SALEM — The stress will be on the festivities at next weekend's Massachusetts Poetry Festival, which moved to Salem after being held in Lowell its first two years.
"The festival is not just for poets by any means," said J.D. Scrimgeour, coordinator of the creative writing program at Salem State University, who will participate in a North Shore Poets in the Round program. "There will be food, and it's for the community."
The festival will open next Thursday night and continue through Saturday, May 14. Events will be held at Old Town Hall, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem State and The Salem Athenaeum, among other sites around town.
There will be a trolley carrying people to and from festival events, and visitors from Boston can travel to Salem on a special train in which poets will be reading.
Scrimgeour called attention to presentations at the Main Stage at Derby Square that will blend poetry with performance, which are intended to appeal to a wide audience.
"It will be exciting, with all sorts of music and poetry and things like the Boston Typewriter Orchestra," he said.
Other events with a dramatic streak will include an intercollegiate poetry slam at Gulu-Gulu Cafe, Rhina Espaillat reciting Federico Garcia Lorca to the accompaniment of a classical guitarist, and a reading by Patricia Smith, whom Scrimgeour described as "an amazing performer."
Another program that will mix music and words on the main stage is "Fishwife Tales," a sequence of lyrics by poet Jennifer Jean, who also teaches at Salem State.
Jean's poems will be recited to a variety of tunes, from rock 'n' roll to art songs, which were written by musician and composer Sarah Eide.
"It's about a shape-shifter marine creature, a female, who comes out of the water to marry a fisherman," Jean said.
"She has her struggles with married life, but she finds real love with her husband," she continued. "I'm hoping this story resonates with anybody who feels their mate is some alien creature."
Broadening the audience with such genre-defying events and performers will deliver the message that poetry is an art form everyone can enjoy.
"We want to recognize that poetry can and should be part of our everyday lives," Scrimgeour said.
Poetry is 'for everyone'
Another event that aims to deliver that same message is the Favorite Poem Reading, which will feature Salem politicians Mayor Kim Driscoll, Congressman John Tierney and Rep. John Keenan, among many others reciting poems.
"Poetry really is for everyone," said Julie Batten, a poet from Hamilton who organized the Favorite Poem Reading. "Everyone is touched by some work of poetry at some point in their life."
The event is modeled on the Favorite Poem Project originally organized by former poet laureate Robert Pinsky, a professor at Boston University.
Batten described her sense of how a poem affects a reader to become his or her favorite.
"It allows us to transcend something as we know it," she said. "Your mind does some kind of somersault that makes us want to go back to that same place that happened."
For practicing poets, and those with a passion for everything literary, the festival will offer a variety of programs on everything from how to get published, to compositional techniques.
"With the caliber of poets we're gathering in, both locally and nationally, the excitement around the state has been tremendous," said Beverly poet January O'Neil, a member of the festival's organizing committee.
Headliners, in addition to Patricia Smith, include Mark Doty, who won the National Book Award in 2008. He will read his poetry to close the festival, and also will discuss his book on Dutch painting, "Still Life With Oysters and Lemon," in conjunction with the Dutch masterworks in the van Otterloo collection currently on display at the Peabody Essex Museum.
There will be workshops by poetry groups from around the state, several of which are affiliated with literary magazines. Great poets from the distant and near past will be honored in celebrations of Anne Bradstreet, Elizabeth Bishop and Federico Garcia Lorca.
Presentations will be held in which poetry will be considered as a source of wit, a vehicle of dissent, and as a means of illuminating obscure corners of history.
There will also be programs on found poems and formal poetry, on the Japanese forms haibun and haiku, and on dramatic monologues.
Staff writer Will Broaddus can be reached at wbroaddus@salemnews.com.
Want to go?
What: Massachusetts Poetry Festival
When: Thursday, May 12, to Saturday, May 14
Where: downtown Salem
Tickets: A $10 button allows visitors into almost every event and may be purchased in Salem at: Roost, Salemdipity, Salem Witch Museum, Signatures Apparel and Trolley Depot and in Marblehead at Spirit of '76 Bookstore.
More information: For schedule, and to pre-register for some events, visit www.masspoetry.crowdvine.com.
