Scattered events at poetry festival
The cultural council of Lowell spearheaded efforts to create and execute the first annual Massachusetts Poetry Festival in Lowell over Columbus Day Weekend. With 42 events happening over three days, the cobblestone streets, back alleys, and byways of Downtown Lowell were traversed by many first-time visitors, as well as locals and any walks of poetry-loving people.
The festivities began on Friday Oct. 10 with a Lowell high school student poetry showcase. Anthony Febo, enormously successful proponent and supporter of youth urban poetry and once substitute teacher at Lowell public schools, hosted this event.
Following an intercollegiate poetry reading at the revolving museum, UMass Lowell’s Literary Society hosted a release party for the 2008 edition of the annual literary journal The Offering at the Brush with History Art Gallery in the Market Street Mills.
Nationally renowned poet Nick Flynn was there to share an informal chat with the attendees of the launch party. Flynn praised the efforts of Lowell exemplified in the surrounding eagerness by saying it was an “organized system to plug into and realize there’s a large world of writers.”
He began by reading a piece from his upcoming book The Ticking Is a Bomb.
While this was happening, there were other events, workshops and showings of the film “Lowell Blues” happening as well. Flynn, Regie Gibson, and Rhina Espaillat were the featured readers at the Lowell High school auditorium that night.
After the featured readings, Gibson headed to the top floor of the Brewery Exchange and helped Timothy Gager host a poetry showcase and open mic, where UML students, students from Boston colleges, local poets, and Gibson all contributed.
Saturday Readings
J.D. Scrimgeour of Salem State College hosted an open mic at Olive That and More on Market Street that showcased many of the poets from his well-regarded summer workshops, one of whom was recent UML graduate Jacob Oley.
Ed Sanders, originator of the true counter-culture lifestyle of poets in the 1960s, read pieces from his new book, Poems for New Orleans.
In the context of New Orleans, one line that stood out and closed a poem was “Once you reach heaven the water makes God’s bread leaven.”
Confluence: Where Words and Music Meet
At 3 p.m. that afternoon, Scrimgeour performed alongside his Salem State colleague at the revolving museum in a production called “Confluence: Where Words & Music Meet.” Philip Swanson, the accompanying musician, played both piano and trombone. Scrimgeour explained how some of their collaborations take from the beat tradition, while others are based loosely around soundtracks.
Scrimgeour also cited other poets’ borrowed lines, deftly using a bit of a Wallace Stevens poem. In the same piece he himself wrote, “I was as insubstantial as smoke, a dream of myself’—more than just a smattering of Stevens’ style.
Year’s First UVAS
The first UVAS (urban village art series) of the year took place at 4 p.m. at the National Park Historic Visitor Center. Derek Fenner, proprietor of local Bootstrap Productions publishers, introduced the first artist, Joseph Torra.
Torra, whose work has been released on Bootstrap, is a Boston native. A poem called “Academics” began with the line “fools shower them with praise,” showing exactly the stiffness he set out to debunk in his writing.
Local author Dave Robinson introduced Frank Morey, saying “his songwriting is vivid…he pins characters in his songs.”
Morey fretted out a walking 1-4-5 bass progression on the fourth song to pick up the atmosphere after singing songs from the voice of alcoholics, despondent locals, and war veterans.
Eileen Myles began with poems written while she was in Provincetown last summer and ended with an excerpt from her novel The Inferno.
She read her poem “On the Death of Robert Lowell” which was an utterly unstoppable condemnation of the man. One poem went “I see Alaska, I s-, I s-, I Sarah!” The audience thought this the most hilarious of all.
Saturday Night’s Featured Reading
The culminating event of the weekend was arguably Saturday night’s featured reading with Lucie Brock-Broido, Martin Espada, and Robert Pinsky.
The mayor of Lowell, Bud Caulfield, gave an introductory speech including Lowell’s merits and achievements, its history, and the people who’ve come from here. Paul Marion went on to introduce local poet Kate Hanson. Hanson read a poem about her more current life, a letter to God. Hanson introduced Brock-Broido.
Brock-Broido divides her time between a number of liberal arts and Ivy League schools. She is renowned for her clarity in verse, and it showed as she hummed through lines like “arguing about the word inarguably” and “whatever suffering is insufferable is punishable by perishable.”
She then read a poem she wrote about the execution of Tooki Williams, an L.A. gang-leader who was executed in 2001 at San Quentin penitentiary.
Martin Espada was a finalist for the Pulitzer for his book The Republic of Poetry. He teaches poetry at UMass Amherst. His delivery was lively and dynamically syncopated compared to Brock-Broido, perhaps due to the overt modernity of his subject matter—his Puerto Rican roots, “the pain and suffering of the people” and all else. He read a poem called “Native Costume,” which he prefaced by calling “a poem about expectations, stereotypes if you will.”
One of his most recognized poems was one about a Chilean coup that occurred on Sept 11, 1973, “the first 9/11,” he said.
He ended with a poem about 9/11/2001, focusing on the food-workers: “many of them invisible in life, even in death.” His body rocked and undulated as he read in an enunciated baritone.
Robert Pinsky had three terms as U.S. Poet Laureate, a post shared previously by Stanley Kunitz a merciful death.
He did a cover poem of Walt Whitman’s “Election Day 1884” then read “Samurai Song” from his book Jersey Rain. In one of his poems he used profanity copiously and unabashedly. He then read a poem about hurricane Katrina and ended with his translation of a bit of Dante’s Inferno.
The after party for the evening was at the Boott Cotton Mills Museum, with poetry read in an overlain fashion above the improvised jazz of the Jeff Robinson Trio, who do a similar gig every Sunday night at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge.
The Final Event
On Sunday afternoon, the final event, “More Cultural Lines of Poetry” of the festival was held at the National Park Visitor Center. It was hosted by the Hellenic Culture Society of Lowell.
The first poet was Walter Bacigalupo. He he read pieces from his book, Trip Down Salem Street, which has been published on Loom Press.
Partha Chowdhuri, a local scientist, read his poem “Travels in Space and Time.” Kate Hanson, who had been the introductory reader at the feature the night before, had another reading.She read “Prayer,” a docile piece.
Samkban Khoeun read the original Khmer and English translation of a Cambodian poet. .
Lowell resident Tony Sampas read his poem “Christ returns to the Grotto,” which tells of his encounter there with Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan.
Gigi Thibodeau, current writer-in-residence at UML, read a poem about logging, her grandfather’s profession in Penobscott, Maine.
Paul Marion, the host of the event, ended with a poem from his book What is the City?, about French and Chinese cuisine.
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