Poetry Coalition

In November 2015, more than 20 nonprofit poetry organizations, including Mass Poetry, joined forces to form a national Poetry Coalition working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and the important contribution poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds.

Poetry Coalition Convening in San Francisco

Massachusetts Poetry Festival Director M.P. Carver and Poetry Coalition Fellow L. Renée represented us at the 2024 Poetry Coalition Convening in San Francisco in November. The Poetry Coalition is an alliance of more than 25 organizations across the nation, including Mass Poetry, dedicated to collaborating to promote the cultural value of poets and the impact poetry makes on people of all ages and backgrounds. Founded in 2016, the Poetry Coalition is coordinated by the Academy of American Poets and supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The convening brought together poetry leaders and emerging arts administrators across the nation to be in community, discuss membership priorities, and review the coalition’s goals, values, and strategies. Coalition members shared highlights and valuable lessons from their 2024 poetry programming. Many also expressed their appreciation for the Poetry Coalition Fellowship program—now, in its fourth year—that seeks to diversify leadership of the nonprofit literary field; develop future literary leaders regardless of educational background; provide meaningful experiences to individuals interested in nonprofit literary arts management, fundraising, programming, and editorial work; and increase the capacity of each organization hosting fellows by having additional assistance. L. Renée is one of six fellows in this year’s national cohort. 

Youth Speaks, a leading presenter of Spoken Word performance, education, and youth development programs, hosted the convening at their San Francisco offices. Youth Speaks Executive Director Michelle Mush Lee and the tremendous staff also organized a community tour that included stops at the San Francisco Public Library and Dr. Maya Angelou statue, San Francisco State University Poetry Center, and City Lights Bookstore. The team also presented a poetry performance and showcase featuring talented staff poets, teen poet members of their youth advisory board, and San Francisco Poet Laureate Genny Lim. 

The convening concluded with an inspirational talk and poetry reading by Juan Felipe Herrera, who has served as U.S. Poet Laureate and California Poet Laureate. Herrera encouraged attendees to create a new society with our poetry and our voices, centering practices of nonviolence, becoming the other, and caring for the climate. “A beautiful voice is who we are,” he said, later adding, “We can become a big tractor of love!”

M.P. Carver said “It was a joy to spend time with L., and with other organizers dedicated to creating and expanding access to poetry programming, supporting poets and poetry orgs, and centering our art in the national discourse. In the face of political tension and an uncertain future of funding for the arts, I was grateful to join folks from across the country and combine efforts in the search for a brighter path forward.”

L. Renée said it was an honor to attend the convening and converse with literary arts leaders and fellows committed to their missions of celebrating poetry and the transformative power of the spoken and written word. “In these challenging times when so many aspects of our daily lives seem to be uncertain, when basic freedoms to be authentically ourselves are being targeted and threatened, the arts are even more critical to support and protect,” she said. “Coalitions like this allow organizations to offer mutual aid, to galvanize around shared goals, and to enact sustainable change toward a future that recognizes our shared humanity and planet.”

Poetry & Environmental Justice (2021)

In March 2021, Mass Poetry hosted a series of writing workshops exploring the theme of Poetry & Environmental justice with poets Elizabeth Bradfield, Eleni Sikelianos, Lucía Hinojosa, Everett Hoagland, and devorah major where participants created works of ecopoetry and engaged in discussions around environmental justice. Students, teachers, and community members participated in writing generative workshops around the themes of water and environmental justice. This workshop series is Mass Poetry’s contribution to a national collaboration by the Poetry Coalition—an alliance of more than 25 independent poetry organizations across the United States—to explore the theme “It is burning./ It is dreaming./ It is waking up.: Poetry & Environmental Justice.”

Workshop participants were encouraged to submit their final work to a Raining Poetry contest. The winning poets will have their poem or an excerpt of their poem installed in the pavement surrounding the Center for Creative Writing for its grand opening later this year! Learn more about the workshops below.

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Poetry & Protest (2020)

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What Is It, Then, Between Us?: Poetry & Democracy (2019)

Mass Poetry kicked its project off on March 13, 2019 with a blackout poetry workshop at Trident Booksellers & Cafe, led by poet M.P. Carver, which was attended by a couple dozen participants. Throughout the spring, Mass Poetry enlisted members of the community, including high school students and poets from across the Commonwealth, to create erasures, or blackout poetry, of political documents, including the US Constitution, Bill of Rights, Letter From Birmingham Jail, and Malala Yousafzai’s speech delivered to the UN. Continuing in the rich, experimental tradition dating back to the 1960s, Mass Poetry asked poets to create altered documents of the originals by blacking out text while exploring their newfound meaning.

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Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body (2018)

We are pleased to share that the 2018 Massachusetts Poetry Festival will feature poems about the body in its Raining Poetry project. Five poems will be selected to be displayed on the streets of Salem to celebrate our 10th Massachusetts Poetry Festival, May 4-6. We are looking for poems specific to the broad theme of the body.

The phrase “Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live” is an excerpt from U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith’s poem “Flores Woman” from her collection Duende, which won the James Laughlin Award in 2006.

Using a biodegradable water-repellent spray and stencils made by local artists, the organization will place poems throughout the streets of Salem. The spray vanishes once dry, so the poems are invisible—until it rains. Once wet, the area around the poems will darken, enabling passersby to read them.

Winners

• From “AS YET UNBORN” – Stanley H. Barkan
• From “Fingertip” -Louisa Clerici
• From “HERE ON MY ANKLE” – Wendy Drexler
• “Instructions for Skipping” – Marjorie Thomsen
• From “The Art of Healing” – Prema Bangera

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Because We Come from Everything: Poetry & Migration (2017)

On a rainy weekend in Salem, poetry reigned supreme during festival weekend. City streets were covered with poems as part of the Mass Poetry Festival’s Migration Poetry Contest.

Sixty-four entries were received from Massachusetts residents on the broad theme of migration. Our theme, Because We Come from Everything: Poetry & Migration, borrows a line from U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera’s poem, “Borderbus.”

The five winners are

• From “Embarkation” – Lisken Van Pelt Dus
• From “Explorer” -Ashmita Malkani
• From “EXQUISITE FRUIT” – Janet Aalfs
• From “From the Sky” – Sarah Snyder
• From “Kneeling to Kiss the Ground” – Jane Yolen

The poems were featured on Salem Streets through our program Raining Poetry.

Using a biodegradable water-repellent spray and stencils made by local artists, we placed poems throughout the streets of Salem. The spray vanishes once dry, so the poems are invisible, until it rains—which it did on festival Saturday. Once wet, the area around the poems will darken, enabling passersby to read them. The poems will remain for 6-8 weeks.

Excerpts of the poems were stenciled near Old Town Hall at Front Street in downtown Salem just in time for the festival. They will be on the streets for a few more weeks. Bring a bottle of water and watch the poems appear before your eyes!