View of Boston from the windows of the Royal Sonesta

From 7 to 10 o’clock share complimentary wine, a cash bar, hors d’oeuvres, music, and great company — like Robert Pinsky, Gail Mazur and Maggie Deitz as they share with us their favorite poems. The gala will be at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge on June 13.

Imagine the evening — wonderful poetry, smoozing with poetry friends, and the beauty of Boston at the turn of your head!

The money from ticket sales supports the  year-round work of Mass Poetry–the placement of poet-educators in schools, Louder than a Bomb Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, and Common Threads. What better way is there to support a great cause.

MassLEAP kicked off the second annual youth poetry slam festival on Saturday, with twenty-four different teams of students from high schools and organizations around Massachusetts competing in preliminaries at MassArt. Over 200 student poets, mentors, and leaders attended Louder Than A Bomb and shared their stories, creating a chance for diverse communities to come together.

Photo by Richard Beaubien

What was once a competition between friends, on rooftops and street corners, blossomed into something much more. Louder Than A Bomb began in Chicago in 2001, and is now, across seven states, the largest youth poetry festival in the world. As Amanda Torres, poet and co-founder of LTAB Massachusetts describes, “Louder Than A Bomb started as an idea…[it] started as four teams in the basement of the Chopin Theater on Milwaukee Avenue. From those collective meetings came the idea for the festival that would bring young folks together from across the city.”

 Louder Than A Bomb derives its name from a Public Enemy song, “exemplifying the idea that we must name our own lives before they are named for us,” says Torres. “We believe that young people are the future of this world and so we need to start listening to what they have to say.”

At the competition on Saturday, audiences heard teen poets spit stories ranging from quantum science and Bobby Fischer, to racial issues and domestic abuse. Though the students each hoped to win their team a spot in the finals the atmosphere during bouts was very supportive, evidence of the ways in which Louder Than A Bomb builds and strengthens community. Poets applauded one another loudly and often. Especially strong lines received “snaps,” cheers, and even audible gasps. If the audience felt the judges had been unfair, delivering a score deemed too low, they called out “listen to the poem!”

Photo by Richard Beaubien

MassLEAP Collective—founded in part by LTAB Chicago creator Anna West—serves as the youth programming arm of Mass Poetry, and organizes Louder Than A Bomb. Supporting Mass Poetry means providing the funding to carry out programs like LTAB, and continuing to empower young poets to speak their minds.

Louder Than A Bomb finals will be held Thursday, May 23^rd from 6-9 at the Boston University Theatre. The four teams competing are FreeVerse! (Lowell), Codman Academy (Dorchester), Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School, and Grub Street (Boston). Several teams that did not advance to the finals will still receive showcases on the finals stage.

Tickets are available here. Remember: Listen to the poem!

See the Boston Globe’s fantastic article on LTAB.

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.

In preparation for his Bad Poetry session, Steve had urged his audience to submit bad love poems, appealing to us personally: “Because you’re human. And that’s what humans do: they write bad love poems.”

Steve Almond

Alice, who has published many poems in literary magazines as well as the chapbook  Death of Teaticker Hardware, took the bait. She says, “One of the last things I did before leaving work late on Thursday night was to send Steve Almond a really bad love poem I had written for his ‘Bad Poetry Contest.’  I had promised myself that I would not miss this event, as I needed some humor after a tough week at work.”

Steve’ blurb on the winning poem describes it as “a masterpiece of wrenching obscurity. Clearly, the speaker has suffered romantic anguish, and yet in her brilliant badness we (the readers) have no clear idea of ANYTHING concrete about this loss — it’s all stolen souls and deceived hearts. That’s what Bad Poets are all about–hiding in abstraction.”

Alice jumped at the chance to demonstrate her skill in badness to the audience that assembled for Steve’s presentation. “I was delighted that he asked me to read, ‘If I Had Known’ and later chose the poem as the winner.  The prize: his wonderful book: Bad Poetry.  It was a treat for the next 24 hours to have random people [at the poetry festival] congratulate me.  My favorite comment was, “When you wrote it, did you know it was bad?”

Steve concurs that the reading was a hit. “Alice brought the house down with her delivery of the poem.”

You can order Steve’s book Bad Poetry from the Harvard Book store.

And you can read Alice’s gloriously winning poem here:

If I Had Known

If I had known
that sad lament
too late regret
about the others
the et al of lovers
as I do now,
would I have breathed—

absorbed your soul,
tasted longing,
that brief belonging,
then you leave
taking the heart of me
and I become—one
of the et al of lovers.

I exposed
that ancient need
to be known
completely seen
to feel loved,
finally fully loved.
If I had known

as I do now,
I don’t exist
except to foil
another’s need
to be known
by you alone.
How do I grieve

the death of me?
My soul stolen
my heart deceived,
seduced by the fantasy
of you pretending
to be in love with me,
such soulless hypocrisy.

If I had known
as I do now.

Alice Kociemba

Donate Now!

Last year Mass LEAP, the youth programming arm of Mass Poetry, attracted 16 teams with over 100 young people participating in a poetry program called Louder than a Bomb (LTAB). This year the enthusiasm for the nascent program has almost doubled across the state, with  24 teams and close to 180 teens participating in free workshops, presentations and poetry slams.

Who would have thought a poetry program in the public schools   would catch fire this way?

Amanda Torres

Amanda Torres and Alex Charalambides–organizers of the event–would have. This dynamic pair are not just leaders; they are believers.

But they need your help. Mass Poetry — after the festival — is low on funds. Currently we have raised $2,750 of the $10,000 we need for this event — but there are only 8 days left for this campaign before the LTAB festival begins. Mass Poetry needs the money to pay coaches and pay for venues. We are down to the wire.

Alex Charalambides

See the story and video in Cambridge Day.  Donate! 

And stay tuned to masspoetry.org for more about the roots of this wonderful youth program.

Jack Scully

Thanks to Jack Scully for the following report:

SUBMISSIONS

Poetry

Call for submissions! Forgetting Home: Poems About Alzheimer’s

Email 2-4 poems in the body of an email, on the topic of Alzheimer’s or old age and memory loss, to annaevans(at)barefootmuse(dot)com. Type Anthology Submission followed by your last name in the subject header. Deadline July 31 2013. Publication Date tbc. Contributors will receive one free copy of the anthology. Previously published poems accepted—include publication credit.

 Guidelines

DaQuan Cook – I was making a routine check-up on the info stations supported by other dedicated volunteers. All of a sudden, Terrance Hayes was walking in my direction, and I introduced myself. It was calming how down to Earth he was. I was engulfed by the love of Cave Canem. The warm embrace of their poets interacting with the audience and themselves was inspiring. Mass Poetry Festival 2013 was an influential time with spectacular performances, and an already historic city in Salem that became a Mount Olympus for poetry. I look forward to next year!

Tony Toledo — The Mass Poetry Festival Was Amazing! Wonderful! Funny! Hip! Astounding! I tip my Hat to you ALL!  Walking down the streets of Salem the lovers of poetry were smiling, talking to each other about what they had just heard, amazed that this world class poetry event is right here in Salem.  In the Hobbit, the Rangers protected the Shire from the outside world.  At this grand Poetry Festival each of you did the same thing.  You made sure everything ran smoothly so attendees heard only grand poems, attended only thought provoking workshops, and reveled in the company of their fellow poets.  I am already looking forward to The 2014 Mass Poetry Festival. For today though, I am still grinning ear to ear, pondering all the wonderful words I heard at this year’s festival.  Today I thank all the wonderful poets, all the wonderful volunteers, all the wonderful attendees, all the wonderful organizers.  Bravo!

Jade Sylvan — Thank you all so much for having me and my bizarro cohorts at the poetry festival this year. It was a really special show, and we got great feedback from members of the audience. My performers all told me they had a great time. The musicians and dancers loved the event!  They got to perform in front of an audience they’d never normally see, and the poets got to perform in a way they rarely get to do. I’ve had a particularly long and intense spring, and it was so nice to come back to the Poetry Festival and share some of what I’ve been doing for the past year. I think I’d like to continue in this vein and I’m already planning on how to hone the event and make it even better next year. Thank you all again for everything you do.

And here is a photo to remember the festival — in spring, in front of the Old Town Hall in Salem, in the luminous and wondrous world of poets coming together to celebrate!

Photo by John Andrews, Social Palates

Tom Daley — If the Festival has convoked (“called together”), it has also provoked (originally, “called forth, challenged”). Called forth a Grey Panther Wiccan-style “Up With People” flash mob at Friday’s “Headliner” event—as if to underline, as Jill McDonough’s image of wiener missile-tossing cranks teaches, that no one is safe from incongruous surprises. Terrance Hayes was provocation itself, counter-spelling smugness, not in image so much, as Ruby Poltorak pointed out, as in thought, provoking the re-configuring of our philosophic orders in poems that inculcate without ever being explicitly philosophical; poems that spare politics the retrofit of poetic sermonizing by exploiting the rummage room between contradictions. Other notable provocations? Ellen Doré Watson’s “Mending Wall” neighbor wife spitting back at Frost twice, once in the poet’s reading and then in a splendid rendition by Salem State dramatists. Sharon Olds’ odes to tampons and clitorises. Steven Cramer’s persona’s disassociations burrowing up to the light of dissonance. Berryman refreshed in Jim Vrabel’s play and Hopkinsesque in Erica Funkhouser. Somebody’s boilerplate homesickness diagnosed as a first book. The convoking? Michael Ansara and January Gill O’Neil convening an exquisitely compelling crew of headliners and programmers. Friends at vegan restaurants, bars, train rides, and in GPS-addled detours confirming that mutual affection for poetry can accrete to other manifestos of mutual fondness—is that not a satisfying undertone for poetry convocations?

Laurin Macios — My favorite part of the festival was meeting all of the volunteers—these good people who have donated their time to the festival in order to help it run smoothly. They forfeited having free reign of the festival themselves so that they could help make the festival a warm, friendly, joyful place for everyone else attending, and that really says a lot to me about who these people are. It was an honor for me to get to work with them and to get to know each of them even just a little, and I genuinely enjoyed getting to shake each of their hands as they checked in at headquarters. I’m already looking forward to seeing them again, and meeting new volunteers, in 2014!

Alice Kociemba

Alice Kociemba — If I were to single out any surprise or moment that I treasure, it would be running into some volunteers I know from Falmouth.  For example, Susan Fishman and her husband, who came to their first Festival, found me and we sat together at the keynote reading on Saturday night.  Susan, a member of the Poetry Book Group I facilitate at the Falmouth Public Library, is not a poet, but an enthusiastic reader of poetry.  She so enjoyed her time in Salem.  Also, I spotted Regina Correira, a poet who regularly reads at Calliope’s open mic.  She was there on Sunday, volunteering at the information booth in front of the Museum Mall.  Regina had just arrived from Boston, after visiting her husband, Michael in the hospital.  He encouraged her to come to the Festival to replenish her energy.  Like so many people involved in the Festival’s nuts and bolts, they inspire me.

Claire Keyes — The Flash Mob on Friday night before the feature reading was, hands down, my favorite aspect of the Mass Poetry Festival 2013.   Why?  because I was one of the singers and all the planning that had gone into this surprise was suddenly paying off.   Our director, Valerie Peterson, began in her beautiful soprano, ringing out with “Yonder Comes Day” as she walked towards the area in front of the stage.   Soon other singers from my chorus, Calla Lily, began to join in.   Heads turned, people started clapping and smiling.   A Flash Mob! Just like the ones on You Tube—only less elaborate.   We segued into “Earth Dance,” a simple lyric which evolves into four-part harmony.   We were swaying and clapping our hands and the poetry audience joined in.  By the time we got to “This Land is Your Land,” the crowd was on their feet, their voices blending with ours.  I loved seeing my friends in the audience smiling, cheering us along.   And I was delighted to bring together two parts of my world, music and poetry.   Perhaps the Flash Mob could also be seen as emblematic of the Festival itself: a coming together of disparate voices.

Joey Gould – Poetry festival 2013 began its gestation period in a Salem town meeting room in April 2012, & since then we’ve carried, nurtured, grown, & mostly cajoled it into existence.  It screamed its way into the world on Thursday with the Student Day of Poetry, then toddled, then walked–& one could often see January running, too.  I feel a certain species of postpartum depression today, in the afterglow—the mist had lifted from the ground & dissipated revealing a sunrise over Salem, but the sky can only be painted with such vividness for so long.  Three days.  Wow, was all I could muster this morning.  So, the poets diffuse back into the world.

But those sunrise colors are forever story-true, telling themselves in the lives of witnesses.  Here’s hoping a beautiful day follows.  Every poem, every question for a panel guest, each clap & snap of fingers connected to a thread of conversation humans have held for thousands of years, but each hue is new.  A thank you to each shoe that traipsed to a venue.  I hope you enjoyed our canvas spread across the city of Salem.

Cindy Veach — The festival is over. I don’t know about you, but spending a weekend among poets—listening to poetry, writing poetry, buying poetry, talking poetry—is not my typical weekend.  In fact, more than once I had to pinch myself.  Some of my memorable “pinch myself moments”:

• Common Threads (Danielle Jones-Pruett) which treated us to a diverse selection of poems—each one with perfect pitch.
• Taboo (Dawne Shand, Kirun Kapur) where esteemed speakers (Collins, Corral, McDonough, Olds) read and answered daunting questions about what is and isn’t taboo today.
• All That Lies Between Us, Kevin Carey and Mark Hillringhouse’s documentary on Maria Mazziotti Gillan, that is as poignant and funny as it is heartbreaking.
• The State of Poetry (Jennifer Jean) where panelists discussed who gets published, self-publishing and the challenge of finding readers for ALL that poetry being published.
• Running into Sharon Olds at the PEM café check out where my tea met her sandwich.
• Headliner readings! What electricity! The kind not invented by Thomas Edison.

The festival is over and I am sitting here looking at a stack of spanking new poetry books.  Could I have really bought so many?  Another “pinch myself moment”.  With any luck I will finish them by the 2014 festival!

• 975 button buyers ( but at a much higher price than last year)
• 312 poets, 60 -70 small press fair people ( as opposed to presses)
• 95 volunteers (both signed in and not signed in)
• 60 comps, poet spouses and PEM members who did not buy a button
• roughly the same 1.500 participants at the festival as last year
• approximately 650-675 students at the Student Day of Poetry –
• roll the two festivals together — more than 2,000 people enjoyed poetry for four days in Salem.

Michael also gives us one more wonderful stat: “One stunning number is the sales of poet  books. We are not able to keep track of the sales by poets directly after their sessions, nor can we keep track of what the small press participants sell directly. The wonderful Salem State University Follet book sellers last year sold just under $5,000 worth of poets’ books ($4982) and this year they sold $9,204 of poets’ books! We are thrilled to be able to support poets through those books sales!”

Here is the first story on the reactions to the festival: On MPF 2013 by Schwartz, Paul, Carey, McLagan, Carlson-Bradley

Lloyd Schwartz: This year’s Poetry Festival seems to have been the most spirited yet. The weather was ideal. The programs were interesting (Wish I could have gone to more). And the cast of characters quite stellar. Congratulations to you both (to Michael Ansara and January O’Neil) for (literally) bringing so much poetry to Life–to our lives.

Dawn Paul

Dawn Paul –What I love about the Festival is that it transforms Salem into a big poetry village.  It may not be visible to visitors trolling for “magick” and history, but I feel it as soon as I walk down Essex Street.  Suddenly there are so many familiar faces—a woman from my workshop last year; a student that I heard read at Salem State this semester; a face from the back of a book that I’ve been reading over and over since grad school.  I find my shy self striking up conversations that veer quickly from the fabulous weather to the fabulous headliners, from “Where’s the PEM?” to “Where’s poetry going next?”  I am giddy.  And then there are the readings.  Should I name them all?  Too many.  How about the ones that changed me in some way?  Jill McDonough, the college slammers, Martha Collins, Kevin Goodan, my fearless North Shore Poets in the Round.  The times when I was witness to greatness?  Sharon Olds, Yusef Komunyaaka, Afaa Michael Weaver.  And when I was witness to wonderful poets who are making the poetry world wider, wild, welcoming:  January Gill O’Neil, Michael Ansara, Amanda Torres.  Three days of magic without the K.  Three days that gave me new poets to love, that will inspire my writing and carry me through.  Gratitude and joy.

Kevin Carey

Kevin Carey — What I will remember most about this year’s festival is being part of a community that cares so much about poetry.The volunteer staff, from the top down, proved once again to be a vital force for the spoken word. Being associated with this group of people and witnessing the hard work that went into crafting and executing the details of a great festival was the real creative miracle to me. As much as I enjoyed the poets who read and the teachers who taught, my first line of appreciation and amazement this year is reserved for the worker bees and how they gracefully and willingly transformed Salem into a place of poetry and joy. Thank you.

Martha Carlson-Bradley  – It’s hard to select just one highlight from my first experience at the Mass Poetry Festival, though the scope of the event is truly impressive: the sheer number of people who come to Salem on a spring weekend to explore and celebrate poetry. Though offering an impressive array of sessions sessions and events, the festival never lost a wonderful sense of intimacy and camaraderie. One of my favorite sessions was Crossing Over: Poets Writing in Other Genres, moderated by J. D. Scrimgeour, particularly Richard Hoffman’s reminders not to “bully” a piece of writing but to take “delight in making sentences”—to retain a sense of play as we figure out “what is given” to each of us that only we can write. I came away from the festival with ideas about books to read, places to send review copies of my own book, exercises to share with my students, revisions to try, new poems to write.

Don McLagan–Tabboo At The Poetry Festival:  “Suck a bag a dicks,” “fuck,” even “nigger” are words that don’t frighten Martha Collins, Eduardo Corral, Jill McDonough or Sharon Olds, though “white” and “illegal immigrant” might be such words.  The context was right for these politically incorrect expressions in the Poetry Festival workshop on what front line poets feel is taboo in poetry.  Talking about poetic discomfort, mouthing the words, discussing what they will and will not write, sharing edgy examples of their work liberated and inspired the packed audience in the stately Bartlett Gallery.  Dawne Shand and Kirun Kapur, creators of www.tanneryseries.com moderated the immoderate panel and engaged the audience.  The workshop even enabled me to use mouth-wash words to lead this paragraph.

• Eduardo C. Corral whose his first book, won the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. He’s the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
• Terrance Hayes’ his first book won the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. He’s the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
• Sharon Olds is the winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her book Stag’s Leap. She is also the winner of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and the San Francisco Poetry Center Award for her first collection

Here is a poem by each one:

Eduardo C. Corral: In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes

Terrance Hayes: Cocktails with Orpheus

Sharon Olds: I Could Not Tell