originally published: 09/21/2016
(NEWARK, NJ) -- Martin Farawell, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation’s Poetry Director, announced Main Stage readings and highlights of the four-day program for the upcoming 30th anniversary Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. The 16th biennial Festival – the largest poetry event in North America – will be held from Thursday, October 20 through Sunday, October 23, 2016 at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) as well as other venues in Newark’s Downtown Arts District, all within easy walking distance of NJPAC.
More than 150 poetry events will be held during the four days of the Festival, with multiple events occurring simultaneously on several stages throughout each day, Thursday through Saturday, and on Sunday morning. Each evening and on Sunday afternoon all readings will take place on the stage of NJPAC’s magnificent Prudential Hall.
“We need poetry now more than ever,” said Martin Farawell, Poetry Director, “These days, we don’t have to look very far to be bombarded with language that is ugly and thoughtless. Just spend a few minutes searching the internet or watching television: someone or some group is always insulting or bullying another. Poetry reminds us our incredible gift of speech is also there to connect us. Poets invite us, complete strangers, inside their most private thoughts. I have never witnessed people experiencing this more powerfully than at the Dodge Poetry Festival.”
Thursday, October 20
During the day on Thursday there will be more than two dozen poetry and music events, with many occurring simultaneously in various venues at NJPAC and throughout Newark’s Downtown Arts District. In addition to other events, the afternoon will feature a two-part Poetry Sampler, a signature event at the Festival in which multiple poets give back-to-back readings from the stage of NJPAC’s Prudential Hall. From 12:30 to 1:45pm the Poetry Sampler will feature Robin Becker, Nickole Brown, Billy Collins, Marilyn Chin, Martín Espada, Celeste Gainey, Laurie Ann Guerrero, Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman and Jane Hirshfield and from 2:00 to 3:15pm Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Li-Young Lee, Stephanie Lenox, Robin Coste Lewis, Katha Pollitt, Vijay Seshadri, Tim Siebles, Aaron Smith and Gary Snyder will be featured.
Following a welcome from Newark’s Mayor, Ras Baraka, who is a poet himself, Thursday evening will feature the main opening event of the 2016 Dodge Poetry Festival: readings by the Academy of American Poets’ Board of Chancellors. Established in 1946, the Chancellors are an honorary group of esteemed poets that consults with the Academy on artistic matters, elects the recipients of the Wallace Stevens Award and the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, advocates for the organization’s programmatic work, and serves as ambassadors of poetry in the world at large. Chancellors reading on Thursday evening from 7:00-9:15pm on the stage of NJPAC’s Prudential Hall are Elizabeth Alexander, Mark Doty, Linda Gregerson, Juan Felipe Herrera, Brenda Hillman, Jane Hirshfield, Khaled Mattawa, Marilyn Nelson, Alicia Ostriker, Claudia Rankine, Alberto Rios, Arthur Sze and Anne Waldman.
Friday, October 21
Friday’s daytime schedule will feature more than 40 poetry events with as many as eight occurring simultaneously in multiple venues. Among the day’s many readings and poetry discussions will be panels on From Homer to Hip Hop: Poetry and the Oral Tradition, with more than 20 poets on seven different stages discussing the oral tradition of poetry and its evolution to contemporary poetry slams, jams and open mikes, as well as Poetry and Pride, exploring the contributions of the LGBTQ community to poetry past and present.
Friday afternoon will include the inauguration of an historic collaboration between the Dodge Poetry Festival and the renowned Academy of American Poets that will fully integrate their annual Poets Forum into the Festival. The Poets Forum, an event previously held in New York City that brings together the Academy’s Board of Chancellors for readings and conversations, will take place at the Festival in NJPAC’s Victoria Theatre on Friday and Saturday afternoon.
Friday evening in Prudential Hall will begin with the first part of a two-part special event, The Work to be Done: Poetry and Social Justice. Brian Lehrer, host of the Peabody Award-winning “The Brian Lehrer Show” on public radio station WNYC, will moderate a conversation on poetry’s place in these challenging times with Martín Espada, U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, Katha Pollitt and New York Times bestseller Claudia Rankine. Taking its title from the closing words of Gwendolyn Brooks’ “to the Diaspora,” with its reminder of the work that remains “to be done to be done to be done,” the event will be followed with Main Stage readings by Martín Espada, Katha Pollitt and Claudia Rankine.
Saturday, October 22
Saturday’s program begins with In Praise with poets Martín Espada and Mahogany L. Browne joined by the Newark Boys Chorus and Parkington Sisters in a spoken and sung celebration of poems and songs of praise. The daytime schedule of nearly 40 other poetry events will include panels on the influence of Asian poetry, Washing in Clear Water: Asian Poetry in America, and readings by poets from Kundiman, an organization dedicated to the cultivation of Asian American creative writing; Cave Canem, a writers center with a focus on African American poets and writers; Warrior Writers, which provides a creative community for the artistic expression of veterans; and Brick City Voices, featuring some of Newark’s brightest emerging poets. Additionally, the five recipients of this year’s Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships, a $28,500 prize awarded by the Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine to U.S. poets between 21 and 31 years of age, will give their debut readings as Fellows.
Main Stage readings during the day on Saturday will be given by Marilyn Chin, Brenda Hillman, Li-Young Lee, Robin Coste Lewis, Tim Seibles and Vijay Seshadri. The second afternoon of the Poets Forum of the Academy of American Poets will also be held.
Saturday evening’s program will offer a powerful blend of poetry, spoken word and song, Poetry Like Bread: Poems of Social and Political Consciousness. Like the anthology of the same name, this performance gets its title from these lines from Roque Dalton’s poem “Like You” (Como Tú): “I believe the world is beautiful/and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone. The evening will feature poets Marilyn Chin, Martín Espada, Robert Hass, Juan Felipe Herrera, Brenda Hillman, Claudia Rankin and Tim Seibles, among others and special musical guests.
Sunday, October 23
Among the multiple events on Sunday morning and early afternoon will be a discussions on poetry and ecology, Our House: Eco-Poetry and the Earth, with Robert Hass, Jane Hirshfield and Gary Snyder; I Too Sing America: Poetry and Race with Marilyn Chin, Juan Felipe Herrera, Brenda Hillman, Claudia Rankine and Vijay Seshadri; and a tribute to the late poet Galway Kinnell, featured at many Dodge Poetry Festivals, with Billy Collins, Martín Espada, Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, and members of Kinnell’s family.
The afternoon will feature the Festival’s concluding events: Main Stage readings by Billy Collins (U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001-2003), Robert Hass (U.S. Poet Laureate from 1995-1997), Juan Felipe Herrera (now in his second term as the current U.S. Poet Laureate), Jane Hirshfield and Gary Snyder.
The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, an initiative of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation held biennially in even-numbered years since 1986, is a celebration of poetry that immerses participants in four days of readings, performances, and conversations. In its 30-year history, the Dodge Poetry Festival has involved nearly 600 poets, including Nobel Laureate and U.S. Poet Laureates; Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners; Guggenheim, Fulbright, MacArthur and NEA fellows; and an unparalleled array of much-published and award-winning poets.
The Dodge Poetry Festival is the largest poetry event in North America. Called “Wordstock” by The New York Times, audience members have the opportunity to hear performances from and interact with dozens of the world’s foremost poets with an extraordinarily wide range of backgrounds and styles.
Anchored by events at NJPAC, the Festival will transform Newark’s Downtown Arts District into a “Poetry Village,” with many of the performances and readings occurring at multiple venues and cultural destinations in the city, all within easy walking distance of NJPAC. At times during the Festival eight or more separate stages will offer events simultaneously for audiences from 100 to 2,000 people, including at the Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, First Peddie Baptist Memorial Church, the New Jersey Historical Society, the Newark Museum, Newark Symphony Hall, North Star Academy, and Trinity & St. Philip’s Cathedral.
Known for its tremendous ethnic and cultural diversity, downtown Newark is located three miles from Newark Liberty International Airport, one of the largest international airports in the United States. Downtown Newark is easily accessible by public transportation via Amtrak, New Jersey Transit (NJ TRANSIT), and PATH trains, and is located at the center of the New York metropolitan area. Once again, as a key component of the Dodge Foundation’s commitment to a healthier environment, the Festival will partner with NJ TRANSIT to make public transportation more affordable for Festival-goers. NJ TRANSIT will offer $10.50 ticket vouchers for Festival participants for a round-trip ticket from any NJ TRANSIT rail station to Newark Penn Station or Newark Broad Street Station. The voucher will also be honored on the Newark Light Rail once riders arrive in Newark. Vouchers can be purchased with Festival tickets online, over the phone, or at the NJPAC Box Office.
Tickets
Tickets are now available in all categories including full day/evening admission at $40 per day as well as Weekend Passes offering full admission throughout Saturday and Sunday for $60 and Four Day Passes offering admission through the entire Festival for $100. Discounts are available for seniors and teachers with ID as well as half-price admission for students with ID and Newark residents. Tickets and passes are available at the NJPAC Box Office, 1 Center Street, Newark NJ, online at www.njpac.org or by phone at 1-888-GO-NJPAC.
For regularly updated information about the 2016 Dodge Poetry Festival visit www.DodgePoetry.org and join the Poetry Program’s e-mail list.
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