Best of the Best at Palm Beach Poetry Fest

Sam Leon

(PRESS RELEASE)_(Delray Beach, FL – September 6, 2018) Susan R. Williamson, Director of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, and Dr. Blaise Allen, Director of Community Outreach, today reminded local poets and poetry fans about eight upcoming public events:

September 29 – 3:30 pm (Saturday)

8th Annual 100,000 Poets and Musicians for Change
American Rocks Bar and Grill
1600 East Hillsboro Blvd. in Deerfield Beach
FREE

The public is invited to participate in what could be the largest poetry reading in history. The Palm Beach Poetry Festival is hosting this annual open-mic event in partnership with 100 Thousand Poets for Change. This global happening will be taking place at the same time in over 1,000 venues in 120 countries. Poets will read and perform work to promote social, political, environmental sustainability, and change, simultaneously across the planet. Attendees are welcome to read their own work or favorite poems by other poets. Between poetry readings, special guest musicians will play songs for peace.  Attendees are welcome to play or sing along. As in previous years, the event will be photographed by Dr. Allen and archived by Stanford University. Must be 21 years old to attend. 

October 6 – 1:00 pm (Saturday)

Poetry Workshop
One Foot on the Ground:
An Examination of the Role of Setting in Poetry
With Sam Leon
Old School Square – Classroom 6 (upstairs)
51 N. Swinton Avenue in Delray Beach
$10 per person

This workshop’s purpose is to explore how place – and placelessness – impacts a poem’s potency. Being grounded fully in a specific place allows for the poet to swim in unique images and evoke sensory details that breathe life into the poem. Attendees will discuss various grounded poems and move into the “in-between” that are less identifiable as real, specific, or singular places. How does the choice of setting and the establishment of a world’s rules serve the poetic purpose? Handouts will be provided with examples of poems that use place as a key tool in advancing the power of the words on the page. Participants will then respond to prompts during two ten-minute free writes. As a third and optional exercise, participants are encouraged to bring in a photo of a place of significance to them, with the goal of marrying the visual images with the poetic. 

Bio: Sam Leon is an MFA candidate in poetry at Florida International University, where she teaches undergraduate writing. She is the Assistant Managing Editor for Gulf Stream Magazine. Leon earned her BA in English Writing from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, where she was a two-time recipient of the Carroll Creative Writing Scholarship. Her book reviews and author interviews have been or will soon be published in Gulf Stream Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, and The Iowa Review.

October 17 – 1 pm (Wednesday)

Bards of a Feather
Round Robin Open Mic Poetry Reading
Green Cay Nature Preserve, Community Room
12800 Hagen Ranch Road in Boynton Beach
FREE

Participants should bring up to four poems, original or not, to share with the group. Non-poets are welcome to attend.

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November 3 – 12:30 pm  (Saturday)

Poetry Workshop
Aspects of Love Poems: Models of Excellence
With Sarah Brown Weitzman
Old School Square – Classroom 6 (upstairs)
51 N. Swinton Avenue in Delray Beach
$10 per person

Love has been the subject of and perhaps motivation for poems from the earliest poets to contemporary poets.  In fact, there is probably no poet who hasn't written a love poem. Through close analysis attendees will examine the use of poetic techniques in these model poems and will have an opportunity to try their hand at writing a love poem whether it is directed at a person, a pet, on object or love itself. Work produced in the class will be shared aloud.

Bio: Sarah Brown Weitzman, a past National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Poetry and Pushcart Prize nominee, is widely published in hundreds of journals and anthologies including The New Ohio Review, The North American Review, The Bellingham Review, Rattle, Mid-American Review, Poet Lore, Slant, Miramar, and elsewhere.  She was twice a finalist in The Academy of American Poets' Walt Whitman First Book Award contest. Pudding House published her chapbook, The Forbidden.

December 1 – 12:30 (Saturday)

PoJo Collage Workshop
With Cara Nusinov
Boca Raton Museum of Art School
801 W. Palmetto Park Road in Boca Raton
FREE

Note: This workshop is limited to the first 25 people who RSVP at drblaiseallen@aol.com. Accepted participants will receive confirmation of attendance.

This workshop is the perfect place to combine a love of art collage, poetry and journaling. Cara Nusinov will show participants how to create their own collage cover art, and write poems utilizing reflective writing while expressing personal thoughts in a notebook or journal brought from home, along with scissors, Elmer’s Glue or a glue stick, writing paper, a writing pen, magic markers, a favorite photograph of him/her self at any age, 8-10 small images from magazines, and other stuff to incorporate into a collage such as glitter, sequins, feathers, or any flat item

Bio: Cara Nusinov joyfully facilitates workshops of words, self-discovery and expressive thoughts to help connect and heal, empower and additionally, laugh. A Poetry Therapy Practitioner with the International Academy For Poetry Therapy. Nusinov is a collage artist, poet, teacher, leisure photographer, and Laughter Yoga Leader, and she is certified in art journaling.

December 5 – 1 pm (Wednesday)

Bards of a Feather
Round Robin Open Mic Poetry Reading
Green Cay Nature Preserve, Community Room
12800 Hagen Ranch Road in Boynton Beach
FREE

Participants should bring up to four poems, original or not, to share with the group. Non-poets are welcome to attend.

December 13 – 10:30 am (Thursday)

Alzheimer’s Poetry Project

Holiday Poetry Reading and Sing Along
Facilitated by Blaise Allen, Ph.D.
Sunrise Assisted Living, Brighton Gardens
6341 Via De Sonrisa Del Sur in Boca Raton
FREE

Spread the joy of poetry and music at this special holiday event, where attendees will share their favorite holiday poems and songs of the season. All ages welcome.

January 10, 2019 – 11 am (Tuesday)

11th Annual Haiku U
Facilitated by Yaddyra Peralta, MFA.
Morikami Gardens and Museum Theatre
4000 Morikami Park Road in Delray Beach
FREE to attend, but participants will have to pay admission to the Morikami Museum and Gardens

Participants will learn the basics of the Japanese literary form of haiku and haibun, which is a combination of prose and haiku. Participants will look at a brief history of the haibun and examine various examples, with a focus on the work of haiku master Kobyahsi Issa. Workshop participants will learn about the history of the forms, examine various examples, past and present, and then head to Morikami’s beautiful gardens to generate their own haiku and haibun. Participants need to bring a pen and writing pad, snippets of prose, dreams, found poems, journal entries, observations, memories, or a few lines from their own poems to incorporate in their very own haibun.

About the Palm Beach Poetry Festival 2019:

The 15th annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival will be held next January 21-26 at Old School Square in Delray Beach. Special Guest Poet will be Sharon Olds, the author of 11 books of poetry and winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Another Pulitzer Prize winner, Tyehimba Jess, will be the Festival’s first Poet At Large. 

Eight distinguished poets will lead poetry-writing workshops at the Festival: Ellen Bass, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Stuart Dischell, Aracelis Girmay, Campbell McGrath, Mathew Olzmann, Gregory Pardlo and Eleanor Wilner, with individual conferences offered by nationally acclaimed poets: Lorna Knowles Blake, Sally Bliumis-Dunn and Nickole Brown. The Festival will feature these top poets at numerous ticketed public events, including readings, talks, interviews, panel discussions and more.

The Palm Beach Poetry Festival is presented in partnership with Old School Square and is generously sponsored by Art Works of the National Endowment for the Arts, Morgan Stanley, The Windler-Keel Group of Atlanta, GA, the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County, The Tourist Development Council of Palm Beach County; the Board of Commissioners of Palm Beach County, The Palm Beach Post, a grant from Visit Florida, WLRN-FM, and Murder on the Beach, Delray Beach’s independent bookseller.

In 2010, the Palm Beach Poetry Festival received an Arts Challenge Grant from The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; and in 2011, it was presented with The Muse Award for Outstanding Cultural Organization (with a budget under $500,000) by the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County.

For more information about the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, please visit www.palmbeachpoetryfestival.org.