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 to a

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
Boostrap Press
FOLLOWING
Boston Book Festival SPONSORS FOR THEIR
Cape Cod Writers Center
Cave Canem
CONTRIBUTIONS AND
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
As of 8/25/2009
High School, Collegiate
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
Greater Merrimack Valley Convention &
& Caleb Neelon
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
Middlesex Community College
from
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 +

Susan G. Case
Kerouac, Panel Discussion
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
Jarita A. Davis
MA Authors
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
Andrew S. Krotinger and Linda G.
Poetry Slam
Curtis

This poem will appear in: 20 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.

B L

J F
D
N

A
H

C G
I K

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 Upstairs at the Old Court
authors. Will also have a schedule for author book signings.
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 X/O Studio & Gallery
FRIDAY HEADLINE EVENT Urban Village Arts Series (UVAS) Mestre
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

C J Pollard Memorial Library

Lowell National Historical Park
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 Lowell Telecommunications Corporation
Poetry from the Heart of the Commonwealth featuring poets of Worcester
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 Cobblestones Restaurant
“Poem Generator” with Grub Street, Inc. 2-3pm & 3-4pm
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 119 Gallery
and Ecology 2-2:55pm
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
facilitated by professional poets and
writers.Special Guest Emcee: Regie
Gibson
Intercollegiate
Readings & Workshops
2:30 - 6:15pm
Lowell City Hall
375 Merrimack Street
Inspirational Poetry:
Women Survivors
Celebrate Healing
Journeys of Mind, Body
& Spirit
4-5pm
Life Alive Organic Café
194 Middle Street
When Mary McManus was faced
with the challenge of post polio
syndrome, she turned to writing
inspirational poetry overflowing
with messages of love, hope,
healing, and spiritual freedom.
She experienced transformation of
mind, body, and spirit and went on
to run the 2009 Boston Marathon.
Her poems and journey touched
the lives of Alicia Staley, three-time
cancer survivor, and Janice Pero,
incest survivor. These three women
will celebrate their healing journeys
and read poetry selections authored
by Mary McManus.
Alice Kociemba, Poet, 4-5 PM at Dharma Buns
Poetry of Resilience, organized by
Holly Guran and Alice Kociemba
4-5pm
Dharma Buns, 26-A Market Street
Poetry of Resilience will feature six Boston-area and Cape
Cod poets reading as an ensemble to demonstrate poetry
as a celebration of personal, cultural and environmental
resilience. Webster’s defines resilience as “an ability to
recover from or adjust . . . to misfortune or change.”
The impact of hard times, the festival’s theme, is one of
change, often misfortune. In this reading, the poems of
the individuals presenting or of other well known poets
Regie Gibson, Poet. selected for their relevance, will speak to the resilience
Performer in 2008 & Emcee of High School Poetry Workshops. inherent in stories of fortitude and hope.
Dangerous Writings: Aware Poetry in Oppressive
States
4-5pm
Caffe Paradiso, 45 Palmer Street
In many oppressive states, Iran, Egypt, Burma to name a few, non-conformal
writing in general and poetry in particular carries with itself risks of
harassment, imprisonment, or even death, by the authorities. For example,
in Iran what is known as “Aware Poetry” has led to arrests, imprisonment,
exile, and even execution of poets. In this poetry event Ala Khaki from Iran
and Pablo Medina from Cuba will read their poems and talk about the
threats they faced in their native countries for their poetry. A Q&A session
will follow the readings.
City Poets Reading
5:30-6:30pm
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.
Urban Village Arts Series (UVAS) Novelists, non-fiction writers, sculptors, filmmakers, painters, poets,
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
45 Middle Street influences and combines them with a radical social perspective on the nature of art and
humanity.
The 2009 Massachusetts Poetry Festival will highlight small press
publishing to show its importance to the craft of poetry—without a
Books of Hope, Somerville, MA
www.somervilleartscouncil.org/programs/artwow/booksofhope
small press culture, there is no sustainable American Poetic Tradition.
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

Presses / Journals also appearing:
Adastra Press, Easthampton, MA
www.pw.org/content/letter_time_adastra_press
Antrim House, Simsbury, CT
www.AntrimHouseBooks.com
Ballard Street Poetry Journal, Worcester, MA
www.ballardstreetpoetryjournal.com
Boston Poetry Union / The Pen and Anvil Press, Boston, MA
bostonpoetry.com
Cervena Barva Press, Somerville, MA
www.cervenabarvapress.com
Little Red Tree Publishing, New London, CT
www.littleredtree.com
Naugatuck River Review, Westfield, MA
www.naugatuckriverreview.com
Founded in 1998, Fence is a biannual journal of poetry, fiction, art, and criticism that has a
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.
Launched in 2001, Fence Books publishes poetry, fiction, and critical texts and anthologies,
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.
Loom Press, Lowell, MA www.loompress.com
Established in 1978, Loom Press publishes books by emerging writers and artists from
the New England area. In addition to poetry, Loom Press titles range from documentary
photography to cultural studies.
Outside Voices, Buffalo, NY www.looktouch.com/press
This innovative publishing venture is an umbrella for Outside Voices Books, Take-Home
Project Chapbooks, and Foursquare Magazine.
Shakespeare’s Monkey, Lowell, MA
www.shakespearesmonkey.com
Shakespeare’s Monkey Revue is an international literary journal dedicated to excellence.

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
Aiken
How to Be a Good Public
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 /

Panel Discussion & Reading
1:00 P.m - 2:00 p.m.
1-1:55pm
Lowell Telecommunications Corporation, 246 Market Street Entrance
The Wild, Wild West with Amy Dryansky, Mary A.
Members of Lowell’s Cambodian community and Light of Cambodian
Koncel & Ellen Dore Watson
1-1:55pm
Children will host a panel discussion, poetry reading, and multi-media
Pollard Memorial Library, 401 Merrimack Street
presentation focusing on the Cambodian Refugee Poetry Book & CD Proj-
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
3-3:55pm
Upstairs at the Old Court, 29 Central Street
Shinkei (1406-75), a Japanese poet-priest of the medieval period, developed
the conceptual grounding and artistic development of renga (linked
poetry), today called renku. Renku is a longer poem of alternating stanzas
by two or more poets shifting among traditional topics without a narrative
progression. The performance of sculling blackbirds is a collaborative art
form where the composer, Allen LeVines, choreographer-dancer, Emily
Beattie and vocalist, Yumiko Matsuoka combine to respond to the renku
idea as they interweave their unique expressions into performance elements.
The renku stanzas were developed collaboratively by Raffael de Gruttola,
Karen Klein and Judson Evan who cross-adapted the dialogue of the one
act play, called HAIKU, by Katherine Snodgrass, the Director of the Boston
Playwrights Theatre. The idea of renku performance was the original idea
of Tadashi Kondo, a renku Japanese scholar.
3:00 P.m - 4:00 p.m.
Nature, Art & Poetry from Wild Apples Journal
3-3:55pm
ALL Arts Gallery, 246 Market Street
Join the Editors of Wild Apples, a new journal of nature, art, and
inquiry, for a multimedia poetry reading. Taking its title and mission
from Thoreau’s 1862 essay, this color journal brings together poetry
and prose with the work of visual artists and photographers connected
by common threads of care for the environment, social concerns,
and commitment to the arts. Writer-editors Linda Hoffman, Susan
Edwards Richmond, Kathryn Liebowitz, and Sophie Wadsworth will
read poetry by Wild Apples authors Jane Hirshfield, Gary Metras,
Red Pine and others, with a slide show of contributors’ artwork. Visit
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
Espaillat, are an award-winning group devoted to craft. Its members have
won The New Criterion Prize, The Richard Wilbur Award, and the T.S.
Eliot Prize. Featured at the Festival will be Michael Cantor, Len Krisak, Toni
Treadway, and Richard Wollman.
Ugly Truths: A Poetry Craft Panel Discussion
on Poems That Make Art from Shocking or Risky
Material
3-3:55pm
Cobblestones of Lowell, 91 Dutton Street
Do you have poems that you want to take to the next level? Often as
writers we know that a poem needs something more, but we can’t
identify what that “more” is. In this workshop, we will identify places
within the poem—an energetic line, a compelling stanza—that can
provide springboards to new material. Using prompts given by the
instructor, we will generate new material through free-writes and
explore how to mine this material for language, syntax and tone to
enhance the poem. Please bring two poems that you would like to
work on.

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
experiences 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
abundant, 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
Cobblestones of Lowell, 91 Dutton Street Lisa Olstein

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

Enjoy the 2nd Annual fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller
Foundations, and from the National Endowment
for the Arts. In the fall of 2003, she replaced Billy
Massachusetts Poetry Festival Collinsas the Library of Congress’s twelfth Poet
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

Massachusetts Poetry Festival -- October 15 - 18, 2009
City of Lights Parade -- November 28, 2009
Winterfest -- February 4 - 6, 2010
Lowell Film Festival -- April 1 - 3, 2010
Lowell Folk Festival -- July 23 - 25, 2010
Lowell Summer Music Series -- through September 2010
Lowell Quilt Festival -- August 5 - 8, 2010
Southeast Asian Water Festival -- August 21, 2010
Lowell Open Studios -- September 25 - 26
Lowell Celebrates Kerouac -- October 7 - 10, 2010
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
to the American audience for poetry. Elegant and
tough, vividly imaginative, Pinsky’s poems have
earned praise for their wild musical energy and
ambitious range. His book Gulf Music (2007) is
his seventh volume of poetry. His The Figured
Wheel: New and Collected Poems 1966-1996
was a Pulitzer Prize nominee and received the
Lenore Marshall Award and the Ambassador
Book Award of the English Speaking Union. In
May 2006 his chapbook entitled First Things to
Hand was published. Pinsky’s books about poetry
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
Homes for Poems: Japanese Binding with
Susan Kapuscinski-Gaylord
1-4pm
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
with collage materials and stencils or explore ideas for more
bookmaking at home. While the emphasis is on using easy-
to-get and environmentally friendly materials, information
will be available for those wishing to make more polished
books for small editions. Recommended for adults, teens, and
children 8 and over with a parent.
Come Explore, Imagine, Discover, Create!
with Karen M. Kline, Founder/Executive
Director of American Community Think
Tank
1:00, 1:30, 2:00, 2:30 & 3pm
23
Events @ 119 Gallery
119 Chelmsford Street
Lowell, MA
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 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.

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