4th Annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival

Miles Coon, Founder and Director of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, wrote to ask me if I would let you all know about their upcoming event. I've taken workshops with several of these poets (Thomas Lux at Provincetown was poetlife changing) and heard almost all of them read, and it sounds like a great event.

The 4th Annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival - January 21-26, 2008

The 2008 lineup includes Kim Addonizio, Claudia Emerson, Major Jackson, Thomas Lux, Campbell McGrath, Malena Mörling, Sharon Olds, and C.K. Williams. The event will also feature Florida poets Lola Haskins and Spencer Reece for a special reading. Roger Bonair-Agard and Marty McConnell will grace the stage for performances at the annual late-night Coffee House event.

The deadline to apply for a workshop is October 31st

This sounds very tempting - workshops with some great poets in the Florida sunshine during January (while I'll be sloshing through snow in NJ). All festival events take place at Old School Square Cultural Arts Center, a national historic site blocks from the beach Delray Beach, Florida.

ADVANCED WORKSHOPS

STEALING FIRE with Kim Addonizio
DELIGHT TO WISDOM Claudia Emerson
WORD BY WORD, LINE BY LINE with Thomas Lux
POETRY IN PROGRESS with Campbell Mcgrath
GENERATING NEW WORK with Sharon Olds
RE-CONCEIVING POEMS withC.K. Williams

INTERMEDIATE WORKSHOPS

MUSIC MAKES IT HAPPEN with Major Jackson
TRANSFORMING POEMS with Malena Mörling

In addition, participants get free admission to two craft lectures and a panel discussion by all of the faculty poets, as well as invitations to the festival gala and to participate in workshop participant readings offered free to the public.

"The Palm Beach Poetry Festival was simply one of the best, most fun, and best-run poetry conferences I've ever been to—a very high level of student writers was one special feature; to be among all those sweet people brought together in the spirit of poetry, in the miraculously soft Florida salt air, was a sweet and very satisfying experience. "—Tony Hoagland

"This was a lovely and thoughtfully worked-out event, absolutely exhilarating fo be part of. I didn't want to delay any longer in thanking you for putting on such an outstanding festival/workshop and for including me in it. To you, Miles and Mimi, and all who made it such a great success, my gratitude and my warmest congratulations."—Jane Hirshfield

palmbeachpoetryfestival.org