Join Literary Cleveland, CSU Poetry Center, CWRU English Department, and GRIEVELAND for a weekend poetry festival featuring some of the best poets living and working in Northeast Ohio. This festival is a celebration of poetry, creativity, and community, designed to help you envision new work, advance your craft, and get published.
This event is sponsored by Mac's Backs Books and University Circle Inc.
To kick-off the Cleveland Poetry Festival, we will celebrate the genre and city with an evening of awesome original poetry performed by writers including Kisha Nicole Foster (Bloodwork), Philip Metres (Shrapnel Maps), Kortney Morrow (“American Girl Dolls Attend Mandatory Diversity Training”), and Zachary Thomas (Cleveland Foundation’s Anisfield-Wolf Fellow), hosted by Stephanie Ginese (Unto Dogs). Attendees can sign up at the event to share their work on the open mic, following the featured performances.
The main program for the festival includes three writing workshops and three discussion panels running concurrently in three 90-minute sessions. Participants can choose the sessions they want to attend during online registration. Space in each session is limited to 25 people.
NOTE: During the whole main program, participants can also buy copies of presenters’ books onsite from Mac’s Backs-Books on Coventry and create special print poetry projects with Zygote Press.
Join Walt Hunter (CWRU Chair of English and poetry editor for The Atlantic), Kevin Latimer (co-creator of GRIEVELAND), Dave Lucas (2nd Poet Laureate of the State of Ohio), Zach Peckham (Editor-in-Chief of Cleveland Review of Books), and Alyssa Perry (editor at Rescue Press) as they have an informative discussion of the ways that poets can publish their work and places where they can publish.
This generative workshop will explore poetic form, with inspiration from recent poems. You’ll focus especially on how poetic music makes meaning, how noise becomes voice. It warmly welcomes writers with all backgrounds and interests. Zach Savich is the author of six books of poetry and two books of nonfiction. He teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he serves as Chair of Liberal Arts. His newest book, Momently, is forthcoming from Black Ocean Press.
The main program will break from 12:30-2:00pm so participants can have lunch. There are more than 20 restaurants located near CWRU Campus, with many within walking distance of Writers House.
Join poets J. David (founder of Starlight Elsewhere Reading Series), Delilah McCrea (editorial assistant at University of Michigan Press), Eric Matthew Odum (founder of One Mic Open), and Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers (Chord Box) as they talk about their creative processes, artistic missions, and methods of publishing, performing, and promoting their work.
Sometimes when writers create raw, honest and real work, others label it as sad or heavy. These labels might mess with a writer’s mind, convincing the writer to avoid creating work involving trauma, pain, and the like. This workshop will encourage writers to find the gift in writing about real experiences and embrace the poet’s duty of bearing witness. You will begin by looking at poems that strike a chord and discover how these poems offer you release and repair. Black will then lead you through a set of unique exercises to generate new poems others might consider sad, but you can find necessary and liberating. Ali Black is a writer from Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of If It Heals at All (Jacar Press, 2020). The book was named a finalist for the 2021 Ohioana Book Award in poetry. Her writing has appeared in The Atticus Review, jubilat, Literary Hub, The Offing, The Adroit Journal and elsewhere. She recently launched a creative writing program for teens called The Most Promising.
Join Ali Black (founder of The Most Promising), Quartez Harris (We Made It to School Alive), M. Carmen Lane (founder & director of ATNSC), Ray McNiece (creator of A Poem for Cleveland), Amy Rosenbluth (founder & executive director of Lake Erie Ink), and CWRU professor Lindsay Turner (Songs &Ballads and A Fortnight) as they share their projects, experiences, insights, and future plans as poets working among the various organizations, institutions, neighborhoods, and other artists in the city.
In this generative workshop, you will discuss revision techniques and examine common obstacles that interrupt the drafting process. Using a series of exercises, you will experiment with ways to reimagine drafts, expand ideas, deepen imagery, explore emotion, and discover new possibilities. All participants should bringan early poem draft and be prepared to crack it open and see it anew during class. Robin Beth Schaer is the author of the poetry collection Shipbreaking. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, Yaddo, MacDowell, and others. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Bomb, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She has taught writing in New York, New Jersey, and Ohio, and she worked as a deckhand aboard the Tall Ship Bounty, a180-foot ship lost in Hurricane Sandy.
To close out Cleveland Poetry Festival 2023, we will showcase more amazing original poetry performed by writers Raja Belle Freeman (“Never Have I Ever”), Siaara Freeman (Urbanshee), Brendan Joyce (Love & Solidarity), and Rachel Wiley (Revenge Body), hosted by Kevin Latimer (ZOETROPE). Attendees can sign up at the event to share their work on the open mic, following the featured performances.
Attendees can register for the entire festival, including all April 21 and April 22 events, or you can register separately to attend the Opening Reading & Open Mic and/or Closeout Reading & Open Mic. You cannot register for individual panels or workshops without registering for the entire festival. If you need financial assistance to cover registration fees, please email Matt Weinkam or Michelle Smith at info@litcleveland.org.
Join Literary Cleveland, CSU Poetry Center, CWRU English Department, and GRIEVELAND for a weekend poetry festival featuring some of the best poets living and working in Northeast Ohio. This festival is a celebration of poetry, creativity, and community, designed to help you envision new work, advance your craft, and get published.
This event is sponsored by Mac's Backs Books and University Circle Inc.
To kick-off the Cleveland Poetry Festival, we will celebrate the genre and city with an evening of awesome original poetry performed by writers including Kisha Nicole Foster (Bloodwork), Philip Metres (Shrapnel Maps), Kortney Morrow (“American Girl Dolls Attend Mandatory Diversity Training”), and Zachary Thomas (Cleveland Foundation’s Anisfield-Wolf Fellow), hosted by Stephanie Ginese (Unto Dogs). Attendees can sign up at the event to share their work on the open mic, following the featured performances.
The main program for the festival includes three writing workshops and three discussion panels running concurrently in three 90-minute sessions. Participants can choose the sessions they want to attend during online registration. Space in each session is limited to 25 people.
NOTE: During the whole main program, participants can also buy copies of presenters’ books onsite from Mac’s Backs-Books on Coventry and create special print poetry projects with Zygote Press.
Join Walt Hunter (CWRU Chair of English and poetry editor for The Atlantic), Kevin Latimer (co-creator of GRIEVELAND), Dave Lucas (2nd Poet Laureate of the State of Ohio), Zach Peckham (Editor-in-Chief of Cleveland Review of Books), and Alyssa Perry (editor at Rescue Press) as they have an informative discussion of the ways that poets can publish their work and places where they can publish.
This generative workshop will explore poetic form, with inspiration from recent poems. You’ll focus especially on how poetic music makes meaning, how noise becomes voice. It warmly welcomes writers with all backgrounds and interests. Zach Savich is the author of six books of poetry and two books of nonfiction. He teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he serves as Chair of Liberal Arts. His newest book, Momently, is forthcoming from Black Ocean Press.
The main program will break from 12:30-2:00pm so participants can have lunch. There are more than 20 restaurants located near CWRU Campus, with many within walking distance of Writers House.
Join poets J. David (founder of Starlight Elsewhere Reading Series), Delilah McCrea (editorial assistant at University of Michigan Press), Eric Matthew Odum (founder of One Mic Open), and Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers (Chord Box) as they talk about their creative processes, artistic missions, and methods of publishing, performing, and promoting their work.
Sometimes when writers create raw, honest and real work, others label it as sad or heavy. These labels might mess with a writer’s mind, convincing the writer to avoid creating work involving trauma, pain, and the like. This workshop will encourage writers to find the gift in writing about real experiences and embrace the poet’s duty of bearing witness. You will begin by looking at poems that strike a chord and discover how these poems offer you release and repair. Black will then lead you through a set of unique exercises to generate new poems others might consider sad, but you can find necessary and liberating. Ali Black is a writer from Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of If It Heals at All (Jacar Press, 2020). The book was named a finalist for the 2021 Ohioana Book Award in poetry. Her writing has appeared in The Atticus Review, jubilat, Literary Hub, The Offing, The Adroit Journal and elsewhere. She recently launched a creative writing program for teens called The Most Promising.
Join Ali Black (founder of The Most Promising), Quartez Harris (We Made It to School Alive), M. Carmen Lane (founder & director of ATNSC), Ray McNiece (creator of A Poem for Cleveland), Amy Rosenbluth (founder & executive director of Lake Erie Ink), and CWRU professor Lindsay Turner (Songs &Ballads and A Fortnight) as they share their projects, experiences, insights, and future plans as poets working among the various organizations, institutions, neighborhoods, and other artists in the city.
In this generative workshop, you will discuss revision techniques and examine common obstacles that interrupt the drafting process. Using a series of exercises, you will experiment with ways to reimagine drafts, expand ideas, deepen imagery, explore emotion, and discover new possibilities. All participants should bringan early poem draft and be prepared to crack it open and see it anew during class. Robin Beth Schaer is the author of the poetry collection Shipbreaking. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, Yaddo, MacDowell, and others. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Bomb, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She has taught writing in New York, New Jersey, and Ohio, and she worked as a deckhand aboard the Tall Ship Bounty, a180-foot ship lost in Hurricane Sandy.
To close out Cleveland Poetry Festival 2023, we will showcase more amazing original poetry performed by writers Raja Belle Freeman (“Never Have I Ever”), Siaara Freeman (Urbanshee), Brendan Joyce (Love & Solidarity), and Rachel Wiley (Revenge Body), hosted by Kevin Latimer (ZOETROPE). Attendees can sign up at the event to share their work on the open mic, following the featured performances.
Attendees can register for the entire festival, including all April 21 and April 22 events, or you can register separately to attend the Opening Reading & Open Mic and/or Closeout Reading & Open Mic. You cannot register for individual panels or workshops without registering for the entire festival. If you need financial assistance to cover registration fees, please email Matt Weinkam or Michelle Smith at info@litcleveland.org.
