PB POETRY FESTIVAL Invites Local Poets & Poetry Fans to Eight Upcoming Community Events

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. - Sept. 17, 2018 - PRLog -- PALM BEACH POETRY FESTIVAL

Invites Local Poets & Poetry Lovers to Eight

Upcoming Community Outreach Events

(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.

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.

Available for Interview:

Dr. Blaise Allen, Ph.D.

drblaiseallen@aol.com

Media Contact:

Gary Schweikhart

PR-BS, Inc.

561.756.4298

gary@pr-bs.net