Powow River Poets: local poets have wide influence

Rhina Espaillat is a founding member and former director of the Powow River Poets. She writes poetry and prose both in English and in her native Spanish. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines, including The Lyric, Poetry, Sparrow, Orbis, The Formalist, and The American Scholar, as well as some forty anthologies. Espaillat has eight poetry collections in print, including Where Horizons Go, which won the 1998 T. S. Eliot Prize; Rehearsing Absence, which won the 2001 Richard Wilbur Award; and most recently, Playing at Stillness. In 2004 she became the first winner of the Tree at My Window Award from the Robert Frost Foundation for her Spanish translations of Robert Frost and her English translations of Saint John of the Cross and César Sánchez Beras. That same year she also received the Dominican Republic’s Salome Ureña de Henríquez Award for service to Dominican culture and education

How, when, and why did the Powow River Poets get started?

We began with a small nucleus of some five or six local poets in 1992, meeting at first in one another’s houses, and then in local cafes, then in the Newburyport Art Association and finally in the Newburyport Library once a month, to exchange poems with each other and trade comments and ideas. By then some of the earliest members had moved away or gone on to other interests, and new members had joined.

What was the purpose of the organization?

The chief purpose has always been the same: to get better at what we do by giving each other useful criticism. Additional purposes are the exchange among ourselves of such useful information as publication venues, contest news and so forth, and also the presentation of poetry to the reading public, especially but not exclusively in the local community, and the fostering and encouragement of local students. We run a free reading series that brings well-known poets to Newburyport to read every two months at Jabberwocky Books. We also present readings occasionally at other venues in and around Newburyport, individually or in small groups, often at events sponsored by other cultural groups in the area, such as the Newburyport Literary Festival, the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, the Whittier Home, museums, galleries and book stores. The person in charge of setting up those readings is currently Michael Cantor: you may want to contact him for details about that:  ( mcantor@prodigy.net  )

Has the purpose changed or expanded over the years? If so, why?

No, we’re still committed to improve as poets, and to serve the community by enriching its cultural and educational life to the extent that we can.

How does it support local poets?

By helping them to hone their craft, hear other poets and gain access to their books and recordings, and attempt new forms and techniques, such as polyphonic readings (readings by several voices), melopoeias (readings with musical backgrounds) and other combinations of two or more arts, including the visual and dramatic arts. I’m happy to report that the group has won a disproportionate number of national and international poetry awards, and has drawn attention and positive commentary from poets out of the area, including Dana Gioia, X. J. Kennedy and Lewis Turco. From eight to twelve of us attend the yearly West Chester Poetry Conference, the largest poetry conference in the country and the only one devoted specifically to the study of poetic craft. Almost all of us have published at least one book, and several have quite a few; a number have also published translations, both of the classics and from the work of contemporary foreign poets. 

How many members do you have? How does one become a member?

We currently have twenty-five active members, of whom some eighteen or nineteen attend every meeting. We’re not actively seeking new members, as that’s a large number, and we like to give each poet as much time as possible at each of our monthly meetings. Poets seeking membership are asked to visit a reading first, without any work to share, to see if the group seems right for his needs, and then, if he chooses, to ask Don Kimball   (  prisdon@comcast.net  ),  the current workshop time-keeper and head of the membership committee, about membership.

What are some of the more exciting things your organization has done in the years since it began?

In addition to the workshop meetings, the bi-monthly readings by guest poets are our most exciting activities. We have presented to the public readings by several former U. S. Poet Laureates, including William Jay Smith and Richard Wilbur, as well as dozens of poets celebrated nationally and internationally. We have taken part in civic events, appeared at the Firehouse Center for the Arts, the Actors’ Studio and other cultural centers, and consistently mentored the work of Newburyport High School’s outstanding creative writing group, Poetry Soup, at the invitation of its director, teacher Debbie Szabo. As individuals, of course, our members have also done quite a few exciting things.

Deborah Szabo adds:  The Powow Poets are at the core of a group of poets who serve as featured readers for Poetry Soup, the monthly poetry readings the kids hold at Newburyport High School. Several of the Powows have served as major inspiration for my students, especially, of course, Rhina, whom we fondly refer to as the “grandmother of Poetry Soup.”

What are your plans for the future?

We are considering, at the invitation of Newburyport Art Association Director Elena Bachrach and jointly with Debbie Szabo, the possibility of some shared activity bringing together the literary and the visual arts, and harnessing the talent of the area’s young people. Aside from this project, of course, we hope to continue doing what we’ve been doing so far, and whatever future challenges lead us to accomplish.

Szabo responds to what the Powow Poets are doing in this initiative:  The project Rhina mentions will launch in the fall. Students from my Creative Writing class will write dramatic monologues based on the art work being shown at the Newburyport Art Association. It was Rhina’s idea! Not sure yet how the Powows will fit in, but I’m hoping we can use poems they have written from the point of view of inanimate objects as models for my students to read and study before going to the Art Association to write their own.