks in the Graveyard (Headmistress Press) and The Future is Trying to Tell Us Something: New and Selected Poems (Sheep Meadow Press). A work of... Read More →

Pilar Quintana

poet, artist, musician, actor, Grey Court Poets

Pilar Quintana is a queer and genderqueer poet, currently working on a book of poems dealing with the roles that family, religion, and society play in our acceptance of gender and sexual identities. A member of the Grey Court Poets, Pilar's poems can be found in their anthology Songs... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
Charter School 2 Museum Place Mall, 2nd Fl, Salem, MA 01970

Panel Discussion

2:00pm EDT

Brown Bag Poetry: Workshop with Emily Jaeger

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How can a crochet hook tell a love story? Or masking tape explain coming of age? In this workshop, each participant will reach into a paper bag and pull out the central image of their poem. Using surprising and silly found objects as our inspiration, we will challenge our creative abilities and tie down abstract poetic themes—love, hate, memory, growing up—to the page with new and refreshing imagery.

Moderators

Emily Jaeger

Poet, Editor, Window Cat Press

Saturday April 30, 2016 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
Charter School 3 Museum Place Mall, 2nd Fl, Salem, MA 01970

Workshop

2:00pm EDT

Grub Street Poetry Generator

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Join Ben Berman as he leads festival attendees in innovative, fun, and stimulating poetry exercises. These unique exercises have been used in Grub Street’s multiweek poetry courses, and generated numerous published poems. The goal is to complete 2-4 exercises in an hour, leaving time for attendees to share their work aloud if they wish. You will receive supportive feedback, and suggestions for how to make the poems better, helping writers with common mistakes. Any critique will be given in a gentle and encouraging way. Even if you are not a published or practicing poet, this session will inspire you to want to create poems of your own.

Moderators

Ben Berman

Author, THEN AGAIN

Saturday April 30, 2016 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
Charter School 4 Museum Place Mall, 2nd Fl, Salem, MA 01970

Workshop

2:00pm EDT

To Refract the Complexity of Our Lives, Write American Ghazals

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Thanks to Agha Shahid Ali (1949-2001), who redefined the ghazal within our complex American context, more than 100 contemporary poets, including Natasha Tretheway, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Patricia Smith, and Margaret Szumowski (1949-2013), have written and published American ghazals.This engaging and interactive workshop invites participants to read aloud a few American ghazals (pronounced guzzles) so that we may discuss together how published poets are channeling their diverse creative, cultural and experiential experiences into this intriguing form. As a group, we will then strive to write a first draft of a ghazal; on the spot, participants will determine whether we write a first draft of a collaborative ghazal or individual ones. Participants will leave with a greater appreciation of this lyrical poetic form.

Moderators

María Luisa Arroyo

multilingual Boricua poet & educator

Multilingual Boricua poet and educator María Luisa Arroyo was educated at Colby (BA), Tufts (MA) and Harvard (ABD) in German, her third language. Her poetry collections include Gathering Words: Recogiendo Palabras (2008) and Destierro Means More than Exile (2018). For 20+ years... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
Charter School 1 Museum Place Mall, 2nd Fl, Salem, MA 01970

Workshop

3:15pm EDT

Solstice Anthology Reading

Solstice is one of the leading literary magazines when it comes to publishing diverse voices and reaching diverse audiences. Last year, it published its first print anthology, a selection of the best pieces of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction since it first started publishing over five years ago. This reading brings together five different poets from the anthology – Major Jackson, Martha Collins, Betsy Sholl, Alysia Harris and Karen Skolfield – for a celebratory reading of their work.

Moderators

Regie Gibson

Speakers

Martha Collins

FIELD magazine; Oberlin College Press

Jeff Friedman

Alysia Harris

Dzvinia Orlowsky

Karen Skolfield

Saturday April 30, 2016 3:15pm - 4:15pm EDT
Charter School 2 Museum Place Mall, 2nd Fl, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

3:15pm EDT

Warrior Writers Poetry Reading

Warrior Writers is a veteran-focused arts organization whose mission is to give voice to veterans’ experiences, providing creative community for artistic expression through casual workshops and retreats and bearing witness to the experiences of warriors through public performances and art exhibitions. Warrior Writers provides a bridge between veterans and their families and their communities. Through poetry, veterans are empowered to share their experiences and heal in a public yet intimate way.

Moderators

Rachel McNeill

Warrior Writers

Speakers

Tom Aikens

Tom Aikens is privileged to have been published in Warrior Writers' most recent anthologies, After Action Review (2011) and Warrior Writers (2014). He was an infantryman with 1st ID, and served as a team leader and squad leader on deployments to Kosovo (2002) and Iraq (2004-2005... Read More →

Michael Anthony

Warrior Writers

Michael Anthony was invited to read by Warrior Writers, a great group of veteran writers. He is honored to be a part of the 2015 Massachusetts Poetry Festival.

Nathan Heilman

Shannon Kafka

Volunteers

Eric Wasileski

Boston Facilitator, Warrior Writers

Eric Wasileski is a Persian Gulf Veteran of Operation Desert Fox, father, activist, preacher, ethicist and poet. Eric recently published his first book of poetry, Live Free (or Die), with Human Error Publishing. He is the coordinator of the Smedley D. Butler Brigade of Veterans for... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 3:15pm - 4:15pm EDT
Hawthorne Pickman Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

3:15pm EDT

Writing/Teaching/Living: Four Perspectives on Making a Life with Poetry

Faculty and a senior student from the University of Maine Farmington will read excerpts from their diverse works and discuss a variety of approaches to making a living (and a life) as a poet. Points of discussion will include the role of teaching, the workshop as pedagogical practice, the relationship of contemporary poetry to the academy, and the complexities involved in balancing the demands of art with the demands of paid work. This panel features writers at four different stages of their careers. The panel welcomes discussion with audience members working to fashion their own writing lives and will draw strength from the variety of experiences the panelists had prior to teaching as they were building their writing lives.

Moderators

Shana Youngdahl

Assistant Professor, University of Maine Farmington

Shana Youngdahl is the author of History, Advice and Other Half-Truths (Stephen F. Austin State University Press 2012) and three chapbooks, most recently Winter/Windows from Miel Books. She teaches first-year writing at the University of Maine Farmington.

Speakers

Kristen Case

Audrey Gidman

Jeffrey Thomson

Jeffrey Thomson is the author or editor of nine books across genres including fragile, amemoir, Birdwatching in Wartime, winner of both the 2010 Maine Book Award and the 2011 ASLE Award in Environmental Creative Writing. The Complete Poems of Catullus: an Annotated Translation, and... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 3:15pm - 4:15pm EDT
Hawthorne Library Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

3:15pm EDT

Mark Doty: Speaking in Tongues - Headline Event

The strongest poems, I’d propose, speak from more than one part of the self. How does a poem shift registers — moving, say, from intellect to intuition, or from sense perception to feeling? We have a number of varieties of knowing — from the rational to the subterranean, from description to touch. We’ll look at some stellar examples, and talk about technical means of shifting the gears of our own thinking, in order to try for poems that are more dimensional and complicated. more, that is, like life.

Speakers

Mark Doty

Mark Doty is the author of nine books of poetry, including Deep Lane (April 2015), Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, which won the 2008 National Book Award, and My Alexandria, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the T.S. Eliot... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 3:15pm - 4:15pm EDT
The Bridge at 211 211 Bridge Street, Salem Massachusetts 01970 (Formerly First Universalist Church)

Headline Event

3:15pm EDT

Off the Beaten Path: Poetry in the Hinterlands

The Big Apple, the Hub, the Windy City, LA. What if you happen to live far from the vibrancy and variety of city life? How can you bring top-notch poetry into your own community where appropriate venues are scarce, funding is tight, and writers are scattered? Poets from the North Shore of Massachusetts and the Catskills and Hudson Highlands in New York will talk about how we have each created successful, innovative ways to nurture poetry way off the beaten path. We will offer a fresh take on the possibilities for sharing and promoting poetry locally on air, in plein air, on stage, on the page, in the laundromat, and in the roller rink. Our imaginative poetry initiatives can be adapted anywhere—even downtown! Easy-to-follow instructions for launching unique literary programs and events will be included.

Moderators

Jo Pitkin

Poet and Educational Writer, Pear Tree Hill Editorial Services

Jo Pitkin is a native of Somers, New York. She received a BA from Kirkland College—a progressive women's college that pioneered the undergraduate degree in creative writing—and an MFA in poetry from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. For the past 30 years, she has... Read More →

Speakers

Sharon Israel

SHARON ISRAEL hosts the radio program, Planet Poet, an edition of the Writer's Voice, on WIOX FM, in Roxbury, New York, a hamlet in the Catskill Mountains. As a poet and soprano, Sharon collaborates with composer Robert Cucinotta on works for voice, live instruments, and electronics... Read More →

Colleen Michaels

Founder/Host, Improbable Places Poetry Tour

Will Nixon

I'm the author of "Acrostic Woodstock," a portrait in poems of Woodstock, New York. I'm the co-author of "Walking Woodstock: Journeys into the Wild Heart of America's Most Famous Small Town" and "The Pocket Guide to Woodstock."

Pamela Manché Pearce

Pamela Manche Pearce founded POETS READ POETRY, a monthly meeting of Hudson Valley poets who chose poems on a set theme to read and discuss. Certified in the Amherst Writers & Artists workshop method, she leads a weekly poetry group at a senior residence as well as workshops and retreats... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 3:15pm - 4:15pm EDT
Old Town Hall 2nd Fl 32 Derby Square, Salem, MA 01970

Panel Discussion

3:15pm EDT

Cycles and Series: Identifying Themes and Threads in Your Work

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The journey to a chapbook or full collection starts with identifying themes, obsessions, habits, and fascinations. At times, one single poem does not capture the full complexity or impact of its spark. This workshop will examine key strategies to maximize connection and continuity among a group of poems, leading towards the goal of publication. Reviewing a body of one’s work is to consider what Miriam Sagan suggests as obsessive themes each poet possesses, or recurring inspirations and considerations, the frequent image that returns and returns. In group discussion, participants will develop methods for grouping poems, building cycles that are linked in some manner, and fully supporting the work to meet its own potential, creating a foundation for examining their work as not just a bunch of poems but an inter-related “community” of language and form to deliver to the reader.

Moderators

Georgia Popoff

Georgia A. Popoff, is an educator, arts-in-education specialist, Comstock Review senior editor, Downtown Writers Center Workshops Coordinator and faculty member with two poetry collections and coauthor of a book for teachers on poetry in K-12 classrooms. Her fourth book is forthcoming... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 3:15pm - 4:15pm EDT
Charter School 4 Museum Place Mall, 2nd Fl, Salem, MA 01970

Workshop

3:15pm EDT

The Prose Poem

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The prose poem, as its title indicates, is a strange animal all its own. Borrowing from each form, a successful prose poem reads as if it could have been written no other way. In this workshop, we’ll learn by doing and discussion. Using handouts, we’ll look at some examples of successful prose poems, and try to figure out why they work. Then, using writing prompts, we’ll try to write some, noting some of the difficulties they raise and hoping for some small successes too. This workshop promises to be a lot of fun, and informative as well. It raises more questions than it answers.

Please bring writing materials, paper and pen preferred.

Moderators

Kathleen Spivack

Writer/teacher.

Kathleen Spivack is the author of "Unspeakable Things," published by A.Knopf, 2016. Her last book was "With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz and Others" (University Press of New England, 2012.) She’s published eight other... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 3:15pm - 4:15pm EDT
PEM Bartlett Gallery Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Workshop

3:15pm EDT

The World in a Grain of Sand: Incorporating Scale in Poetry and Art

Galaxies and exoplanets, scanning electron microscopes, 4 million queries per minute on Google: in our ever expanding universe, is the human brain still 'wider than the sky' as Emily Dickinson said? What is the role of poet/artist in helping us understand how and where humans fit? Join poet and museum professional Meg Winikates to explore the use of scale in poetry and art in PEM's Sizing It Up exhibition, experiment with physical and mental scale in your writing, and generate a poem idea (or three!) inspired by the artworks on view.

Moderators

Meg Winikates

Membership & Advocacy Manager, New England Museum Association

Margaret Winikates is a writer and museum professional from Boston and Northampton, MA. She writes poetry and fiction as well as Brain Popcorn, a blog on interdisciplinary education. Five years working at the Peabody Essex Museum reinforced the ways nature and art inspire her writing... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 3:15pm - 4:15pm EDT
PEM East India Marine Hall Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Workshop

3:15pm EDT

State of Poetry

Limited Capacity seats available

A diverse panel of poets will engage in a free flowing discussion about the state of poetry today: who gets published (and who doesn’t), the impact of new technologies, trends in craft, and poets and poetry’s connection to the events and to the social context of our times. Hosted by Jennifer Jean.

Moderators

Jennifer Jean

Co-director, Morning Garden Artist Retreats

Speakers

Sandra Beasley

Richard Blanco

Richard Blanco is the author of the memoirs The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood and For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey; the poetry chapbooks One Today and Boston Strong; and the poetry collections Looking for the Gulf Motel, Directions to the Beach of... Read More →

Ada Limon

Gregory Pardlo

Teaching Fellow, Columbia University

Saturday April 30, 2016 3:15pm - 4:30pm EDT
PEM Morse Auditorium Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Panel Discussion

7:30pm EDT

Mark Doty and Marie Howe

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Join us for what promises to be an extraordinary night of poetry with Mark Doty and Marie Howe.

Speakers

Mark Doty

Marie Howe

Marie Howe is the author of three volumes of poetry, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time; The Good Thief; and What the Living Do, and she is the co-editor of a book of essays, In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker... Read More →

Saturday April 30, 2016 7:30pm - 9:00pm EDT
The Bridge at 211 211 Bridge Street, Salem Massachusetts 01970 (Formerly First Universalist Church)

Headline Event

9:45pm EDT

Boston Slam

Limited Capacity full

Join members of the 2015 and 2016 Boston Slam team "bring it" at the 2016 festival!

The “House Slam” is Boston’s Poetry Slam venue located in the heart of Dudley Square. Built to be a transformative and inclusive artistic space, this bi-weekly open mic, poetry feature, and poetry slam brings poets and audience members together for a night of sharing and community. Co-founded by the 2014 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion Porsha Olayiwola and the 2015 Women of the World Poetry SlamChampion Janae Johnson, this venue is also home to the 2015 National Poetry Slam Team. Watching performances by the House Slam is an experience you don't want to miss, bringing with it the best that Boson Spoken Word has to offer both in poetry writing and poetry performance technique. Catch them every 2nd and 4th Friday of the month at the Haley House Cafe.

Moderators

Porsha Olayiwola

Black, futurist, poet, dyke, hip-hop feminist, womanist: Porsha is a native of Chicago who now resides in Boston. Olayiwola is a writer, performer, educator and curator who uses afro-futurism and surrealism to examine historical and current issues in the Black, woman, and queer diasporas... Read More →

Speakers

Erich Haygun

Melissa Lozada-Oliva

Jonathan Mendoza

Jonathan Mendoza is a Boston-based activist, spoken word artist, educator and musician. He is a two-time Louder Than A Bomb Massachusetts alumni and is currently a member of slam teams representing Berklee College of Music and The House Slam of the Haley House Bakery and Café in... Read More →

Jordan Peterson

Jade Sylvan

Saturday April 30, 2016 9:45pm - 11:00pm EDT
Bambolina Restaurant 288 Derby St, Salem, MA 01970

Performance

10:15am EDT

Reading for Salamander Magazine

Join Salamander Magazine for a reading by poets Beth Woodcome Platow, Simeon Berry, and Valerie Duff. These poets have appeared in Salamander's pages and represent a cross-section of the solid and compelling work published there. They have received recognition for books of poetry (Platow's manuscript won the Rousseau Poetry Prize, Berry is a two-time winner of the NPS, and Duff was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize); they come together at the festival to embody a magazine whose mission, after two decades, remains singular and dynamic: “to publish a generation of writers reaching artistic maturity and deserving of a wider audience alongside new work by established writers.”

Moderators

Jennifer Barber

Scholar in Residence/Editor, Suffolk/Salamander

Speakers

Simeon Berry

Simeon Berry lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. He has been an Associate Editor for Ploughshares and received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Individual Artist Grant. His first book, Ampersand Revisited (Fence Books), won the 2013 National Poetry Series, and his second book, Mo... Read More →

Valerie Duff

Valerie Duff's book, To the New World (Salmon), was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize (Queen's University Belfast) in 2011. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Common, AGNI, Solstice, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. She is the poetry editor... Read More →

Beth Platow

Sunday May 1, 2016 10:15am - 11:15am EDT
Old Town Hall 2nd Fl 32 Derby Square, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

10:15am EDT

Us and Them: Poets Read Original Works and New Translations

US & THEM began with a group of translator/writer/poets who met at the Bread Loaf Translators' Conference in June 2015. This reading will feature New England poets presenting their original work (US) and work they have translated (THEM). The reading will explore the effects of translation on ones own writing and how the translator has the ability to write in the voice of another poet while maintaining their own voice when working on original pieces. As many translators today are themselves writers/poets, it is important to showcase both sides of the "writing self" in one space as the passion for words comes from a single source: a love of language.

Moderators

Todd Portnowitz

Speakers

Sam Bett

Maria Jose Gimenez

Pablo Medina

Lloyd Schwartz

Frederick S. Troy Professor of English, University of Massachusetts Boston

Sunday May 1, 2016 10:15am - 11:15am EDT
PEM Create Space 1 Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

10:15am EDT

Working Class Poetics

This session explores poetry by and about working class lives. We will explore the concept of privilege, asking questions about who gets to tell their poetic stories, and why. Sally Bellerose and Ellen LaFleche will read poetry describing their childhood experiences with poverty and class, including poems from LaFleche’s chapbook Workers' Rites and Bellerose’s poems about growing up in a mill town in western MA. Howie Faerstein will read his poetry, including selections from his book Dreaming of the Rain in Brooklyn. These poems challenge notions of class in the USA. Oonagh Doherty will read poetry about her experiences as a poverty lawyer and hand out a poem that asks questions about privilege and intersectionality and connects classism with other social issues including ageism, ableism and racism. Audience questions and a discussion period will follow.

Moderators

Ellen LaFleche

Ellen LaFleche has published three chapbooks of poetry: Workers Rites (Providence Athenaeum); Ovarian (Dallas Poets Community Press); and Beatrice (Tiger's Eye Press.) She is a winner of the Philbrick Poetry Prize, the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize, New Millennium Writings Poetry Prize... Read More →

Speakers

Sally Bellerose

In her writing, Sally Bellerose loves to mess with rhythm, rhyme, and awkward emotion. Bellerose writes about class, sex, illness, absurdity, and lately, growing old. Her novel The Girls Club, http://www.bywaterbooks.com/shop/the-girls-club won many awards including an NEA Fellowship... Read More →

Oonagh Doherty

Oonagh Doherty was born in Scotland, and grew up in both the United Kingdom and the United States. She is seriously interested in poetry about cultural clashes, connections between people who seem very different, globalization, desire, misunderstanding, love, and loss. She has published... Read More →

Howie Faerstein

Westfield State University

Howie Faerstein’s full-length book of poetry, Dreaming of the Rain in Brooklyn, a selection of the Silver Concho Poetry Series, was published in 2013 by Press 53. His work can be found in numerous journals, including Great River Review, Nimrod (finalist in the Pablo Neruda Poetry... Read More →

Sunday May 1, 2016 10:15am - 11:15am EDT
Hawthorne Library Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

10:15am EDT

Edward Hirsch - Sunday Headline Event

Limited Capacity filling up

Sunday morning poetry and discussion with Edward Hirsch.

Speakers

Edward Hirsch

Sunday May 1, 2016 10:15am - 11:15am EDT
PEM East India Marine Hall Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Headline Event

10:15am EDT

Recovering the Poetry of Harriet Beecher Stowe

The internationally famous Harriet Beecher Stowe died in 1896, and 2016 marks the 120th anniversary of her death. As such, a reconsideration of her lesser-known works is warranted. Chief among these is her poetry—a significant area of her oeuvre that has attracted very little scholarly attention. Stowe is, of course, best known for her abolitionist novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), but she also wrote an unknown number of poems. In 1967, Collected Poems of Harriet Beecher Stowe, by John Michael Moran, Jr. (1906-1995), was published by Transcendental Books in Hartford, CT. An independent scholar, Moran worked as an accountant for forty-five years. In his brief foreword, Moran observed that while Stowe’s poetry had attracted some attention during her lifetime, it is “now neglected.” Moran’s collection ran one hundred pages and contains fifty-nine poems. This presentation will provide an introduction to the poetry of this well-known novelist.

Moderators

Nancy Schultz

Professor of English, Salem State University

I am working on collecting and editing the poetry of Harriet Beecher Stowe. I am the author of Fire and Roses:The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834 (Free Press 2000) and Mrs. Mattingly's Miracle: The Prince, the Widow, and the Cure that Shocked Washington City (Yale UP 201... Read More →

Sunday May 1, 2016 10:15am - 11:15am EDT
Hawthorne Pickman Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Panel Discussion

10:15am EDT

Write Poetry with a Natural Poet - A Workshop for Children and Parents

Limited Capacity seats available

When children and adults write side by side, something magical happens. Maybe it's because children are natural poets. Their love of word play and sound, their quick observations of the moments we adults have come to recognize as poetry give them an advantage. Writing poetry with your child affirms their talent and frees you to play with language in a lighthearted way. Together, you create a family memory hinged on the creation of poetry. Children's authors Burleigh Muten and Jeannine Atkins, who write in verse, invite you to a family writing session. They will provide unique, fast-paced writing prompts to spark your creativity. You and your child will unleash your imaginations as you write poetry together. Poets ages six and older are welcome along with an adult companion.

Moderators

Burleigh Muten

Sunday May 1, 2016 10:15am - 11:15am EDT
PEM Create Space 2 Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, Massachusetts 01970

Workshop

11:00am EDT

Common Threads

Join Susan Donnelly, Alan Feldman, Danielle Legros Georges, Henry Lyman, and Alice Kociemba as they read and discuss the poems in Common Threads 2016. Moderated by Alice Kociemba.

Moderators

Alice Kociemba

Founding Director, Calliope—Poetry for Community

Speakers

Susan Donnelly

Susan Donnelly is the author of three poetry collections, the most recent Capture the Flag. Published in Poetry, The New Yorker, Prairie Schooner, The Atlantic Monthly and elsewhere, including two poems currently in Irish journals, she had a poem featured in December in Nicholas Kristof's... Read More →

Alan Feldman

Danielle Georges

Professor, Lesley University

Henry Lyman

Henry Lyman’s work has appeared in The Nation, New England Watershed, The New York Times, Poetry, and other periodicals. Open Field Press published his collection The Land Has Its Say in April of this year. He edited Robert Francis’s new and uncollected poems Late Fire, Late Snow... Read More →

Sunday May 1, 2016 11:00am - 12:15pm EDT
PEM Bartlett Gallery Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Panel Discussion

11:00am EDT

Collaborations with Chance, the Art of Dada poetry

Join multidisciplinary artist, Sandra Adams for this drop -in opportunity to learn the art of Dada poetry, a practice that focusses on chance as a means to find profound meaning in the seemingly absurd. Working from a random selection of words cut out from print media, participants will assemble phrases or short poems that are bound to surprise and delight. No prior writing or art-making experience is necessary.

Sunday May 1, 2016 11:00am - 2:00pm EDT
PEM Atrium Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Poetry with Visual Art

11:30am EDT

Bengali Poetry Reading

We are a group pf writers who live and work in Boston and write in our mother tongue, Bengali. Our group is named LEKHONI, meaning "the pen," and has been in existence for more than a decade. We have had annual poetry and fiction readings and two Anthologies published with our collected works. Five of our poets, each reciting his/her original poetry individually in Bengali followed by its translation in English, each poet talking about the theme of immigrant living. Come and hear the varied cadences of two different languages; the language of birth and the language of the adopted home and how they are expressed; and how nostalgia for the past is experienced by an immigrant even as assimilation into the modern new world is happening here.

Moderators

Gouri Datta

Speakers

Susmita Bando

Papia Banerjee

Sajal Banerjee

Badiuzzaman Khan

Nilay Mukherjee

Sunday May 1, 2016 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT
Hawthorne Pickman Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

11:30am EDT

How Did I Get Here? MA Book Awards Winners Tell All

Amy Dryansky, Jeffery Harrison, and Daniel Tobin are all recent winners of the Massachusetts Book Award for Poetry, a prize that’s sponsored by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Each poet will read from their work, and talk briefly about their experience as writers- not just about their achievements, but their struggles, the diverse paths each has taken that brought them to where they are today, and where they might go in the future. Come hear these three very different poets share their work, and talk about what it means to make your way as a writer in the world.

Moderators

Amy Dryansky

Speakers

Jeffrey Harrison

Jeffrey Harrison is the author of five full-length books of poetry, including THE SINGING UNDERNEATH, selected by James Merrill for the National Poetry Series in 1987; FEEDING THE FIRE, winner of the Sheila Motton Award from the New England Poetry Club in 2002; INCOMPLETE KNOWLEDGE... Read More →

Daniel Tobin

Professor of Writing, Literature and Publishing, Emerson College

Daniel Tobin is the author of six books of poems, Where the World is Made, Double Life, The Narrows, Second Things, Belated Heavens (winner of the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry), and The Net (2014). His seventh book of poems, From Nothing, is forthcoming in 2016. He is the author... Read More →

Sunday May 1, 2016 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT
Old Town Hall 2nd Fl 32 Derby Square, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

11:30am EDT

North of the Border: Canadian Women Poets Speak Out

Canadians live so close and speak our language yet American poets rarely know what is going on in their poetry community. We do not pay attention to their journals, awards, contests, writing organizations and MFA programs. How does it differ to be a poet in Canada compared to the States? What are the concerns of women poets in Canada in particular? Three edgy and exciting female Canadian poets will discuss the state of poetry in Canada right now. They all live in different regions of the country and will offer multiple perspectives on the topic. Our panelists will share their concerns, the influences on their writing, and discuss how Canadian women’s poetry differs from men’s and from the poetry of the States, and they will also read from their celebrated and refreshing work.

Moderators

Elisabeth Weiss Horowitz

Salem State University

Elisabeth Weiss teaches writing and literature at Salem State University. She’s taught poetry in preschools, prisons, and nursing homes and as well as to the intellectually disabled. She’s worked in publishing in New York and has an MFA from The University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop... Read More →

Speakers

Stevie Howell

Stevie Howell is an Irish-Canadian writer and worker. Sharps, a first collection of poetry, was a finalist for the 2015 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Poems from the book were finalists for The Walrus Poetry Prize and The Montreal Poetry Prize. Poems have also been anthologized in... Read More →

Sharon McCartney

Sharon McCartney is the author of Metanoia (Biblioasis, Spring 2016), Hard Ass (2013, Palimpsest), For and Against (2010, Goose Lane Editions), The Love Song of Laura Ingalls Wilder (2007, Nightwood Editions), Karenin Sings the Blues (2003, Goose Lane Editions) and Under the... Read More →

Chantal Ringuet

Chantal Ringuet is a scholar, an award-winning poet and a literary translator from Quebec. She has published two collections of poetry (Le sang des ruines, 2010, and Under the Skin of War, 2014), a cultural essay about Yiddish Montreal (À la découverte du Montréal yiddish) and... Read More →

Sunday May 1, 2016 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT
Old Town Hall 2nd Fl 32 Derby Square, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

11:30am EDT

Youth Poetry: Publishing and Performance

Books of Hope will lead a youth poetry workshop, open mic and feature, as well as a discussion around publishing for youth audiences.

Moderators

Erich Haygun & Jayy Dodd

Books Of Hope

Youth Poetry Publishing

Speakers

Michael Jones

Andrine Pierresaint

Briana Pierrette

Tyler Roze

Jahi Spaloss

Sunday May 1, 2016 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT
PEM Create Space 1 Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

11:30am EDT

Marie Howe- Headline Event

Limited Capacity filling up

We are pleased to have Marie Howe read and discuss her work at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival.

Sunday May 1, 2016 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT
PEM East India Marine Hall Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Headline Event

11:30am EDT

Boston Typewriter Orchestra

Back with us again in the Boston Typewriter Orchestra (BTO)!

The BTO is a collective endeavor which engages in rhythmic typewriter manipulation combined with elements of performance, comedy and satire. BTO will entertain the masses while providing an outlet for the creative urges of its members. *BTO promises to protect customer confidentiality with the utmost vigilance while remaining irreverent at all times.

Check out this one-of-a-kind of performance.

Moderators

Boston Typewriter Orchestra

Sunday May 1, 2016 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT
PEM Morse Auditorium Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Music Performance

11:30am EDT

Writing for Social Change and Writing to Bear Witness

This panel/prompt will highlight Writing Poetry for Social Change, Social Justice, and for the Global Good; Writing through Collective Crisis; and Poetry as witness. Participants who have something to express with regard to a social justice issue, but who may be unsure how to begin or continue their work will find this session enlivening. Also, those seeking to write poetry to bear witness after a collective crisis or tragedy, including writing about the refugee, migration or immigration experience; the experience of being a soldier; or the experience of witnessing a life-altering event will find the session of particular interest. Additionally, the session will explore the question: When does catharsis become art?

Moderators

Tobi Dress-Germain

Tobi Dress-Germain is a writer and lecturer on peacebuilding, conflict prevention, human rights, and related human security issues. She is also a lawyer and mediator, and in her personal life is a poetry and fiction writer.Tobi is a published author who has written and edited books... Read More →

Sunday May 1, 2016 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT
Hawthorne Library Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Panel Discussion

11:30am EDT

Writing Truth and Beauty: Using Your Photos for Poetic Inspiration

Limited Capacity full

We’ve all had the experience of hearing the whispers of photographs that seem to have a deeper story to tell. Whether they’re treasured family snapshots, polished studio portraits or cell phone images, certain pictures arrest our attention and prompt an emotional response we cannot immediately express. Writing poetry from photos allows us to express the truth of what we feel and haven’t said, and capture the beauty and deeper meaning of an image in words. We’ll let the images “speak” - writing poems, fragments of memoir, or stories that capture the feelings, personalities, relationships, rites of passage, cultural identity and family history evoked by photographs. When personally chosen photos are brought into a writing circle, powerful writing about family, community, and cross-cultural identity emerges. We’ll explore the photos as a warm-up to generating first drafts. Writers of all backgrounds and experience are welcome - bring photos to work from.

Moderators

Kelly DuMar

Kelly DuMar is a poet, playwright, and workshop facilitator from Boston. She’s the author of three poetry chapbooks, and her poems and photos are published in many literary journals. She serves on the Board of the International Women’s Writing Guild and produces the Bi-Monthly... Read More →

Sunday May 1, 2016 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT
PEM Create Space 2 Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, Massachusetts 01970

Workshop

1:00pm EDT

A Many Sided Reality: The Poetic Sequence and the Book-Length Poem

The poetic sequence has become a staple of contemporary poetry from its beginnings in the work of Whitman and Dickinson, Yeats and Eliot, and a great many others, over the course of the 20th and into the 21st centuries. Likewise, the book-length poem has found renewed purchase in the culture over the past decade or more. This panel of five prominent poets—Christine Casson, Martha Collins, Steven Cramer, and Daniel Tobin--will discuss the subject and read from their work in these two important and dynamic sub-genres of the art.

Moderators

Daniel Tobin

Professor of Writing, Literature and Publishing, Emerson College

Speakers

Christine Casson

Scholar- /Writer-in-Residence, Emerson College

Christine Casson is the author of After the First World, a book of poems. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and she has also published critical essays on the work of Leslie Marmon Silko and the poetry of Linda Hogan and Robert Penn Warren. She is currently... Read More →

Martha Collins

FIELD magazine; Oberlin College Press

Steven Cramer

Steven Cramer’s poetry collections include Listen, Clangings, and Goodbye to the Orchard, a Sheila Motton Prize-winner and a Massachusetts Honor Book. Published in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, Poetry, et al., and recipient of Massachusetts Cultural Council and NEA fellowships... Read More →

Sunday May 1, 2016 1:00pm - 2:00pm EDT
PEM East India Marine Hall Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

1:00pm EDT

A World Of Voices from White Pine Press

Since 1973 White Pine Press has published and presented a wide diversity of poetry from the American mosaic and in translation from around the world. Editor/Publisher Dennis Maloney will introduce a group of our poets who will read from their work published by White Pine Press.

Moderators

Dennis Maloney

Speakers

Marjorie Agosin

MARJORIE AGOSIN is a Chilean-born Americanwriter. She is a prolific author: her published books,including those she has written as well as thoseshe has edited, number over eighty. Her two mostrecent books are both poetry collections, The Lightof Desire / La Luz del Deseo, translated... Read More →

Wyn Cooper

Editor, Wyn Cooper Editing

Wyn Cooper is the author of five books of poems, most recently Mars Poetica. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Slate, The Southern Review, AGNI, and in 25 anthologies of contemporary poetry. His poems have been turned into songs by Sheryl Crow, David Broza, and Madison Smartt Bell... Read More →

Kim Garcia

Kim Garcia is the author of The Brighter House, winner of the 2015 White Pine Press Poetry Prize, DRONE, winner of the 2015 Backwaters Prize, and Madonna Magdalene, released by Turning Point Books in 2006. Her chapbook Tales of the Sisters won the 2015 Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Chapbook... Read More →

Sunday May 1, 2016 1:00pm - 2:00pm EDT
Hawthorne Pickman Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

1:00pm EDT

Greetings from the Happy Valley

"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.

Moderators

Adam Grabowski

Vermont College of Fine Arts

Adam's work has appeared in Off the Coast, jubilat, The Rattling Wall, The Naugatuck River Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Meat for Tea, and elsewhere. Adam received his MSW from Westfield State University in 2012 and is currently an MFA candidate at the Vermont College... Read More →

Speakers

Tara Jean Bernier

Tara Jean Bernier walked into an open mic in August of 2012, and never left. Currently, she is the slam master and co-host of the weekly Northampton Poetry open mic (though, admittedly, she is vexed by adding three numbers together after having two beers on slam nights). She also... Read More →

Robbie Dunning

Movement Voter Project

Robbie Dunning is a poet, performer, artist and educator living and working on stolen land (specifically of the Pawtucket and Massa-adchu-es-et people). They have worked at Movement Voter Project since 2016 in a range of areas from graphic design to their current focus on Operations... Read More →

Lauren Singer

Lauren Singer is the assistant judge of the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest, the Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest, and the North Street Book Prize. She is a native New Yorker living in Western Massachusetts. Her poetry has been published in Nerve House, Bareback... Read More →

Sunday May 1, 2016 1:00pm - 2:00pm EDT
Old Town Hall 2nd Fl 32 Derby Square, Salem, MA 01970

Group Reading

1:00pm EDT

“A Language for the Unknown”: The Interplay of Poetry and Science

Careful observation, precise language, and a fascination with what poet and science writer Alison Hawthorne Deming calls “the unknown” are some of the commonalities between poetry and science. This panel examines the ways in which the two disciplines inform and inspire each other. How can astronomy, geology, or biology illuminate a relationship or expose human truth in poetry? How does a fact become a metaphor when it crosses the science/poetry border? How do curiosity and imagination play out in both arenas? Using their own poetry as well as examples from other poets and scientists, Heather Hughes, Rosemary Starace, and Ellen Goldstein discuss how science figures in their search for poetic meaning and “the unknown.”

Moderators

Ellen Goldstein

Ellen Goldstein was born and raised in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her work has appeared in journals such as The Common, Measure, StorySouth, Solstice, Muddy River Review, and Post Road, as well as in the anthologies Queer South (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014, Bloomsbury Anthology of... Read More →

Speakers

Heather Hughes

Rosemary Starace

Rosemary Starace is a writer and visual artist living in Pittsfield, MA, USA. Her poems have appeared in Orion, Blueline, Yew, Studio, Lake, and other journals and books. She is author of the poetry collection, Requitements (Elephant Tree House), and co-editor, with Moira Richards... Read More →

Sunday May 1, 2016 1:00pm - 2:00pm EDT
Hawthorne Library Hawthorne Hotel, 18 Washington Square W, Salem, MA 01970

Panel Discussion