San Jose Poetry Festival

featuring:
Alejandro Murguía, San Francisco Poet Laureate
Arlene Biala, Santa Clara County Poet Laureate
Sally Ashton, former Santa Clara County Poet Laureate

plus many more local and regional poets, along with:
Workshops • Small Press Fair • Spoken Word • Veterans Write
Words & Music • World Poetry • Youth Presentations

The theme of the 2016 San José Poetry Festival is Breaking Borders, which celebrates not only our community’s diverse ethnic and cultural heritage, but also the wide range of topics and literary styles reflected in our festival workshops, presentations, and small press fair.

a packed schedule of eclectic presentations:

A World Poetry segment, presented by Pushpa MacFarlane, includes international poets reading works in both their native tongue and in English translation, while Amy Meier’s Veteran’s Writeprogram features writers who have served in the armed forces. Scientist Poets, led by Len Anderson, illustrates the unique perspectives of writers applying a technical background to the craft of poetry, engineering a hybrid of art and science. For a younger perspective, longtime Willow Glen Poetry Project’s Dennis Richardson has assembled a posse of high school poets to read their writing in Youth Poetry.

a celebration of unique modes of expression:

Caesar Kent has mobilized a squad of expressive and impressive performance poets in a Spoken Word/Slam segment, including the San José celebrity and self-proclaimed “stand-up poet,” Mighty Mike McGee. San Francisco author and poet Diane Frank, accompanied by Cellist Eric Ievins, will present a gorgeous collaboration of strings and stanzas in Words and Music. The cavalcade of creative voices continues with Bay Area poets Mark Heinlein and Pranita Patel exploring The Borders of Ecstasy. Local poet and workshop leader Charlotte Muse has designed a segment illustrating the many ways poetry inspires, and is inspired by, The Senses.

advice and improvement in poetry workshops:

For writers looking to wrestle with our Breaking Borders theme, Los Angeles-based poet Tresha Haefner Rubinstein will offer a mind-bending two-hour workshop on Surreal Poetry. Dean Rader’s workshop deals with effective poetic Revision and refinement techniques, and poet/storyteller Tim Myers’ fifty-minute slot explores Building a Poem—Word by Word. On advice for performing poetry, former Santa Clara County Poet Laureate Nils Peterson will illustrate How to Read a Poem. Diane Moomey’s presentation on Self Publishing, as well as Kelly Cressio-Moeller’s insights on Journal Submission will help poets get their work into readers’ hands!

Join us at the beautiful History Park San José for San José Poetry Festival 2016—a day of inspiration and exploration!