Palm Beach Poetry Festival Invites Local Poets & Poetry Lovers to a Variety of Special Events

Susan R. Williamson, Director of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, and Dr. Blaise Allen, Director of Community Outreach, today invited local poets and poetry fans to numerous upcoming special workshops and events:

December 3 - 12:30 pm (Saturday)

Poetry and Delight

A Workshop with Professor Ellene Glenn Moore

Poetry fans have all read and studied poems of great sorrow, deep love, and intellectual probing. But what about delight? How might a poem be served by writing from a place of delight, and what can be learned from the many poets who have reached for delight? This workshop will look at how poets have translated delight into their work, how they have delighted in building a poem, and how they have employed craft elements to convey delight. After discussing various models, ranging from Issa to O'Hara, trying to suss out the "poetics of delight," workshop participants will write and share their own poems using these models as prompts.

Note: Ms. Moore earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University, where she held a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Fellowship. Moore's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Raleigh Review, Brevity, Best New Poets, Ninth Letter, Critical Flame, and elsewhere, and her chapbook The Dark Edge of the Bluff will be published next year.

Old School Square

51 N. Swinton Avenue in Delray Beach

$10 per person

January 12 - 11 am (Thursday)

Haiku U

A Workshop with Yaddyra Peralta

In this 11th annual workshop, participants will learn about the Japanese literary form of zuihitsu.Often translated as "miscellaneous essay," zuihitsu often consists of loosely connected pieces of prose and fragmented ideas of varied lengths that typically respond to the author's surroundings. Participants will look at a brief history of the form and examine various examples-past and present-before heading to Morikami's beautiful gardens to generate their own zuihitsu. There is no charge for the workshop, yet participants must pay for entrance to the Morikami Museum and Gardens.

Note: In addition to being the assistant director of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Ms. Peralta is a poet who teaches writing and literature at Broward College and Miami Dade College. Her poems have been published in Eight Miami Poets and Ghazals for James Foley. Her work has also appeared in Ploughshares, Jai

Alai, Abe's Penny, Tigertail, The New Poet and Hinchas de Poesia.

Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens

4000 Morikami Park Road in Delray Beach

FREE

January 16-21 (Monday through Saturday)

Palm Beach Poetry Festival 2017

The 13th annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival will feature 15 top poets at numerous ticketed public events, including workshops, readings, talks, interviews, panel discussions and more. Special Guest Poet in 2017 will be Charles Simic, winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the U.S. Poet Laureate in 2007. Among the nine distinguished poets who will lead writing workshops at the Festival are David Baker, Laura-Anne Bosselaar, Tina Chang, Lynn Emanuel, Daisy Fried, Terrance Hayes, Dorianne Laux, Carl Phillips and Martha Rhodes. Individual conferences will be offered by nationally acclaimed poets Sally Bliumis-Dunn, Nickole Brown and Ginger Murchison, and Performances at the Field House will offer sizzling spoken word by The Mayhem Poets: Mason Granger and Scott Raven. For more information about the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, please visit www.palmbeachpoetryfestival.org.

Old School Square

51 N. Swinton Avenue in Delray Beach

February 2 - At Sunset (Thursday)

Stargazing:

Out of this World Poetry Reading

Co-hosted by the Palm Beach Poetry Festival and the Astronomical Society of the Palm Beaches, participants will read poetry round robin while observing the moon and the stars. The poems can be original or an old favorite but must relate to the night sky. When a poet is finished, others can view the heavens through telescopes provided by the Astronomical Society.

Hagen Ranch Road Library

14350 Hagen Ranch Road in Delray Beach

FREE

February 11 - 12:30 pm (Saturday)

Mythology in Poetry

A Workshop with Deborah DiNicola

Odysseus, Penelope, Persephone, Achilles, Gods, Goddesses, Heroes & Heroines, The Cyclops and other monsters! Modern poets have continued to update the many archetypal themes found in Greek mythology. In this workshop, participants will examine poems written on the themes of different stories in Greek mythology and then reflect on how contemporary poets have re-visioned or updated them to speak about our society, its wars, political issues, feminism, betrayal and abandonment, love and transformation.

Note: Ms. DiNicola's most recent publications are The Future That Brought Her Here: Memoir of a Call to Awaken, and her fifth book of poetry Original Human. In addition, she edited Orpheus & Company: Contemporary Poems on Greek Mythology.

Old School Square

51 N. Swinton Avenue in Delray Beach

$10 per person

February 14 - 10:30 am (Wednesday)

Alzheimer's Poetry Project

Valentine's Day Poetry Reading and Sing Along

Sunrise Assisted Living, Brighton Gardens

6341 Via De Sonrisa Del Sur in Boca Raton

FREE

Spread the joy of poetry on Valentine's Day as the Palm Beach Poetry Festival's poetry troupe reads love poems and sings romantic songs of yesteryear. Participants should feel free to sing their favorite golden oldies or bring five single-page poems, original or not.

March 12 - 1 pm (Sunday)

Writing from Life:

A Close Look at the Work of Jack Gilbert

A Workshop with Visiting Poet Kevin Goodan

In this class, we will do a close reading of Jack Gilbert's, The Great Fires, and his essay "Real Nouns", in preparation for exercises that participants will do as a group to get the poetic pot churning.

Note: Goodan was raised in western Montana, and fought forest fires for ten seasons with the USFS, on the Lolo National Forest. An Associate Professor of English at Lewis-Clark State College, he is the author of In The Ghost-House Acquainted, Winter Tenor, Upper Level Disturbances, Let The Voices and the forthcoming Anaphora: an elegy.

Old School Square

51 N. Swinton Avenue in Delray Beach

$10 per person

March 15 -12:30 pm (Wednesday)

Bards of a Feather

Round Robin 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.

About the Palm Beach Poetry Festival 2017:

The 13th annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival will be held January 16-21 at Old School Square in Delray Beach. The Festival features top poets at numerous ticketed public events, including readings, talks, interviews, panel discussions and more. Nine workshops will be offered for which applications are required.

The 2017 Palm Beach Poetry Festival is sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts; the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture; Morgan Stanley & The Legacy Group of Atlanta; the Cultural Council of Palm County, the Palm Beach County Tourism Development Council and theBoard of Commissioners of Palm Beach County; The Palm Beach Post; Visit Florida; WLRN; and Murder on the Beach, Delray Beach's independent bookseller.

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

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