Massachusetts Poetry Festival & Other Programs
What’s a trait you really admire in another person? I suspect most of us would rank the ability to laugh at one’s self right up there with generosity and kindness. Besides, laughter is catching — so we all get to benefit.
Alice Kociemba
Alice Kociemba earned the admiration of a room full of people when she read her prize-winning poem in Steve Almond’s Bad Poetry Contest at the recent Massachusetts Poetry Festival.
Don’t miss out on your favorite events at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, which is May 3-5 in Salem. Many of the workshops, readings, panels, etc. are already filled.
You’ll see the four easy steps to follow:
Now you are ready to print out your own personal agenda.
Jack Kerouac
On Thursday, May 2, a Kerouac Symposium at Salem State University kicks off the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, which runs in Salem through the 5th.
The May 2 Kerouac Symposium is not the first Kerouac event at Salem State. In fact the first one occurred 40 years ago, a little over four years after Kerouac died on October 23, 1969. It was the first time many of Kerouac’s old friends had been together since his death, says Jay McHale, a retired professor at Salem State and the organizer of the first event and the one to occur on this coming May 2. In fact Allen Ginsberg said at the first symposium, ““We’re paying homage to the memory of Jack Kerouac.”
Poster courtesy of Aforementioned Productions
With a reading by some of the state’s most well-known poets and writers, the Boston literary community joins the statewide effort to support those affected by the marathon attack. Those reading include Robert Pinsky, former U.S. Poet Laureate; Sue Miller, best-selling author of While I Was Gone and The Lake Shore Limited; Fanny Howe, award-winning poet, fiction writer, and essayist; author and AGNI editor Sven Birkerts; and acclaimed poet Jill McDonough. More authors may be named soon.
Here are two stories that may be of interest to our readers: an interview with Claire Keyes on Common Threads in the Salem News and a long audio interview with one of our feature poet Kevin Goodan on the New Books of Poetry site.
Louder than a Bomb (LTAB) Massachusetts is a youth poetry program that can change lives. Those that work with the program make that claim because they have seen it happen to young people they’ve worked with. And some of them have felt that change in their own lives as they got involved in Chicago where the program began.
But the program needs your financial help now.
What do the arts in Massachusetts mean to you? We ask our readers to think about that question because the House Ways and Means Committee has threatened to cut the budget for the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) by $1.5 million.
Sharon Olds, one of our Saturday night feature poets at the Mass Poetry Festival, has just won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. And Martin Espada, a Sunday headliner at the Cinco de Mayo reading, has just won the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award.
Congratulations to both winners!
This interview with Maria Mazziotti Gillan is the fourth in a series with the featured poets for the 2013 Massachusetts Poetry Festival (May 3 – 5 in Salem). Each interview is accompanied by a poem, featured in the left column under “Poem of the Moment.” Maria’s poem is Public School No.18, Paterson, New Jersey
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The Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference was held in Boston last week. In addition to the snowstorm, the city was piled high with literary types — a heavenly if exhausting experience for poets and writers of all stripes. Below we have the responses of four attendees: January O’Neil, Alice Kociemba, Michelle Gillett, and Liz Janik. [Read more...]
