Cultural Corner
The 8th Annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival Set for January 16-21, 2012
By Danny Smith
The festival takes place at the Old School Square Cultural Arts Center located at 51 N. Swinton Avenue, Delray Beach, FL 33444 and features six days of reading events, craft lectures, and poetry workshops. Some of the most extraordinary and engaging poets in America will be participating. This event is located in the heart of Delray Beach, Florida.
The special guest reader for the gala evening this year is Charles Wright, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Other notable poets attending the festival this year include: Kim Addonizio, Cornelius Eady, Claudia Emerson, Vanessa Hidary, David Kirby, Thomas Lux, Jamaal May, Gregory Orr, Chase Twichell and Eleanor Wilner. Poets Hidary and May will be featured at the annual Coffee House Performance event, which is a celebration that takes place the last night of the festival.
General Admission ticket prices per event are $12/adult, $10/senior and $8/student. Special student group rates are available. For more information, visit: http://www.palmbeachpoetryfestival.org/, or call 561-243-7922.
The complete schedule is as follows:
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THE PALM BEACH COUNTY HIGH SCHOOL POETRY CONTEST
Part of this festival features submitted original poems from high school students across the county.
Each year, the contest offers a unique opportunity for high school students to be recognized and participate in the annual festival. Students learn from taking their work out of the classroom or notebook and sending it out into the world.
THE FESTIVAL GALA
Meet and greet the featured poets, workshop participants from all over the country, sponsors and supporters of the festival, staff, media representatives and community leaders. Enjoy cocktails, dinner and music, as your participation supports a growing community of poets and poetry lovers. This is a one of a kind event and is followed by the Festival’s Evening Reading.
The Gala will take place Wednesday, January 18, 2012 from 5:00-8:00 pm at Old School Square in the Vintage Gymnasium Building, 51 North Swinton Avenue, Delray Beach, FL, before the evening reading with Special Guest Poet, Charles Wright.
Individuals & Couples: Individuals: $175 Couples: $300
Inner Circle (Groups of 8 or 10) Reserved Table of 8 $1,200 Reserved Table of 10 $1,500
I had the opportunity to interview one of the featured PBPF poets Thomas Lux.
Thomas Lux ‘s latest collection is God Particles (Houghton Mifflin, 2008). Other books include The Cradle Place; The Street of Clocks; New and Selected Poems: 1975-1995, a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; The Blind Swimmer: Selected Early Poems: 1970-1975; and Split Horizon, winner of the Kingsley-Tufts Poetry Award. His distinguished teaching career includes twenty-seven years on the writing faculty and as Director of the MFA Program in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence. He has taught at Emerson College, Warren Wilson’s MFA Program for Writers, and other universities. A finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry and recipient of three NEA grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Lux holds the Bourne Chair in Poetry and directs the McEver Visiting Writers Program at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
♦ Q: What advice would you give to a poet trying to get published now?
A: Read, read, read, read, read, etc., write, write, write.
♦ Q: What do you enjoy more: writing or teaching writing?
A: I enjoy teaching a great deal. I hate writing, particularly early drafts: they’re terrible. I do like the middle drafts (I’d say 15-20 would be average) because that’s when I usually make discoveries, if they are any to be made. The last few drafts are just combing hairs into place.
♦ Q: Which work did you most enjoy writing?
A: I suppose the poems about my daughter
♦ Q: What common, every day things give you inspiration for writing?
A: Countless poems can be made out of anything.
♦ Q: How would you say your writing has developed and changed over the years?
A: My work is less arbitrary, surreal (but I hope still highly imaginative) and I know my trade (craft) better now than I did early on.
♦ Q: What is the next work you are releasing?
A: I have two new books coming out in 2012; one a nonfiction book with pieces about cop stuff, fire eaters, hypnotists, weeping, a bridge in San Diego, taxidermy, a dairy farmer, etc. and a new book of poems called Child Made of Sand. The former from Marick Press, the latter from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
♦ Q: How can we preserve support of the arts (including poetry) while our country is shifting more towards focus on science and engineering to compete with other nations?
A: The arts, poetry, have survived for thousands of years–through war, and plagues, and come what may. Technology is a good thing, but poetry has survived since the cave people.
Thank you, Thomas Lux!
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Danny Smith is a member of the Journalism and Literary Class “Lit Mag” at Wellington High School where he is a junior. He is a member of the National Honor Society and Mu Alpha Theta the national math honor society. He has diverse interests, including being a cartoonist and an experienced guitarist.