Day 2 of Dodge
Big events this day. I had so much to do. It was kids day at the Dodge Poetry Festival, so bus load after bus load of school kids arrived at the NJPAC. Some kids came from as far as Pennsylvania via bus. It was incredible.
A reading with Michael Cirelli and Dunya Mikhail kicked off my morning. Here are a few photos from that:
Michael
Dunya
The BEAUTIFUL audience!
And then I had a longish session with high school kids called Poets on Poetry, where I had to talk about how I became a poet, how I write, etc. I had been nursing a cold. The hour long talk did me in. During the session with the kids, I had a bit of a coughing fit which pretty much sealed my doom for the rest of the festival.
I wound up going back to my room to rest after my session, thus missing a lot of the Dodge events, but honestly I was so tired and hoarse that I needed to get away.
After my nap, had dinner with the crew and went back to NJPAC for another mega reading. Pictures from the reading are below:
Me and Aimee in the Opera House.
Santee with Bob Hicok over his shoulder clapping.
The Opera House for poetry.
The very dapper Martin Farawell who gave the most beautiful introductions of poets that I've ever heard.
Hadara Bar-Nadav reading her lovely work.
Matthew Dickman charms. And I also believe he called out someone whose cell phone went off in the ampitheater. I'm paraphrasing, but Matthew suggested to the person that they answer the phone because the call could be more important than the poems.
Joseph Millar, whose work was a wonderful discovery for me.
Marie Ponsot. Just learned that she raised seven children. My goodness, what a saint!
Rigoberto being naughty during the intermission.
Matthew clowning.
Aimee's singing.
Rigoberto blowing the audience away.
Nancy Morejon!
Amiri Baraka can still throw down.
One of my idols, Galway Kinnell. My very first poetry books were Kinnell's New and Selected and Sharon Old's The Gold Cell. Funny that.
Because here's Sharon swapping canes with Rigoberto.