The Palm Beach Poetry Festival
Plan Ahead for Next Year…and Get Inspired
By Marla E. Schwartz
I fell in love with poetry when I was a little girl. I would sit for hours at a time and read poems out loud, to myself. I’d devour as many books of poetry as possible, based upon the limit of books I could check out every week from the library. Luckily, I had a mother who recognized my love for the spoken word and soon I had my very own library card. I felt like I’d won the golden ticket.
But the real golden ticket lies in the Palm Beach Poetry Festival.
What’s that you say – you’ve never heard of it? Well, the Sixth Annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival took place this past January at the Crest Theatre at the Old School Square Cultural Arts Center in Delray Beach. It was nothing short of ingenious, and the reason you need to know about it now – is because you want to clear your calendar so you’ll be able to attend the Seventh Annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival, January 17-22, 2011.
Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my control, I wasn’t able to attend every event this little jewel has to offer. But I did attend the very informative “CRAFT TALK” with headlining poets Kevin Young & Stephen Dobyns; the “KICKOFF READING” with Mary Cornish and Thomas Lux moderated by poet and Sarah Lawrence College professor Laure-Anne Bosselaar; the “GALA READING” with Kevin Young and Stephen Dobyns, moderated by the illustrious journalist and literary critic Chauncey Mabe, and the “PANEL DISCUSSION: BELOVED & INFLUENTIAL POEMS” moderated by the distinguished MacArthur Fellowship (nicknamed the Genius Award) recipient (among others) and Miami poet who has published six books of poetry and is a Professor of Creative Writing at Florida International University, Campbell McGrath.
The panel discussion offered attendees a rare opportunity to observe all the resident poets at this years festival, Mary Cornish, Stephen Dobyns, Carolyn Forchè, Marie Howe, Ilya Kaminsky, Thomas Lux, David Wojahn and Kevin Young read aloud their favorite poems written by other poets. It was a mesmerizing and enlightening experience.
The festival is much more than a group of celebrated poets getting together and reading poems and talking about poetry (which honestly – would be enough) but it includes a series of private workshops with the poets in residence for the duration of the festival. Additionally, Dr. Blaise Allen is the Community Outreach Director and plans yearlong poetry events throughout the community. For more information, don’t hesitate to contact her at: [email protected].
The festival began in January 2005 and was founded by Miles Coon. The first weekend of workshops and readings took place at Lynn University and today the beautiful Crest Theatre is packed with audience members, some of whom have been attending the event since its inception, and others who are new to the festival.
Miles Coon answered a few questions about the festival for us:
AW: What was your impression of this year’s Palm Beach Poetry Festival?
MC: It was a huge success. Our online surveys of workshop participants, faculty members and audience members indicated that just about everyone thought the festival was excellent.
AW: Why did you decide to start the festival in the first place?
MC: After graduating from Sarah Lawrence’s MFA program, I really missed the community of poets there and the structure of workshops that kept my writing going forward. The closest site for great workshops was Key West, a five-hour drive from Palm Beach where I live. It just seemed to me that having a great writers’ conference/festival in the heart of Palm Beach County would make sense. Presenting a “poetry only” event in the winter created a “niche” for us, as there are few such festivals offered; and of course the weather is a huge draw.
AW: A few local people were asking around as to whether you were going to begin a monthly poetry reading series allowing them to present their writing to other people in the group.
MC: There are a number of organizations in South Florida that provide opportunities for local poets to share their work at monthly meetings. These are membership organizations. They do good work but this is not really how the festival envisions its future growth.
AW: Do you think any poets from this year’s festival will return next year?
MC: As for the featured poets, we cannot say until we have booked all the poets who will teach at the Seventh Annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival, January 17-22, 2011. I do know that many of our workshop participants will return as over 90% of them have said it is very likely, or most likely that they will apply again for workshops.
AW: When did your love of poetry begin?
MC: To quote, (from “September Song“) … “when I was a young man courtin’ a girl.” Poetry helped me a great deal as a young man trying to connect with women. I found that lines from Yeats worked far better than my own.
AW: What poet who has not attended the festival would you like to attend next year or in any year to come?
MC: There are so many… Seamus Heaney; Adrienne Rich; Mary Oliver; Philip Levine; Charles Simic; Charles Wright, to name a few.
AW: Please feel free to add anything else.
MC: One of our goals is to prove to the public that poetry is not an elitist art form. Our featured poets do not use antiquated words; nor do they create poems that are riddles leaving the audience confused. Many Americans don’t like poetry because of the way it was taught: the teacher would read a poem aloud (from the 17th or 18th century) and then ask, “What does this mean?”
Many students came away from this first experience of poetry feeling too dumb or too insensitive to “get it.” Well, at the festival, our readers seek to communicate with the audience in every day speech. The poems are powerful and moving… often amusing. Hearing a great American poet reading his own work is a unique experience. We just want folks to give poetry a try. They won’t be disappointed.
Thanks again for your kind attention to our festival.
AW: You’re welcome. It’s a pleasure!
For more information about the festival, please go to: www.palmbeachpoetryfestival.org.
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A native of Toledo, OH and a graduate of Kent State, Marla E. Schwartz has been a professional journalist since her teenage years and is a Senior Writer for Miami Living Magazine, and a freelance writer for CRAVINGS South Florida in Aventura, as well as Around Wellington Magazine and Lighthouse Point Magazine. An avid photographer, her images have appeared in numerous Ohio publications, as well as in Miami Living, The Miami Herald, The Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and The Palm Beach Post. She has had numerous plays published and produced around the country. Her short play, America’s Working? was originally read at First Stage in Los Angeles and in the same city produced at the Lone Star Ensemble. It was then produced at Lynn University in Boca Raton, FL and then taken to an Off-Broadway playhouse by its producers Adam and Carrie Simpson. Her piece, The Lunch Time Café, was a finalist for the Heideman Award, Actors Theatre of Louisville. Feel free to contact her at: [email protected].