The Mass Poetry Festival is One Month Away!

View this email in your browser Buy Your Buttons! The Festival schedule is live. Buy your buttons for the chance to see headliners ●Louise Glück ●Eileen Myles ●Kazim Ali ●Andrea Cohen ●Cornelius Eady and Rough Magic ●Ross Gay ●Rigoberto González ●Aimee Nezhukumatathil ●Emily Pettit ●Tom Sleigh ●Dara Wier May 5 - May 7 in Salem, MA! Student Day of Poetry Join us on Friday, May 5 for the Festival Student Day of Poetry. Poets Krysten Hill, Lindsey O'Neill, Enzo Surin, Regie Gibson, Hannah Baker-Siroty, Anna Ross, Robby Auld, Lisa Mangini, Neiel Israel and Laurin Macios will lead workshops, participate in readings and q&s, and perform their work before a student open mic. Email sara@masspoetry.org to sign your students up and learn more. Get a Table at the Small Press Fair! Our Small Press and Literary Fair will take place on Saturday, May 6 from 11 a.m. - 5 p.m., located along the Pedestrian Mall between Peabody Essex Museum and Museum Place Mall. Want to book a table at the Small Press Fair? Presses, writing programs, and individual poets—contact us for more info. Send your queries to mp@masspoetry.org. Register to Volunteer Sign up to volunteer at the Mass Poetry Festival as a greeter, session attendant, info booth attendant, and more! Volunteers keep the festival running, and they receive free admission when not working. Migration Poetry As part of the Poetry Coalition, Mass Poetry is proud to present Raining Poetry on the theme Because We Come From Everything: Poetry & Migration, at the Mass Poetry Festival. We are selecting five poems from the submissions received to be sprayed on the sidewalks with water-repellent spray. Be sure to look down when walking around downtown Salem! Spread the Word! Help us spread the word about the Mass Poetry Festival. Post on Facebook and Twitter, and tell us who you are most excited to see, and share info with your communities! Coming up on the Statewide Poetry Calendar: Friday, April 7th: Ginsberg: Green Reading: Andrea Cohen Dire Literary Series Saturday, April 8th: Cape Cod Poetry Group Annual Poetry & Music Celebration of National Poetry Month Sunday, April 9th: Poetry: The Art of Words/Mike Amado Memorial Series Monday, April 10th: Poetry of Attention: Poetry Workshop Tuesday, April 11th: Reading: Safiya Sinclair Reading: Martha Collins, Andrea Cohen, & Miriam Levine If you love the work we do to support poets and spread the power of poetry to students, T riders, and more, please consider supporting us with a recurring monthly donation. Donate Now

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The Top Ten Reasons to Attend the 2016 Mass Poetry Festival!

View this email in your browser The Top Ten Reasons to Attend the 2016 Mass Poetry Festival! View the schedule here. 10. Prose Poets vs. Dadaists bake-off. 9. Find poems as hard as granite, as soft as forgiveness. 8. Commit Random Acts of Poetry at the PEM! 7. It's the best place to dote on Marie Howe and wonder how Mark Doty does it. 6. Have the submission process de-mystified—won't that be nice? 5. Slams—where poetry collides with performance and no one's got insurance. 4. The Atlantic's got nothing on Ocean Vuong! 3. Didn't that guy, right over there, win a Pulitzer Prize? 2. It costs hardly a cento.   And the #1 reason to attend the 2016 Mass Poetry Festival … National Poetry Month may be ending, but we're just getting started! See you in Salem! If you love the work we do to support poets and spread the love and power of poetry to students, T riders, and more, please consider supporting us with a recurring monthly donation of $10. Donate Now Share Tweet Forward Copyright © 2016 Mass Poetry, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you signed up on our website. Our mailing address is: Mass Poetry 15 Channel Center Street, Suite 103 Boston, MA 02210

The Mass Poetry Festival is almost here!

Get Your Festival Button! Festival Spotlight, How to Create and View your Custom Festival Schedule, Sneak Peeks, The Glories of Poetry in Translation View this email in your browser The 2016 Mass Poetry Festival is April 29 - May 1! Get Your Festival Button! Online button sales are open through Thursday, April 28 at 3:00 pm. After that, you will need to buy your button at the festival. Button pick-up (for those pre-purchased) and button sales take place at our headquarters (Old Town Hall at 32 Derby Square), at one of our outdoor info booths along the pedestrian walkway, or in the lobby of the Hawthorne Hotel or Peabody Essex Museum. General Admission - $20 Seniors and students - $7 Workshop fee - $10* BUY NOW. *The workshop fee is a flat fee that allows you to attend as many of our workshops as you'd like. At these prices, we will generate only enough revenue to cover half of the festival costs, but it is important to us to keep prices low so that everyone can attend. We encourage those who have the means to add a donation to their button purchase to help us continue to offer the festival experience at a low price. Festival Spotlight The State of Poetry Saturday, April 30, 3:15 p.m. - PEM Morse Auditorium The Mass Poetry Festival's annual State of Poetry panel is comprised of well-known poets and literary administrators who engage in a free flowing discussion about the state of poetry today—for instance: who gets published (and who doesn't), the impact of new technologies, trends in craft, and poetry's connection to the social context of our times. Panelists include festival headliners Sandra Beasley, Ada Limon, and Gregory Pardlo. Looking for more Festival panels and readings on the business of poetry? Check out these offerings: Friday, April 29 3:45 p.m. Received and In-Progress: Demystifying Submissions and the Publication Process with Karen Skofield, MRB Chelko, and Brandon Amico Saturday, April 30 11 a.m. Legal Issues for Poets and Publishers with lawyers Eric Karlberg, and Peter J. Caruso, II, Esq. 12:15 p.m. Small Press, Big Love: Publishing Poetry Collections with Independent Presses with Danielle Jones-Pruett, Carissa Halston, Enzo Surin, Liz Kay, Jen Lambert, Randolph Pfaff 3:15 p.m. The State of Poetry with Jennifer Jean, Sandra Beasley, Richard Blanco, Ada Limon, and Gregory Pardlo Sunday, May 1 11:15 a.m. How Did I Get Here? MA Book Award Winners Tell All with Amy Dryansky, Jeffery Harrison, and Daniel Tobin As a reminder, we do not check names at the door for events other than workshops or headline events that have reached capacity in the system, so these event is first-come first-served, like most others.  Sneak Peeks For a sampling of our headliners, check out some of Charles Simic's essays and read an interview with Martha Collins. The Glories of Poetry in Translation Join Mass Poetry before the festival on Thursday, April 28, for The Glories of Poetry in Translation, an event sponsored with The Poetry Society of America. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky hosts renowned poets and translators Rhina P. Espaillat, David Ferry, and Ellen Doré Watson, who will read from their translated works and share insights and stories on the experience and process of translation.  If you love the work we do to support poets and spread the love and power of poetry to students, T riders, and more, please consider supporting us with a recurring monthly donation of $10. Donate Now Share Tweet Forward Copyright © 2016 Mass Poetry, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you signed up on our website. Our mailing address is: Mass Poetry 15 Channel Center Street, Suite 103 Boston, MA 02210 Add us to your address book

The latest from Mass Poetry

Festival headliners announced; Proposal deadline extended, Plein air poetry, Poem of the Moment, Archives, Coming up on the statewide calendar and more View this email in your browser Announcing a partial list of #MPF16 headliners! Marie Howe, Sandra Beasley, Mark Doty, Ada Limón, Gregory Pardlo, David Rivard, and Charles Simic are coming to Salem! This is one festival you won't want to miss!  100+ readings, panels, and workshops. All poetry, all day, for three days! If you haven't already, save the date for April 29 - May 1 in Salem! Info on button sales, hotel room blocks, and more coming soon. Have you been working on or considering a festival proposal? We are extending the proposal deadline to 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, November 1. Get those great ideas in! Read the guidelines and submit. Check out "What is Poetry: Scenes from the 2015 Festival" and revisit our 2015 photo gallery & video gallery! Plein Air: Poetry in and About the Natural World   What is plein air poetry and what are its roots? "En plein air is a French term, literally translated as 'in the open air.' So simply put, plein air poetry is poetry written out of doors. The tradition of identifying artistic work as plein air began in the mid-nineteenth century with the Barbizon, Hudson River, and Impressionist Schools of painting. Although artists had often painted outside, during this period, painters became particularly interested in painting in natural light, and the invention of paints in tubes facilitated this practice." Continue Reading. Check out our archives! Articles, poems, books, oh my! Articles: We publish at least one story every week on masspoetry.org, and all stories from the past year are now available on our article archive page. Stories will be added to the archive page when they come off of our current articles page, which always features the latest eight stories.  Poems: Our website features an archive of all Poems of the Moment that have been featured weekly for the past several years. If ever you are in the mood to browse poems by Massachusetts poets, the Poem of the Moment archive is the spot for you!  Extra, extra: Okay, so this isn't an archive! But be sure to check out our New Books By Massachusetts Poets page, which features--you guessed it--new full-length books of poetry by Massachusetts poets. (Pub date within a year.) At the bottom of the new books page, you'll also find all past interviews from our "Getting to Know" poets with new books series. Poem of the Moment Joyce Peseroff: HitchBOT HitchBOT, you look like a toy in a war zone, a photograph staged to crack the heart. HitchBOT, you're like my kid's old Barbie, dressed and undressed, decapitated with familiar contempt. HitchBOT, you're the highway's first dweeby victim in a horror movie franchise, Son or Revenge Of. Continue Reading. Coming up on the Statewide Poetry Calendar: Saturday, October 31: Voices from Beyond: A one day studio workshop for all writers Sunday, November 1: Concord Festival of Authors  Tom Daley, Rebecca Kaiser Gibson and Kathy Nilsson Poetry Reading Monday, November 2: Open Mic and Poetry Reading with Alan Albert and Susan Nisenbaum Becker I Carry My Mother: A Reading by Leslea Newman Blacksmith House Poetry Series Tuesday, November 3: 2x2 Reading Series Wednesday, November 4: Rebecca Kaiser Gibson and Gary Whited Poetry Reading David Ferry Poetry Reading EXTENDED DEADLINE! Submit your proposal for the 2016 Massachusetts Poetry Festival by 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, November 1. ALSO: • Nov 1 Deadline: Apply to be Common Threads 2017 Guest Editor • Nov 6 Deadline: Submit visual art to our Common Threads cover art contest on the theme of "threshold moments." Guidelines/instructions on our website. If you love the work we do to support poets and spread the love and power of poetry to students, T riders, and more, please consider supporting us with a recurring monthly donation of $5-$10 per month. Donate Now Share Tweet Forward Copyright © 2015 Mass Poetry, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: Mass Poetry 15 Channel Center Street, Suite 103 Boston, MA 02210 Add us to your address book