Announcing the Second Carrboro (International) Poetry Festival
May 21 & 22
The 2005 Carrboro Poetry Festival will feature readings from 40 poets
during the two day event Saturday May 21 and Sunday May 22. Hundreds of
people attended the first annual fest in 2004, and many more are
expected to turn out this year.
Festival Organizer and Carrboro Poet Laureate Patrick Herron will be
joined not only by renowned North Carolina-based poets Carl Martin,
Gerald Barrax, and Evie Shockley but also by some of North America's
finest poets including Ammiel Alcalay, Christian Bok, Harryette Mullen,
Hoa Nguyen, Lee Ann Brown, Linh Dinh, Heriberto Yepez, Kent Johnson, and
Murat Nemet-Nejat. We're also working on getting
internationally-renowned poet and playwright Ariel Dorfman as well as
new NC Poet Laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer to come and read as well.
Poetry represented by the event is not limited to any particular
aesthetic or world-view: some of this year's readers are young, some
old, some academic, independent, political, philosophical; and their
poetry ranges from Language Poetry to School of Quietude to elliptical
to New Formalism to post-Language and Avant and Slam and everything in
between and outside. Poetry regularly escapes artificial boundaries and
categorizations--exactly what the organizer of the festival hopes to
demonstrate. There is an emphasis on less established poets whose works
merits greater exposure. The foremost goal of the festival, however, is
simply to bring poets and the people together.
The festival will be held at the Carrboro Century Center in the heart of
downtown Carrboro.
Admission is free and open to the general public. Authors will be
available for book signings at the conclusion of their individual
readings.
Contributions to the festival are welcome and encouraged; you are
welcome to make a donation through the festival website or you can email
me for further details. We need your financial support.
The festival website has pretty much all of the information you'll need,
from maps to hotel listings to author biographies:
Carrboro Poetry Festival