Look here for our articles & links on poetry slams, academic conferences, big & small poetry festivals -- wherever poets get together to talk about & do Po -- as well as guidance on how to host & publicize a live reading of your own.
When the Frankfurt Buchmesse turned fifty, and Bob Holman was commissioned to write the occasional verse, voila! — a SemiCento... the poem gathers poets from all cultures and times to say Happy Birthday, What Is a Poem?
Street closings for a Poetry Marathon? Who ever heard of such a thing!!? Mike Gullickson reports from on-scene at the 20th Anniversary Java City Poetry Marathon in Sacramento, California, July 2006.
Bob Holman defines & explains the phenomenon of the poetry open mic, "a meta-metaphor for freedom, a place where your art can be presented to the public at large," a place where "all humans are created equal – so long as you don’t go over the time limit!"
James Kass talks about reading, writing, hearing & performing poetry with teenagers in Youth Speaks (the project he founded with the tagline 'the next generation can speak for itself') & the National Youth Poetry Slam.
A simple step-by-step outline to prepare yourself for giving a polished, professional reading of your poetry -- adapted from Gary Mex Glazner’s book, How To Make a Living as a Poet.
Los Angeles writer Teresa Conboy’s account of the reading at Skylight Books celebrating the 50th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” -- “a group of local poets and friends of Ginsberg really captured the cadence of the landmark poem” that night in October 2005.
Poet/MC David Levine writes about the new performance gathering in New York City’s Washington Square.
An on-scene report from Calgary & Banff in the summer of 2005 by Bob Holman: "Like any Spoken Word Summit worth its spice, Calgary’s began with a four-day festival..." Sheri-D Wilson, Anne Waldman, Quincy Troupe, local poets & up-&-comers from across Canada, plus a few international touring poets, and a three-piece back-up band for the occasion.
From the 2005 Walla Walla Poetry Party, a review by Amber Andersen, introduced by poetry party participant Travis Catsull and accompanied by a group portrait from the party & a poem by Travis Catsull.
How Study Abroad on the Bowery sprang from a conversation among Anne Waldman, Kristen Prevallet, Alan Gilbert, and Bob Holman at Naropa in the summer of 2004 and opened the doors of the Bowery Poetry Club to poet-students in January of 2005.
From May Day weekend at the Bowery Poetry Club, 16 events in two days and three nights! You could get a degree if you’d been there!
Denis Mair’s notes from the 2003 Walla Walla Poetry Party, condensed for About Poetry by klipschutz, plus a previously unpublished poem by Denis, “
Try a Little Dialogue.”
Linda Lerner tells the story of her return visit to Stone Soup in Boston, a homecoming to the venue where for three decades Jack Powers has enabled poets to experience “the condition of poetry.” Plus two poems: “
the poem the rare soul,” by Linda Lerner, and “
A Condition, Not an Event,” by Andrew Gettler.
Bob Holman returned from the 7th annual Poetry Africa festival held in Johannesburg, South Africa in May, 2003 with a renewed sense of the power of gathered poets... “Africa, specifically South Africa, is ready for a larger voice in world poetry, and Poetry Africa shows how to do it...” And he brought
a passel of poems from the African poets for our readers’ pleasure.
An index of previous About Poetry feature articles reporting from the scene of live poetry events.
An index of our feature articles on poetry as an oral art, poetry slams & the late 20th century revitalization of poetry as a popular art form.
