WELCOME TO THE 2009 MASSACHUSETTS POETRY FESTIVAL

To all the friends of poetry:

Welcome to the 2nd Annual Massachusetts Poetry Festival – and welcome to historic Lowell, a hot spot of the “creative economy” in the Commonwealth. You are part of the “great audience” for poetry that Whitman imagined so many years ago. In one year, the Festival has made an enormous developmental leap. Writers from Boston to the Berkshires ignited literary fires to start the Festival on the Thurs- day of this long weekend of poetry. In this program book you will see the packed schedule for Friday and Saturday in Lowell, as well the Sunday activities at the Children’s Museum and Harvard University.

Our theme this year is “Poetry in Hard Times.” Let’s hope the power of poetry can take us beyond the “hard times” for four days. We are intent on having a good time together and carrying that spirit forward. Robert Pinsky

While you are in Lowell, please explore the city when you move between events. You can sample food from around the world in downtown restaurants, visit Whistler’s birthplace, see extraordinary Anne Waldman commemorative sculptures for Jack Kerouac and Lucy Larcom, wit- ness labor history at our National Park, enjoy award-winning, pre- served 19th-century architecture, and more.

On behalf of the organizers, thank you to everyone who con- tributed talent, time, and money to make this Festival possible. We need your help to continue, so please donate what you can at the various events or online later at www.masspoetry.org. To the more than 50 Poetry Partners, we offer a special thanks for helping us get to the roots of poetry around the state. And also a special thanks to the many volunteers who help plan and produce this complex Festival.

Our goal is to lift the poets and poetry of Massachusetts toa higher level. We want this good work to be seen and recognized more widely. Massachusetts has a special place in the literary history of the Jessica Smith nation and world. Today, you are part of history as it happens. Thank you for making the 2009 Massachusetts Poetry Festival a memorable success.

Sincerely, Paul Marion, on behalf of the MPF Executive Committee

Afaa Michael Weaver

Louise Glück

Michael Casey 2

THE 2009 Poetry Partners MASSACHUSETTS POETRY FESTIVAL Bagel Bards THANKS THE Blacksmith House Poetry Series FOLLOWING Boostrap Press Boston Book Festival SPONSORS FOR THEIR Cape Cod Writers Center CONTRIBUTIONS AND Cave Canem Chelmsford Public Library SUPPORT Concord Poetry Center Courage & Renewal Northeast Cultural Organization of Lowell City of Lowell EchoDitto Emerson College Department of Writing Cultural Organization of Lowell Favorite Poem Project Fireside Reading Series EchoDitto Ford Hall Forum Frost Foundation Enterprise Bank Grolier Bookstore Grub Street, Inc. Feeley & Driscoll, P.C. Charitable Gift Fund Hellenic Culture Society Ibbetson St. Press Greater Cincinnati Foundation Island Poets, Martha’s Vineyard Greater Lowell Community Foundation Jeff Robinson Trio/Lizard Lounge Poetry Jam Lesley University MFA Program in Creative Writing Greater Merrimack Valley Convention and Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! Visitors Bureau Lowell Poetry Network Massachusetts Center for the Book Jim and Karen Ansara Moses Greeley Parker Lectures New England Poetry Club Loom Press PEN New England Pine Manor MFA Program Lowell Five PoemWorks Poetribe Mass Humanities Pollard Memorial Library Lowell National Historical Park Powow River Poets Robert Creeley Foundation Lowell Plan, Inc. Robert Frost Foundation Salem State College English Department Lowell Poetry Network Smith Poetry Center, Smith College Suffolk Poetry Center Massachusetts Poetry Outreach Project Tapestry of Voices The Greater Brockton Society for Poetry and the Arts Massachusetts Cultural Council Theodore Edson Parker Foundation Tsongas Industrial History Center Middlesex Community College University of Massachusetts Boston, MFA Program University of Massachusetts Lowell Moses Greeley Parker Lectures Wild Apples Norman and Amy Gorin Woodbury Poetry Room, Harvard Patrick J. Mogan Cultural Center Worcester County Poetry Association Zephyr Press Pollard Memorial Library 119 Gallery Sunflower Foundation Theodore Edson Parker Foundation The Phoenix University of Massachusetts Lowell Thanks also goes to LOWELL TELECOM- MUNICATIONS CORPORATION (LTC) for their technical assistance and support.

MASSACHUSETTS POETRY FESTIVAL EXECUTIVE PLANNING COMMITTEE AND STAFF

Robert Pinsky, Honorary Chair Michael Ansara, Planning and Fundraising Charles Coe, Planning and Fundraising Suzzanne Cromwell, Project Management Derek Fenner, Planning and Publications Ryan Gallagher, Planning and Publications Chloe Garcia-Roberts, Outreach and Publicity Julia Gavin, Volunteer Coordinator Jacqueline Malone, High School Program Coordinator Paul Marion, Planning and Fundraising LZ Nunn, Planning and Fundraising Nicco Mele, Website Development Madeleine Perry, Website Management Dave Robinson, Planning and Outreach Kathryn Wiese, Website Management Walter Wright, Planning and Outreach

THANK YOU TO ALL THE VOLUNTEERS WHO MADE THIS EVENT POSSIBLE!

designed by Malden High School’s Blue and Gold staff 3

VISITING THE CITY OF Thank you to LOWELL & FESTIVAL INFORMATION the following 4 2009

MAP OF DOWNTOWN Massachusetts LOWELL Poetry Festival 6 Sponsors and FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16TH Donors High School, Collegiate As of 8/25/2009 readings & workshops. Epic Level: $5,000 + Café readings & Events @ the 119 Gallery Mass Humanities Theodore Edson Parker Foundation 8 Oratory Level: $2,500 + FRIDAY HEADLINE EVENT Urban Village Arts Series James and Karen Ansara (UVAS) Mestre Calango, City of Lowell Michael Casey, Jessica Smith Cultural Organization of Lowell & Caleb Neelon Greater Merrimack Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau University of Massachusetts Lowell 9 Prose Level: $1,000 + SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17TH Eastern Bank Small Press Fair Enterprise Bank Feeley & Driscoll, P.C. Charitable Fund 10 Norman W. and Amy F. Gorin Greater Cincinnati Foundation Descriptions of Programming Greater Lowell Community Foundation from Middlesex Community College Sunflower Foundation 11:00 a.m - 4:00 p.m. Narrator Level: $200 + 11-14 Gerald C. & Kate Chertavian LATE AFTERNOON EVENTS: Anna Fincke Dennis R. and Carol A. Kanan Cave Canem Reading

15 Laureate Level: $100 +

Kerouac, Panel Discussion Susan G. Case Louisa Kasdon and Film Stephen B. and Elizabeth A. Rosen Ellen Meyer and Paul E. Shorb III 16 Jonathan Lupfer and Susan Berseth

X.J. Kennedy & The Light Bard Level: $50 + Brigade Lillian Sober Ain, PhD 17 Athenian Corner Restaurant Ronald Howell and Emily Hill Axelrod Reading of New Works by Dorothy D. Burlage, PhD MA Authors Jarita A. Davis Anita A. Diamant Susan Y. Friedman 17 Sandra E. and Lester P. Goldstein John M. & Consuelo A. Isaacson SATURDAY HEADLINE Adele Pressman EVENT featuring Robert Phillip R. Malone & Luciana L. Herman Pinsky, Louise Glück, Anne Waldman & Afaa Weaver Troubador Level: $25 + 18 - 19 Sara B. and Robert L. Dickman Poetry Slam Andrew S. Krotinger and Linda G. Curtis 20 This poem will appear in: Other Donors Let's Not Keep Fighting the Trojan War—New and Selected Poems, 1986-2008 SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18TH B. Minde Kornfeld which Coffee House Press will publish this month, October, 2009. 22-23 Ed Sanders was a performer in 2008 at the festival 4 MAP OF LOWELL

VISITING THE CITY OF LOWELL and FESTIVAL INFORMATION

Upon your arrival to Lowell, please proceed to the Lowell National Historical Park Visitor Center at 246 Market Street and visit the Massachusetts Poetry Festival Information Table. There you will find walking maps of the City and general information, as well as friendly volunteers to guide you and answer your questions.

Lowell National Historical Park Visitor Center by car:

Take the Lowell Connector from either Route 495 (Exit 35C) or Route 3 (Exit 30A if traveling southbound, Exit 30B if traveling northbound) to Thorndike Street (Exit 5B). Follow “National Park Visitor Center” signs.

Downtown Public Parking Facilities

We recommend parking in one of the following Downtown parking facilities. Both are perfectly located to all Mass Poetry Festival venues. All day parking at the following facilities is $8 Leo Roy Parking Facility (next to the National Park Visitor Center) 100 Market Street, 01852 978-446-7174

Joseph Downes Parking Facility 75 John Street, 01852 978-970-4198

Commuter Rail Service from Boston

Commuter rail service is available from Boston’s North Station to Lowell’s Gallagher Terminal. Lowell Regional Transportation Authority shuttles run between Gallagher Terminal and downtown Lowell every half hour, Monday through Friday, 6:00 am - 6:00 pm and Saturday, 10:00 am - 4:00 pm.

ON STREET PARKING METERS ARE FREE AFTER 6 PM ON FRIDAY AND SATURDAY, AND ALL DAY ON SUNDAY. Events by Location & Time 5 Directions to the Brewery Exchange: Continue west down Father E Morissette Blvd (.4mi) Turn right on Cabot St.

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M Directions to the 119 Gallery: Continue southeast on Dutton St toward Fletcher St. G ALL Arts Gallery (.2 mi) Take ramp to Chelmsford St. (right turn). 119 Chelmsford St. Four Poets from Four Way Books 1-1:55pm Meet and Greet: ALL Arts Gallery Artists & Poets, sponsored by A The Small Press Fair the Lowell Poetry Network 2-2:55pm Please use the small press fair as a central location for the festival. Use it as a Nature, Art & Poetry from Wild Apples Journal 3-3:55pm meeting place. Come here to get schedules, buy books from featured presses and H authors. Will also have a schedule for author book signings. Upstairs at the Old Court 10:30am-5pm / 45 Middle Street Confluence: A Music & Poetry Performance 1-1:55pm Renku Performance by the Boston Haiku Society 3-3:55pm B Lowell High School Auditorium I FRIDAY HEADLINE EVENT Urban Village Arts Series (UVAS) Mestre X/O Studio & Gallery Calango, Michael Casey, Jessica Smith & Caleb Neelon 7:30-9:30pm War and Poetry 12-12:55pm SATURDAY HEADLINE EVENT featuring Robert Pinsky, Louise Glück, The Medieval Poetry Workshop 2-2:55pm Anne Waldman & Afaa Weaver 7:00-9:00pm Group Reading featuring the Powow River Poets 3-3:55 pm J C Lowell National Historical Park Pollard Memorial Library Film Screening: “Lowell Blues” 4-4:30pm SE Mass Reading 12-12:55pm Jack Kerouac’s Poetry: A Panel Discussion, Moderated by Anne Waldman 4:30- The Wild, Wild West with Amy Dryansky, Mary A. Koncel & 5:30pm Ellen Dore Watson 1-1:55pm Poèms du Monde Francophone, Poems from the Francophone World 2-2:55pm D St. Anne’s Church Intergenerational Poetry Reading by Six Cape Cod Poets sponsored Opening Ceremony & Favorite Poem Project Readings 11am - 11:55pm by The Cape Cod Writers Center 3-3:55pm Poetry Voices Past and Present, Presented by Tapestry of Voices 12-12:55pm K Poetry from the Heart of the Commonwealth featuring poets of Worcester Lowell Telecommunications Corporation County 1-1:55pm Cambodian Refugee Poetry Book & CD Project / Panel Discussion Melopoeia 2-2:55pm & Reading 1-1:55pm Cave Canem Reading 3-4:25pm New Works Reading 4:30 – 5:30pm L Mogan Cultural Center E BREWERY eXCHANGE How to Be a Good Public Reader of Your Own Poetry Poetry Slam Competition: The Nuyorican Poets Cafe Slam Team (NYC), with Patrick Donnelly 12-1pm & 1-2pm Lizard Lounge Poetry Slam Team (Cambridge, MA), Bar 13 Slam Team, (NYC) Zoom In/Zoom Out: A Workshop in Revision with Kathleen Aguero 1-2pm and the Lowell Poetry Slam Team 9-11:00pm Exercise in Free Writing with Barbara Helfgott Hyett & PoemWorks 1-2pm & 2-3pm F “Poem Generator” with Grub Street, Inc. 2-3pm & 3-4pm Cobblestones Restaurant How to Be a Tourist in Your Hometown with Kat Good-Schiff and KL Pereira 2-3pm Light Verse for Dark Times: A Poetry Reading 12-12:55pm Revision Workshop with Wendy Mnookin 3-4pm The Director’s Cut 1-1:55pm Continuities Readings and Discussions presents an event on Poetry M and Ecology 2-2:55pm 119 Gallery Ugly Truths: A Poetry Craft Panel Discussion on Poems That Make Art from Friday, Saturday, & Sunday events listed on page 8. shocking or Risky Material 3-3:55pm X.J. Kennedy & The Light Brigade 4:30-5:30 pm N Barnes & Noble Sequential Reading by MA Poets with New Books 11:45am - 5pm. 6 7 8 Friday, October 16th 2009

High School Poetry Workshops & Performances 9:30am-3pm UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center

Over 200 students and educators from ten area schools will experience an afternoon of hands-on learning and two days of spirited performances by talented young artists. Writing and performing workshops will be Alice Kociemba, Poet, 4-5 PM at Dharma Buns facilitated by professional poets and writers.Special Guest Emcee: Regie Gibson Poetry of Resilience, organized by Holly Guran and Alice Kociemba 4-5pm Intercollegiate Dharma Buns, 26-A Market Street Readings & Workshops Poetry of Resilience will feature six Boston-area and Cape 2:30 - 6:15pm Cod poets reading as an ensemble to demonstrate poetry Lowell City Hall as a celebration of personal, cultural and environmental 375 Merrimack Street resilience. Webster’s defines resilience as “an ability to recover from or adjust . . . to misfortune or change.” Inspirational Poetry: The impact of hard times, the festival’s theme, is one of Women Survivors change, often misfortune. In this reading, the poems of Celebrate Healing the individuals presenting or of other well known poets Journeys of Mind, Body Regie Gibson, Poet. selected for their relevance, will speak to the resilience & Spirit Performer in 2008 & Emcee of High School Poetry Workshops. inherent in stories of fortitude and hope. 4-5pm Life Alive Organic Café 194 Middle Street Dangerous Writings: Aware Poetry in Oppressive When Mary McManus was faced States with the challenge of post polio 4-5pm syndrome, she turned to writing Caffe Paradiso, 45 Palmer Street inspirational poetry overflowing with messages of love, hope, In many oppressive states, Iran, Egypt, Burma to name a few, non-conformal healing, and spiritual freedom. writing in general and poetry in particular carries with itself risks of She experienced transformation of harassment, imprisonment, or even death, by the authorities. For example, mind, body, and spirit and went on in Iran what is known as “Aware Poetry” has led to arrests, imprisonment, to run the 2009 Boston Marathon. exile, and even execution of poets. In this poetry event Ala Khaki from Iran Her poems and journey touched and Pablo Medina from Cuba will read their poems and talk about the the lives of Alicia Staley, three-time threats they faced in their native countries for their poetry. A Q&A session cancer survivor, and Janice Pero, will follow the readings. incest survivor. These three women will celebrate their healing journeys City Poets Reading and read poetry selections authored 5:30-6:30pm by Mary McManus. Cobblestones of Lowell, 91 Dutton Street Mary McManus, Poet, 4-5 PM at Life Alive Organic Café Offered in connection with the NEASA Public Panel on New England Cities. Events @ 119 Gallery 119 Chelmsford Street Creativity in Hard and Hopeful Times presented by True Story Theater Firday, 8-9:30pm (doors @ 7:30pm) October 16

Poets in the audience will be invited to share a personal example of how coping with economic, health, or other life challenges affects their creativity. In service to these poets, True Story Theater’s improv actors will honor each story with haiku-like impact, magically capturing the heart and essence of each story with words, movement, music, and colored cloths. Our mission is to promote social healing and community building by listening deeply to people’s stories and transforming them spontaneously into theater. We offer audiences fresh perspectives, deeper connections, and a renewed appreciation for our common humanity. TrueStoryTheater.org.

Late Night Music and Poetry Saturday, 8 - 11pm October 17

Experience an exciting, eclectic evening of poetry and music at the 119 Gallery featuring The Doctors Fox, Zean and Patrick Shaughnessy, the Ursonate Orchestra, and Pronoblem performing Kurt Schwitter’s sound poem “Sonata In Primeval Sounds.” Published in 1932, Schwitter’s piece is the granddaddy of sound-art poems: a 90-minute nonsense opus that develops 26 abstract themes in classical sonata format.

All Movement is Poetry, Presented by Rozann Kraus Sunday, 1-2:30pm October 18

Embracing the worlds of words and dance. This workshop is open to all people comfortable with moving in their bodies and at ease with writing and speaking. After a brief dance warm up, we’ll begin by learning Parings, a dance/poem that has been performed by many groups of dancers. We will reflect on sensations learning and doing True Story Theater the dance. After an open discussion of the similar components of texts and choreography, we’ll break into smaller groups to work together in dance and poetry collaborations. The workshop will be completed when we watch each other’s work and share our ideas and insights. Friday, October 16th 2009 9

FRIDAY HEADLINE EVENT The Urban Village Arts Series (UVAS) invites artists to downtown Lowell to give short performances or talks about their work. Novelists, non-fiction writers, sculptors, filmmakers, painters, poets, Urban Village Arts Series (UVAS) and contemporary and classical musicians have given stunning performances during Lowell’s three years of hosting the series. 7:30-9:30pm Designed to be a dynamic, compact presentation of local, regional Lowell High School Auditorium, 50 Father Morissette Blvd. and national talent, UVAS supports working artists by connecting them with an audience that will appreciate and support their talents. Mestre Calango It also encourages students and faculty of UMass Lowell to come to of Capoeira Rosa downtown as performers and audience members while reaching out Rubra. (Left) to residents and regional audiences. Members of the Lowell Poetry Mestre Calango Network and Bootstrap Productions organize and produce between of Capoeira Rosa four and six UVAS shows per year. Rubra plays the traditional Capoeira instrument known Mestre Calango as the berimbau. (right) Mestre Calango began playing Capoeira as a teen in Brazil. He has been practicing Photos by Anna and teaching Capoeira, as well as fitness and rehabilitation, to students of all ages and Isaak-Ross abilities for nearly 30 years. Almost 120 years have passed since the end of slavery in Brazil, but much of the suffering still resounds in Brazilian life and culture. Slaves trained and remained ready for rebellion through a connection to their African roots now known as Capoeira. Out of necessity, they disguised the fighting art of Capoeira as a dance with accompanying instruments and a method of constant movement known as the ginga. From this basis of movement and readiness a Capoeirista may respond to or escape from whatever comes his/her way—be it in the roda or in everyday life. Mestre Calango was a professor of Capoeira in Oliveira and Minas Gerais where he organized groups that performed in various countries around the world. At the moment, more than fifty students are enrolled in the Academia de Capoeira Rosa Rubra in Lowell, Newton, Brookline and Amesbury, MA. Anyone aged Michael Casey, eight or older is welcome to come and learn this beautiful, practical and spiritual art Jessica Smith, from Mestre Calango. Please visit CapoeiraRosaRubra.com for more information. & Caleb Neelon with his art. Michael Casey

Michael Casey was born in 1947 in Lowell, Massachusetts. He received a B.S. in Physics from Lowell Technological Institute where he took a class with poet William Aiken. He’s also studied at SUNY, Buffalo, with poets John Logan, Irving Feldman and William Sylvester. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1968 and his stay at Fort Leonardwood, Missouri, provided the fodder for his later collection, The Million Dollar Hole. In his first collection, Obscenities, Casey writes of his work as military police officer in Vietnam’s Quang Ngai Province. Obscenities won the 1972 Yale Younger Poets Award, chosen by Stanley Kunitz, and sold over 200,000 copies. He’s published the following collections: Millrat (Adastra Press), The Million Dollar Hole (Orchises Press), Raiding a Whorehouse (Adastra), Permanent Party (March Street Press), Cindi’s Fur Coat (The Chuckwagon), and The Bopper (Kendra Steiner Editions). For more on Casey see the above presses online or see Bridge Review: Ecommunity.uml.edu/bridge/review4/casey/index.htm.

Jessica Smith

Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, Jessica Smith received her B.A. and M.A. from SUNY Buffalo, where she was the Founding Editor of the poetry magazine name and won the Academy of American Poets Prize twice. Smith is the author of one full-length collection of poetry, Organic Furniture Cellar. She teaches writing at SUNY Buffalo and Medaille College and since 2001 her work has been published in dozens of magazines including apocryphaltext, Cannibal, dANDelion, ixnay, Phoebe, Small Press Traffic and in three anthologies. Her poetry has been trans- lated into Turkish, Swedish, Icelandic and Danish. Chapbooks include bird-book (Detumescence), The Plasticity of Poetry and Telling Time (No Press), Shifting Landscapes (above/ground press), butterflies (Big Game Books), and What the Fortune-Teller Said (dusie/a+bend). Smith is also known as an editor for her work with the monthly women’s broadzine Foursquare, which was recently on view at the Handmade/Homemade exhibit of small press publishing. Smith now resides in Buffalo—a city Robert Creeley called “the last place you can be Bohemian.” Jessica Smith’s work can be accessed online: Looktouch.com.

Caleb Neelon

Caleb Neelon is based in Cambridge, MA, and is an artist, writer, and educator. His paintings and installation artwork have appeared in solo and group shows in America and Europe. His vivid murals sprawl across walls in Kathmandu, Reykjavik, Bermuda, Calcutta, São Paulo and all over Europe. He is co-author of the Thames and Hudson book Graffiti Brasil as well as Street World from Thames and Hudson, Abrams. Neelon is the author and illustrator of the children’s book Lilman Makes a Name for Himself, and has been a collaborator on nearly a dozen other books. He is an editor at the popular culture hardbound bi-monthly Swindle, and has been a contributing writer at Tokion, Print, Juxtapoz, On The Go, Lemon and many other magazines and journals. Neelon has lectured at international conferences and festivals as well as Harvard Law School, Bates College, Northeastern University and his alma mater the Harvard Graduate School of Education. A monograph of his work, Caleb Neelon’s Book of Awesome, was recently released by Gingko Press. He dislikes winter weather. For more on Neelon, check out: Theartwheredreamscometrue.com 10 Saturday, October 17th 2009 2nd Annual Please use the small press fair as a central location & meeting place for the festival. Small Press Fair Come here to get schedules & buy books from featured presses and authors. We @ the will also have a schedule for author book signings.

Hosted by:

Lowell, MA www.bootstrapproductions.org A non-profit publishing company that promotes the integration of multi-dimensional art forms and experiments into fine press publishing.

Featured Presses & Journals

Black Ocean, Boston, MA www.blackocean.org

10:30am-5pm From early silent films to early punk rock, Black Ocean brings together a spectrum of influences and combines them with a radical social perspective on the nature of art and 45 Middle Street humanity. The 2009 Massachusetts Poetry Festival will highlight small press Books of Hope, Somerville, MA publishing to show its importance to the craft of poetry—without a small press culture, there is no sustainable American Poetic Tradition. www.somervilleartscouncil.org/programs/artwow/booksofhope The editors and publishers of 25 different presses and magazines Books of Hope, seeks to create opportunities for self-expression and advocacy through will have their books and journals for sale and be available to “talk creative writing, so that young people can reach out to each other, to their neighbors, and to shop.” Many of the presses will be offering discounts and deals. others around the world. This will be a central location for the festival & will also host book signings from featured poets. FENCE / Fence Books, Albany, NY www.fenceportal.org

Founded in 1998, Fence is a biannual journal of poetry, fiction, art, and criticism that has a Presses / Journals also appearing: mission to redefine the terms of accessibility by publishing challenging writing distinguished by idiosyncrasy and intelligence rather than by allegiance with camps, schools, or cliques. Adastra Press, Easthampton, MA Launched in 2001, Fence Books publishes poetry, fiction, and critical texts and anthologies, www.pw.org/content/letter_time_adastra_press and prioritizes sustained support for its authors, many of whom come to us through our two book contests and then go on to publish second, third, fourth books. Antrim House, Simsbury, CT www.AntrimHouseBooks.com Loom Press, Lowell, MA www.loompress.com

Ballard Street Poetry Journal, Worcester, MA Established in 1978, Loom Press publishes books by emerging writers and artists from www.ballardstreetpoetryjournal.com the New England area. In addition to poetry, Loom Press titles range from documentary photography to cultural studies. Boston Poetry Union / The Pen and Anvil Press, Boston, MA bostonpoetry.com Outside Voices, Buffalo, NY www.looktouch.com/press Cervena Barva Press, Somerville, MA This innovative publishing venture is an umbrella for Outside Voices Books, Take-Home www.cervenabarvapress.com Project Chapbooks, and Foursquare Magazine. Little Red Tree Publishing, New London, CT Shakespeare’s Monkey, Lowell, MA www.littleredtree.com www.shakespearesmonkey.com Naugatuck River Review, Westfield, MA Shakespeare’s Monkey Revue is an international literary journal dedicated to excellence. www.naugatuckriverreview.com

Off the Coast, Robbinston, ME Tuesday; An Art Project, Arlington, MA www.off-the-coast.com www.tuesdayjournal.org

Perugia Press, Florence, MA “I think that pages — poems — books — they are resting places for what we have to say. For www.perugiapress.com what we see. It was a reaction to all of the (necessary and often fabulous) on-line work that is out there. It had to do with unrest. Work should be enjoyed tactilely. Poems should be kept, Quale Press, Williamsburg, MA when loved. Passed on. Sent out. There is a postcard in every issue, I hope you’ll mail it. I www.quale.com wanted it to come with a stamp on it, but that would have been another thousand dollars.” Jennifer Flescher on Tuesday; An Art Project Salamander Magazine (Suffolk University), Boston, MA www.salamandermag.org Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, NY www.uglyducklingpresse.org Slate Roof Press, Shelburne Falls, MA www.slateroofpress.com Ugly Duckling Presse is a nonprofit art & publishing collective producing small to mid- size editions of new poetry, translations, lost works, and artist’s books. The Presse favors Tupelo Press, North Adams, MA emerging, international, and “forgotten” writers with well-defined formal or conceptual www.tupelopress.org projects that are difficult to place at other presses. Its full-length books, chapbooks, artist’s books, broadsides, magazine and newspaper all contain handmade elements, calling attention upstreet, Richmond, MA to the labor and history of bookmaking. www.upstreet-mag.org Zoland, Cambridge, MA www.zolandpoetry.com/zoland.htm Zephyr Press, Brookline, MA www.zephyrpress.org An annual of contemporary writing from around the globe, Zoland Poetry brings together original English language poems, translations into English, and interviews with featured poets. Saturday, October 17th 2009 11

11:00 a.m - 1:00 p.m.

Official Opening Ceremony & Favorite Poem Project 11am-11:55am St. Anne’s Church, 8 Kirk Street

Official welcome and readings by a diverse group of people including elected officials, teachers, firefight- ers and others of the poems that mean the most to them. Co-sponsored with The Favorite Poem Project http://www.favoritepoem.org.

Poetry Voices Past and Pres- ent, Presented by Tapestry of Voices 12-12:55pm St. Anne’s Church, 8 Kirk Street

Tapestry of Voices is an eleven year old poetry organization, co-founded by Harris Gardner and Lainie Senechal; based in Boston with over 150 affiliates from the Greater Boston Area, most are widely published. TOV has produced numerous programs throughout Massachusetts, including the Ten Year Old Boston National Poetry Month Festival and two on-going monthly Boston Venues. The participating poets in Poetry Voices Past and Present, Presented by Tapestry of Voices will read from beloved poets from the past such as Anne Sexton, Emily Dickenson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, T.S. Eliot, Longfellow, Lorca, Neruda, and others. Each poet will also include two original poems thematically related to each Past Poet. A wonderful blend of Past and Present Voices. Program length of one hour is sure to leave you wanting more.

War and Poetry 12-12:55pm X/O Studio & Gallery, 256 Market Street

How do poets deal with the subject of war? Does a successful war poem depend on personal experience, or can imagination and empathy suffice? What’s accomplished by writing about war today? This reading by poets who’ve experienced war first hand, and non- combatants who care deeply about the consequences of war, will address these questions. The context is obvious, but the words may surprise you, and compel you to look at war for what may seem like the first time. This reading is sponsored by the new literary magazine, CONSEQUENCE, which focuses on the culture of war. www.consequencemagazine.org.

Light Verse for Dark Times: A Poetry Reading 12-12:55pm Cobblestones of Lowell, 91 Dutton Street

The New England Poetry Club (founded by Amy Lowell and Robert Frost for professional poets) is the country’s oldest public reading series. Festival poets are: MICHAEL CASEY, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets; DIANA DER-HOVANESSIAN, author of 23 books and winner of many international and national awards; VICTOR HOWES, critic, translator, and professor emeritus at Northeastern; A.M. JUSTER, award-winning translator and sonneteer; and SUE OWEN, formerly poet-in-residence at Louisiana State University and Louisiana Artist of the Year. All are widely published poets of serious and light verse. Founders: Amy Lowell, Robert Frost and Conrad How to Be a Good Public Aiken Reader of Your Own Poetry with Patrick Donnelly 12-1pm & 1-2pm Mogan Cultural Center, 40 French Street

Writing poetry and reading it well in public are two different skills, and unfortunately even many good poets are not effective at presenting their work for an audience. We’ll review the elements and skills that contribute to a good reading, and discuss how to use readings to market your publications. You’ll go home with strategies for dealing with nerves, tips for pleasing reading organizers, audiences, and—perhaps most importantly—yourself. Come prepared to read a short poem; two participants will be chosen to receive coaching, master-class style, while the audience learns from watching. Open to poets at all levels. DIANA DER- HOVANESSIAN

SE Mass Reading 12-12:55pm Pollard Memorial Library, 401 Merrimack Street 12 Saturday, October 17th 2009

Cambodian Refugee Poetry Book & CD Project / 1:00 P.m - 2:00 p.m. Panel Discussion & Reading 1-1:55pm Lowell Telecommunications Corporation, 246 Market Street Entrance The Wild, Wild West with Amy Dryansky, Mary A. Koncel & Ellen Dore Watson Members of Lowell’s Cambodian community and Light of Cambodian Children will host a panel discussion, poetry reading, and multi-media 1-1:55pm presentation focusing on the Cambodian Refugee Poetry Book & CD Proj- Pollard Memorial Library, 401 Merrimack Street ect. The project, which received grant awards and support from Theodore In this reading and discussion, three Pioneer Valley poets look at how Edson Parker Foundation, Mass Humanities, the Glory Buddhist Temple, their work is (or isn’t) influenced by the rural landscape and small Lowell Cultural Council, and others, is due for completion at the end of towns in which they now live, and how their current sense of place 2009. is (or isn’t) integrated with their more urban beginnings. Each poet brings a distinctly different style and approach to their work, each is Confluence: A Music & Poetry Performance also widely published, and together they bring experiences as author, 1-1:55pm teacher, translator, editor and proud raiser of domestic fowl. Join them Upstairs at the Old Court, 29 Central Street as they take on the myths and realities of the wild, wild, west. Confluence, a performance group that blends poetry and music, celebrates the release of its first CD. Poet J.D.Scrimgeour and musician/composer Philip The Director’s Cut Swanson meld words with a range of music: jazz, blues, and classical. Much 1-1:55pm of the poetry and music is original, but the performance includes poetry Cobblestones of Lowell, 91 Dutton Street by Rainer Maria Rilke and Alan Feldman, and music by Ravel. Swanson’s world-class musicianship and the group’s emphasis on blending longer Poetry reading by five Boston-area poets who direct Creative Writing narrative poems with music make Confluence a unique interdisciplinary Programs, Poetry Centers, and/or Writing Conferences: Fred Marchant, experience. director of the Suffolk University Creative Writing Program; Jennifer Barber, editor of Salamander literary journal, and acting director of the Poetry from the Heart of the Commonwealth fea- Suffolk Poetry Center; Daniel Tobin, director of the Emerson College turing poets of Worcester County MFA program in Creative Writing; Kevin Bowen, director of the William 1-1:55pm Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at UMass St. Anne’s Church, 8 Kirk Street Boston; and Joan Houlihan, director of the Concord Poetry Center. Reading followed by discussion of the opportunities such centers and Jonathan Blake’s poem speaks of compassion and nature in overtones of praise; programs make available to area poets. Susan Elizabeth Sweeney plays with her namesake, the Irish mythical being named Sweeney; David Thoreen, whose poems frame the angst of everyday life; and once upon a time romance novelist, Linda Warren, a weaver of magical tales. Four Poets from Four Way Books 1-1:55pm ALL Arts Gallery, 246 Market Street

In this program, four award-winning Massachusetts poets—Jeffrey Harrison, Sue Standing, Cammy Thomas, and Daniel Tobin—will read from their books published by the vital small press Four Way Books (New York). These poets all live and/or teach in the Boston area and have received grants, prizes, or fellowships from the NEA, the Bunting Institute, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright Fellowship Program, the Academy of American Poets, and the Poetry Society of America. Four Way Books, in its sixteen years, has become one of the leading not-for- profit poetry publishers in America.

Zoom In/Zoom Out: A Workshop in Revision with Kathleen Aguero 1-2pm Mogan Cultural Center, 40 French Street

Do you have a poem you’re struggling to revise? This workshop will take you through a step-by-step process designed to help you explore new possibilities in those poems you just haven’t been able to get right. Bring a draft of a poem and come prepared to write. Hopefully, at the end of this workshop you’ll have a new start on an old poem and a few revision strategies to take away with you.

Exercise in Free Writing with Barbara Helfgott Hyett & PoemWorks 1-2pm & 2-3pm Mogan Cultural Center, 40 French Street

Exercise your creativity through “free writing” exercises meant to inspire! First, enjoy a reading by a master poet. Once read, you will write off one of the lines of poetry against a timer. Everyone’s creative potential is realized when these “new” pieces are then read aloud. Several members of the Workshop for Publishing Poets will guide these unique writing sessions and offer comments on whatever flows. Saturday, October 17th 2009 13

Poèms du Monde Francophone, Poems from the 2:00 P.m - 3:00 p.m. Francophone World 2-2:55pm Pollard Memorial Library, 401 Merrimack Street “Poem Generator” with Grub Street, Inc. Poets Danielle Legros-Georges, Marilene Phipps-Kettlewell, Patrick Sylvain, 2-3pm & 3-4pm and Jean-Dany Joachim will read some of their favorite poems from the Mogan Cultural Center, 40 French Street French-speaking world, along with English translations—as well as their own poems related to the theme. You’ve read and heard great poems throughout the festival – now it’s time to create some of your own. Join instructors from the faculty The Medieval Poetry Workshop of Grub Street – Boston’s premier independent writing center – as 2-2:55pm they lead festival attendees in innovative, fun and meaningful poetry X/O Studio & Gallery, 256 Market Street exercises. These unique prompts have been used in Grub Street’s multi-week poetry courses for years, and have generated numerous The Medieval Poetry Workshop celebrates the inspiring survival of early accomplished and published poems. The goal is to complete 2-4 English literature. Participants will be invited to practice producing exercises in an hour, leaving time for writers to share their work medieval sounds, as we review the remarkable changes in pronunciation aloud if they wish. On request, instructors will offer constructive and verse features transpiring between Old English, Middle English, and feedback. Modern English poetry, in a presentation enriched by discussion of medieval manuscripts and their contexts. Two medieval scholars will conduct the How to Be a Tourist in Your Hometown with practicum element and perform readings from celebrated Middle English Kat Good-Schiff and KL Pereira poems such as The Canterbury Tales, and two modern poets will read work 2-3pm inspired by the artistry of the Middle Ages, demonstrating the power and Mogan Cultural Center, 40 French Street relevance of medieval poetry today. How can one engage with a specific environment (urban, rural, or Continuities Readings and Discussions presents an otherwise) through poetry? Does traveling affect how we engage event on Poetry and Ecology with and see our home environs? What does it mean to travel? In 2-2:55pm this workshop we will explore techniques and exercises to generate Cobblestones of Lowell, 91 Dutton Street site specific work, and we’ll look at some examples of vivid, place- based poems. Expect to go home with a list of writing prompts and Poets Afaa Michael Weaver (The Plum Flower Dance, U Pittsburgh Press, pointers to use in workshops or in your own writing. 2007), Erika Funkhouser (Earthly, Houghton Mifflin, 2008), and Emily Wilson (Micrographia, Kuhl House, 2009) introduced by Nadia Herman Colburn and in discussion with a local environmental activist will read from their work and discuss the relationship between poetry and the ways in which we imagine our relationship with the natural world. Faced with ecological devastation, species extinction, climate change and toxic waste, how do these very different poets imagine the natural world in their poetry? How does the poetic imagination affect the choices we make and help effect change?

Meet and Greet: ALL Arts Gallery Artists & Poets, sponsored by the Lowell Poetry Network 2-2:55pm ALL Arts Gallery, 246 Market Street

The Lowell Poetry Network is offering an opportunity for the public to informally mingle with the artists whose poetically inspired work will then be hanging in the Arts League of Lowell (ALL) Gallery. Meet and talk with participating artists who will make themselves available for questions and discussion involving all aspects of their work, from technique to motivation. Come and enjoy!

Melopoeia 2-2:55pm St. Anne’s Church, 8 Kirk Street

Melopoeia is an ancient art whose Greek name—a combination of “melos” and “poitria”—suggests its nature: a performance involving poetry recited to a musical accompaniment. The poetry is spoken, not sung in the form of song lyrics, so that the two arts flow separately, through and around each other, without either becoming dominant over the other. Rhina Espaillat, renowned author of seven books of poetry, and Alfred Nicol, winner of the Richard Wilbur Award, recite their poems as classical guitarist John Tavano plays pieces composed by Bach, Satie, Tarrega and others.

“The best show I’ve seen this year.” —Neal Ferreira, Boston Lyric Opera

“The Melopoeia concert was high on everyone’s list of this year’s most memorable events.” —Michael Peich, Director, West Chester University Poetry Conference 14 Saturday, October 17th 2009

Renku Performance by the Boston Haiku Society 3:00 P.m - 4:00 p.m. 3-3:55pm Upstairs at the Old Court, 29 Central Street Nature, Art & Poetry from Wild Apples Journal Shinkei (1406-75), a Japanese poet-priest of the medieval period, developed 3-3:55pm the conceptual grounding and artistic development of renga (linked ALL Arts Gallery, 246 Market Street poetry), today called renku. Renku is a longer poem of alternating stanzas by two or more poets shifting among traditional topics without a narrative Join the Editors of Wild Apples, a new journal of nature, art, and progression. The performance of sculling blackbirds is a collaborative art inquiry, for a multimedia poetry reading. Taking its title and mission form where the composer, Allen LeVines, choreographer-dancer, Emily from Thoreau’s 1862 essay, this color journal brings together poetry Beattie and vocalist, Yumiko Matsuoka combine to respond to the renku and prose with the work of visual artists and photographers connected idea as they interweave their unique expressions into performance elements. by common threads of care for the environment, social concerns, The renku stanzas were developed collaboratively by Raffael de Gruttola, and commitment to the arts. Writer-editors Linda Hoffman, Susan Karen Klein and Judson Evan who cross-adapted the dialogue of the one Edwards Richmond, Kathryn Liebowitz, and Sophie Wadsworth will act play, called HAIKU, by Katherine Snodgrass, the Director of the Boston read poetry by Wild Apples authors Jane Hirshfield, Gary Metras, Playwrights Theatre. The idea of renku performance was the original idea Red Pine and others, with a slide show of contributors’ artwork. Visit of Tadashi Kondo, a renku Japanese scholar. wildapples.org for further information.

Group Reading featuring the Powow River Poets Revision Workshop with Wendy Mnookin 3-3:55 pm 3-4pm X/O Studio & Gallery, 256 Market Street Mogan Cultural Center, 40 French Street

Based in Newburyport, the Powow River Poets, co-founded by Rhina Do you have poems that you want to take to the next level? Often as Espaillat, are an award-winning group devoted to craft. Its members have writers we know that a poem needs something more, but we can’t won The New Criterion Prize, The Richard Wilbur Award, and the T.S. identify what that “more” is. In this workshop, we will identify places Eliot Prize. Featured at the Festival will be Michael Cantor, Len Krisak, Toni within the poem—an energetic line, a compelling stanza—that can Treadway, and Richard Wollman. provide springboards to new material. Using prompts given by the instructor, we will generate new material through free-writes and Ugly Truths: A Poetry Craft Panel Discussion explore how to mine this material for language, syntax and tone to enhance the poem. Please bring two poems that you would like to on Poems That Make Art from Shocking or Risky work on. Material 3-3:55pm Cobblestones of Lowell, 91 Dutton Street

What happens to beauty in poems about ugliness? Are beauty and truth symbiotic, as Keats suggests? In both autobiographical and imaginative writing, how do poets approach subjects considered outside the tasteful bounds of poetry? Poems that insist on angry or shameful candor, that reveal disgrace or angst—are they transgressive or “TMI”? The poets talk about rhetorical, metaphorical, and formal strategies they use to manage thorny subject matter for the overall integrity of the poem. They address that rare middle ground between a poetics of emotional disconnection and a poetics of self-involvement. They focus on the ancient strengths and seductions of language (sound, syntax, rhythm, etc.) to make poems rather than expose spillage. Poets: Nancy K. Pearson, Frannie Lindsay, Ellen Doré Watson, Patrick Donnelly. Moderator: Susan Kan.

Intergenerational Poetry Reading by Six Cape Cod Poets sponsored by The Cape Cod Writers Center 3-3:55pm Pollard Memorial Library, 401 Merrimack Street

Six poets from their early teens to an octogenarian will read/perform their work. The question their poetry will address is “Poetry in Hard Times,” the theme of the 2009 Massachusetts Poetry Festival. We all interpret “hard times” differently and age and life experience play a major role. For poet Bob Silberberg at 88 he has been through the Big Depression and fought in or lived through six wars, and find himself opposing two more now. He long ago became A Veteran for Peace, and many of his poems reflect this position. Teenage poets may have different ideas of hard times, and write passionately about personal lack or losses they endure. A diversity of age and many perspectives on the issue define this “Poetry In Hard Times” from Cape Cod poets. Saturday, October 17th 2009 15 3:00 P.m - 4:30 p.m.

CAVE CANEM READING 3-4:25pm St. Anne’s Church, 8 Kirk Street Jericho Brown

Join organizer Jarita Davis and a talented crew of Cave Canem fellows reading at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival: Lillian Bertram, Tara Betts, Jericho Brown, DéLana R.A. Dameron, Johnny Davis, Joy Gonsalves, Jacqueline Jones LaMon, Kamilah Aisha Moon, January Gill O’Neil, Metta Sama and Venus Thrash. Cave Canem elder Aafa Weaver emcees. Established in 1996, Cave Canem Foundation is a home for the many voices of African American poetry and is committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African American poets. www. cavecanempoets.org. Jarita Davis 16 Saturday, October 17th 2009

Film Screening: “Lowell 4:00 P.m - 5:30 p.m. Blues” 4-4:30pm Lowell National Historical Park Visitor Center, 246 Market Street Jack Kerouac’s “Lowell Blues” remembers the Poetry: place Jack Kerouac could not forget A Panel through visual history, language Discussion, and jazz. Excerpts from Kerouac’s Moderated novel, Dr. Sax, are read by Gregory by Anne Corso, Johnny Depp, Carolyn Waldman Cassady, David Amram, Robert Creeley, and Joyce Johnson. The film 4:30-5:30pm is a canvas in motion made more Lowell National vivid by a haunting soundtrack Historical Park by alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, Visitor Center, drummer Jim Doherty and Boston’s 246 Market St. own “godfather of punk” Willie Alexander. It interprets how Panelists: place activates Anne Waldman, Michael the writer’s Gizzi, Roger Brunelle, and imagination, Steve Edington and how the writer’s art reshapes Poet Anne Waldman his city with has been an reverence and active member respect. By of the “Outrider” Jack Kerouac, Ink drawing by Derek Fenner. using both experimental poetry archival and community for over contemporary 40 years as writer, f o o t a g e , sprechstimme performer, professor, editor, magpie scholar, infra- “Lowell Blues” structure and cultural/political activist. She co-founded The Jack melds modern Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics with Allen Ginsberg at e x p e r i e n c e s Naropa University, the first Buddhist inspired school in the West, together with where she currently serves as Artistic Director of its celebrated K e r o u a c ’ s Summer Writing program. She is the author of over 40 books of childhood to poetry including Kill or Cure, Marriage: A Sentence, Structure of the create a timeless World Compared to a Bubble, and the poetic text: Outrider which sense of place. includes an interview with Ernesto Cardenal, and essays on Lorine “Lowell Blues,” Niedecker and Charles Olson. A book translated into Chinese is like Kerouac’s forthcoming in 2010. writing, swirls word and image, music Michael Gizzi was born in Schenectady, New York. He received his and movement BA and MFA from Brown University, then spent the next decade into ethereal as a licensed arborist in Southern New England. In the early 1980s images of he migrated to the Berkshire Hills in western MA, where he began A m e r i c a ’ s teaching. For the next twenty years he coordinated many poetry a b u n d a n t , readings and edited lingo magazine and Hard Press... Back in Rhode ever morphing, Island, Gizzi taught at Brown University where he also coordinated character, and the Downcity Poetry Series and continued publishing, with Craig remembers the city Watson in Jamestown, RI, the imprint Qua books. Gizzi is also one on the river where of the authors of Lowell Connector: Lines & Shots from Kerouac’s “memory and dream Town. He is also known for his co-reading of the entirety Kerouac’s are intermixed in this Old Angel Midnight with Clark Coolidge. mad universe.”

Roger Brunelle was born in Lowell, MA. He attended Saint-Louis- de-France Elementary School for 9 years, spent his teensin Québec, obtained a BA at the University of Sherbrooke, Québec and an MA in French from the Middlebury Graduate School of French in Paris, France. After his military service, he worked on the secondary level in Dracut, Lowell, and Ayer, MA and Nashua, NH. He was a participant and presenter at symposia and colloquia at Assumption College, UMass-Lowell, UMO and Laval University in Québec City. His publications appeared in the NRF in Paris, Yankee Magazine in the USA and in Canada. He is a founding member of the Corporation for the Celebration of Jack Kérouac in Lowell. He started the Kérouac Tours in Lowell, the first two of which he did in French at the request of a group of professors and students from Laval University in Québec City.

Stephen Edington is the President of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac and the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua, New Hampshire. He’s an adjunct faculty member at UML teaching a course on The Literature of the Beat Movement. He is the author of “Kerouac’s Nashua Connection” and “The Beat Face of God.” Saturday, October 17th 2009 17 4:30 P.m - 5:30 p.m.

New Works Reading 4:30 – 5:30pm St. Anne’s Church, 8 Kirk Street

Poets from across the state read their new poems: Franz Wright, Dara Wier, Joan Houlihan, Lisa Olstein, Fred Marchant & Jill McDonough.

Franz Wright

X.J. Kennedy

X.J. Kennedy & The Light Brigade 4:30-5:30 pm Lisa Olstein Cobblestones of Lowell, 91 Dutton Street

Enjoy humorous and provocative poetry by Concord Poetry Center members X.J. Kennedy, Robert J. Clawson, Barbara Lydecker Crane, Joan Houlihan Joan Kimball and Amy Woods. Kennedy’s latest books are In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus: New and Selected Poems and Peeping Tom’s Cabin: Comic Verse. This year he was awarded the Robert Frost Medal of the Poetry Society of America, for lifetime achievement. “And I ain’t even dead yet,” he comments. Poems by other Light Brigadiers have appeared in Christian Science Monitor, Measure, Beloit Poetry Journal, Raintown Review, POESIS, Blue Unicorn, Bumbershoot, Southern Review, Light Quarterly and many other print and electronic publications. Fred Marchant Dara Wier 18 Saturday, October 17th 2009

SATURDAY HEADLINE EVENT Co-sponsored by Moses Greeley Parker Lectures

7-9 pm Lowell High School Auditorium 50 Father Morissette Blvd. Louise Glück

Louise Glück was born in New York City in 1943 and grew up on Long Island. She is the author of eleven books of poetry, most recently, A Village Life:Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009) and Averno (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006), a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award in Poetry; The Seven Ages (2001); and Vita Nova (1999), winner of Boston Book Review’s Bingham Poetry Prize and The New Yorker’s Book Award in Poetry. In 2004, Sarabande Books released her six-part poem “October” as a chapbook. Her other books include Meadowlands (1996); The Wild Iris (1992), which received the Pulitzer Prize and the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award; Ararat (1990), for which she received the Library of Congress’s Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry; and The Triumph of Achilles (1985), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Boston Globe Literary Press Award, and the Poetry Society of America’s Melville Kane Award. In a review in The New Republic, the critic Helen Vendler wrote: “Louise Glück is a poet of strong and haunting presence. Her poems, published in a series of memorable books over the last twenty years, have achieved the unusual distinction of being neither”confessional” nor “intellectual” in the usual senses of those words.” She has also published a collection of essays, Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry (1994), which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction. Her honors include the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, a Sara Teasdale Memorial Prize, the MIT Anniversary Medal and fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Enjoy the 2nd Annual Foundations, and from the National Endowment for the Arts. In the fall of 2003, she replaced Billy Collinsas the Library of Congress’s twelfth Poet Massachusetts Poetry Festival Laureate Consultant in Poetry. In 2003, she was announced as the new judge of the Yale Series of Younger Poets.

“There are few living poets whose new poems one always feels eager to read. Louise Glück ranks at the top of the list. Her writing’s emotional and rhetorical intensity are beyond dispute.” -- The Washington Post “Louise (Glück) sometimes uses language so plain it can almost seem like someone is speaking to you spontaneously – but it’s always intensely distinguished.” -- Robert Pinsky

Robert Pinsky

Robert Pinsky’s first two terms as United States Poet Laureate were marked by such national enthusiasm that the Library of Congress appointed him to an unprecedented third term. As Poet Laureate from 1997-2000, he became a public ambassador for poetry, founding the Favorite Poem Project in which thousands of Americans of varying backgrounds and ages and from every state shared their favorite poems. The project sought to document that presence, giving voice Massachusetts Poetry Festival -- October 15 - 18, 2009 to the American audience for poetry. Elegant and City of Lights Parade -- November 28, 2009 tough, vividly imaginative, Pinsky’s poems have earned praise for their wild musical energy and Winterfest -- February 4 - 6, 2010 ambitious range. His book Gulf Music (2007) is Lowell Film Festival -- April 1 - 3, 2010 his seventh volume of poetry. His The Figured Lowell Folk Festival -- July 23 - 25, 2010 Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996 Lowell Summer Music Series -- through September 2010 was a Pulitzer Prize nominee and received the Lowell Quilt Festival -- August 5 - 8, 2010 Lenore Marshall Award and the Ambassador Book Award of the English Speaking Union. In Southeast Asian Water Festival -- August 21, 2010 May 2006 his chapbook entitled First Things to Lowell Open Studios -- September 25 - 26 Hand was published. Pinsky’s books about poetry Lowell Celebrates Kerouac -- October 7 - 10, 2010 include Poetry and the World, nominated for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, The Sounds of Poetry, and more recently, Democracy, Culture and the Voice of Poetry. His landmark, best-selling translation of The Inferno of Dante received the Los Angeles Times Book Award in poetry and the Howard Morton Landon Prize for translation. For seven years Pinsky appeared regularly on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. In 1999 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is one of the few members of the Academy to have appeared on “The Simpsons.” Pinsky currently teaches in the graduate writing program at Boston University. Saturday, October 17th 2009 19

featuring Robert Pinsky, Louise Glück, Anne Waldman & Afaa Weaver

Anne Waldman

Anne Waldman has been an active member of the “Outrider” experimental poetry community for over 40 years as writer, sprechstimme performer, professor, editor, magpie scholar, infra-structure and cultural/political activist. She grew up on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village, and moved to Boulder, Colorado in 1974 when she co-founded The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics with Allen Ginsberg at Naropa University; she currently serves as Artistic Director of its celebrated Summer Writing program. Waldman is the author of over 40 books of poetry, along with the poetic text Outrider. Her most recent book is Manatee/Humanity (Penguin Poets 2009). She is editor of The Beat Book (Shambhala Publications) and co-editor of The Angel Hair Anthology (Granary Books), Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action (Coffee House) and a comprehensive Beats at Naropa (Coffee House, 2009). Waldman has worked actively for social change, and has been involved with the Rocky Flats Truth and with Poets Against the War. She helped found The Poetry Project at St Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery where she worked as first assistant director and then director. She has been a student of Buddhism since 1962, a culturally active feminist, and an ambassador for the oral revival of poetry, appearing on stages from Berlin to Caracas, from Mumbai to Beijing. Ken Tucker of the New York Times says of her, “She is the fastest, wittiest woman to run with the wolves in some time.”

Anne will be performing with Ambrose Bye, musician (keyboard, guitar, voice) and composer, son of poets Anne Waldman and Reed Bye, grew up in the environment of The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, counting Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs as “poetic” godfathers. He graduated from The University of California, Santa Cruz and is has studied at the music /production program at the Pyramind Institute in San Francisco. He has studied and played Gamelan in Bali and in Santa Cruz. He has performed on stage with Anne Waldman, and Bob Holman in New York’s Issue Project Room in a program that included Steve Buscemi reading form the work of William Burroughs. He accompanied Anne Waldman at The Boulder Theatre’s “Music and Poetry for Progressives” headlined by Thurston Moors of Sonic Youth, and Jello Biafra. His most recent CD is “Matching Half” with Anne Waldman and Akilah Oliver, produced by Farfalla.McMillen, Parrish. His previous composing/ production credits include “In The Room of Never Grieve”, and “The Eye of the Falcon” with poetry by Anne Waldman. He is working on new from top left, clockwise: Anne Waldman project which includes the poet Amiri Baraka. in action, Robert Pinsky, Louise Glück & Afaa Michael Weaver.

Afaa Michael Weaver

Afaa Michael Weaver, formerly known as Michael S. Weaver, was born in 1951 in Baltimore, Maryland, to working class parents. After two years at the University of Maryland, he entered the factory life alongside his father and uncles, where he would remain for fifteen years. During that time, he wrote short fiction and poetry during coffee breaks and started both 7th Son Press and Blind Alleys, a literary journal. His first book of poetry, Water Song, was published in 1985. He soon received a National Endowments for the Arts fellowship for poetry; he left the factory to enter Brown University’s graduate writing program, where he completed his M.A. Just before his move to Boston, Tess Onwueme, the Nigerian playwright, gave him the Ibo name “Afaa,” meaning “oracle”. Weaver has published nine collections of poetry, including Multitudes, Sandy Point, and The Ten Lights of God, all of which appeared in 2000. His full length play Rosa was produced in 1993, and his short fiction appears in Gloria Naylor’s Children of the Night and in Maria Gillan’s Identity Lessons. Weaver has been a Pew Fellow in poetry and taught at both the National Taiwan University and Taipei National University of the Arts. At Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, he is the Alumnae Professor of English and director of the Zora Neale Hurston Literary Center. In addition, he is Chairman of the Simmons International Chinese Poetry Conference. To find out more, please visit his website at www.afaamweaver.com. 20 Saturday, October 17th 2009 Poetry Slam 9:00 P.m - 11:00 p.m. 9-11 pm Brewery Exchange, 201 Cabot St.

Four poetry slam teams will compete to win entrance into the 2010 National Poetry Slam. This is an official Poetry Slam Incorporated event. The Nuyorican Poets Cafe Slam Team (NYC), Lizard Lounge Poetry Slam Team (Cambridge, MA), Bar 13 Slam Team, (NYC) and the Lowell Poetry Slam Team will square off to be the first Massachusetts Poetry Festival Slam Champions. The top two finishing teams get automatic entries into the 2010 National Poetry Slam and cash prizes. 21 22 Sunday, October 18th 2009

Family Programs at the Boston Children’s Museum

308 Congress Street, Boston

Please note that all Boston Children’s Museum programs require general admission tickets to the museum: $12/ adults, $9/children Visit www.masspoetry.org for more complete program descriptions and times.

Poetry & Art with Writer & Children’s Illustrator Calef Brown 1:30pm & 2:30pm

Calef Brown will read poems and stories from his acclaimed books with accompanying visuals. Expect to see Polkabats, Skeleton Flowers, and perhaps even the elusive Allicatter Gatorpillar.

Calef Brown with elephant. Sunday, October 18th 2009 23

Homes for Poems: Japanese Binding with Events @ 119 Gallery Susan Kapuscinski-Gaylord 119 Chelmsford Street 1-4pm Lowell, MA

Make a home for your favorite poems. You’ll use recycled materials to make a simple soft cover book with a side-stitched Japanese binding. There’ll be time to decorate the cover All Movement is Poetry, Presented by Rozann Kraus with collage materials and stencils or explore ideas for more Sunday, 1-2:30pm October 18 bookmaking at home. While the emphasis is on using easy- to-get and environmentally friendly materials, information Embracing the worlds of words and dance. This workshop is open to all will be available for those wishing to make more polished people comfortable with moving in their bodies and at ease with writing books for small editions. Recommended for adults, teens, and and speaking. After a brief dance warm up, we’ll begin by learning Parings, children 8 and over with a parent. a dance/poem that has been performed by many groups of dancers. We will reflect on sensations learning and doing the dance. After an open discussion Come Explore, Imagine, Discover, Create! of the similar components of texts and choreography, we’ll break into smaller with Karen M. Kline, Founder/Executive groups to work together in dance and poetry collaborations. The workshop Director of American Community Think will be completed when we watch each other’s work and share our ideas and Tank insights. 1:00, 1:30, 2:00, 2:30 & 3pm

Children will be creating poetic art on the topic of Friendship. Using colored pencils and/or crayons, art work will be added to each poem. Bubbles will be introduced as teaching tools to begin the 20 minute workshop. Learn the “Bubble~ology” Method of Artistic Poetry Composition as we sail upon the HMS Friendship . . . let’s discover the depths of our curiosity. We will dock at the ports of Fun & Freedom at the Boston Children’s Museum. Kids ages 6 and up and their parents are welcomed!

Haiku for You with Jeannie Martin 1:30pm & 2:30pm

Haiku is a short, 3 line poem that originated in Japan but is now written by people around the world. Haiku poetry expresses a deep awareness of nature and our connection with the natural world. Together we will read some famous haiku poetry and write some of our own. 6. Add Children’s Museum program: Writing a Group Poem with Barbara Helfgott Hyett 1pm & 2pm Barbara Helfgott Hyett plans to read aloud a contemporary poem. She will write the responses and questions of the group on a huge piece of lined paper in a non-linear, poet’s way. By the end of the meeting, the group will have composed a public poem, which she will read it to the group. Copies will be provided.

Poetry at the Woodbury Poetry Room 7pm Adams House Dining Hall, 26 Plympton Street, Cambridge

A Night of Poetry & Jazz with Robert Pinsky, Rakalam “Bob” Moses (drums) and Andrew Urbina (saxophone). 24 Images from last year

“O tall redbrick chimneys of the Cotton Mills of Lowell, tall redbrick goof of Boott, swaying in the terminus clouds of the wild hoorah day and dreambell afternoon--)”

Jack Kerouac Dr. Sax

Top, left to right: Regie Gibson, Edward Sanders, & Lowell insignia.

Center images: Cafe reading at Life Alive Cafe, Zephyr Press at the Small Press Fair, Haiku as public art.

Below, left to right: Rhina Espaillat and Martin Espada.

Photos taken by Suzzanne Cromwell.

Page design by Lynn Tran, Malden High School