Palm Beach Poetry Festival Welcomes Fans and Poets Alike for Upcoming Workshops

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 two upcoming poetry workshops:

November 5 - 1 pm (Saturday)

Translation in Poetry

A Workshop with Professor Becka McKay

Perhaps poetry is what is lost in translation, and certainly any good translator will declare it is virtually impossible to capture everything of an original poem in a translation. However, there is also much to be gained in translation - translators have been enriching the English language for hundreds of years. Certainly, a poet's own language can be enriched by experimenting with translation. Participants in this workshop will create their own versions of poems originally written in German, Chinese, and Japanese - with no foreign language experience required.

Note: Ms. McKay directs the Creative Writing MFA at Florida Atlantic University. Publications include poetry (A Meteorologist in the Promised Land and Happiness Is the New Bedtime) and three translations of Israeli fiction: Laundry, Blue Has No South and Lunar Savings Time.

Old School Square

51 N. Swinton Avenue in Delray Beach

$10 per person

December 3 - Noon (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

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.

Special Guest Poet in 2017 will be Charles Simic, past United States Poet Laureate (2007-2008) and 1990 Pulitzer Prize winner. Nine distinguished poets will lead poetry writing workshops at the Festival: David Baker, Tina Chang, Lynn Emanuel, Daisy Fried, Terrance Hayes, Dorianne Laux, Thomas Lux, Carl Phillips and Martha Rhodes, and individual conferences will be offered by nationally acclaimed poets: Sally Bliumis-Dunn, Nickole Brown and Ginger Murchison. Performances at the Field House will offer sizzling spoken word byThe Mayhem Poets: Mason Granger and Scott Raven.

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 the Board 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.