Headliners for the Mass Poetry Festival

At the Massachusetts Poetry Festival on May 12, 13 and 14, downtown Salem and Salem State University are going to be packed with festivities.  In addition workshops, panel discussions, readings, small press fairs, music, and slam competitions, each evening will culminate with headliner attractions.

Thursday Night Headliner

Salem State will be honoring an alumnus, Tom Sexton, the former Poet Laureate of Alaska and the author of 12 books of poetry. Sexton will read from his new book From East to West to East: One Poet’s Journey at 7:00 in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Room of the Ellison Campus Center.Friday night

Friday Night Headliners

The three poets below will be reading at 7:30 in the Atrium at the Peabody Essex Museum.

• Brian Turner, author of Here, Bullet, a prize-winning book about the poet’s experience in Iraq,  and, most recently,  Phantom Noise, which  was shortlisted for the 2010 T.S. Eliot Prize.
• Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of three poetry collections:Lucky Fish; At the Drive-in Volcano,  winner of the Balcones Prize for the best collection of poetry published in 2007; and Miracle Fruit, winner of the Tupelo Press Prize.
• Jericho Brown, author of Please, his first book, which won the American Book Award, and recipient of the Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland.

See more on these poets in this article.

Saturday Night Headliners

All headliners who are participating in the culminating event of the Festival will be participating earlier in the day. Mark Doty will talk about his recent book Still Life with Oysters and Lemons at the Peabody Essex Museum near the current exhibit of Dutch Masters.  Patricia Smith will present a workshop on writing poetry.  Kim Richey will conduct an afternoon workshop in songwriting.

Here is more on the three artists who will share the stage at 7:30 at the Universalist Church on Bridge Street in Salem:

Mark Doty: winner of two NEA fellowships, Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, a Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Award, and the Witter Byner Prize. Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems won the National Book Award in 2008.

Kim Richey: winner of  two Grammy nominations and whose music has been featured in films and TV.

Patricia Smith: whose book Blood Dazzler chronicles the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and  was named on one of NPR’s Top 5 Books of 2008.