The Massachusetts Poetry Festival 2016: Full Schedule

11:00am EDT

Ada Limon and Gregory Pardlo - Headline Event

Limited Capacity full

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

12:15pm EDT

Charles Simic, David Rivard, Laurin Becker Macios

Limited Capacity full

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 has called many places home — including Florida, Germany, North Carolina, Colorado, Holland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York. Somewhere to Go, her debut full-length book, won the 19th annual poetry award from Elixir... 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

2:00pm EDT

Edward Hirsch - Saturday Headline Event

Limited Capacity full

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

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

Program Manager, 24PearlStreet Online Writing Program at FAWC

Jennifer Jean’s poetry collections include VOZ and The Fool, as well as Object Lesson which is about sex-trafficking and objectification in America. Her teaching resource is Object Lesson: a Guide to Writing Poetry and she's a co-editor and co-translator of an anthology in development... Read More →

Speakers

Sandra Beasley

Sandra Beasley is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Made to Explode, which came out with W. W. Norton in 2021; 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... Read More →

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

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