The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation has announced many of the poets and other performers who will be participating in the 16th biennial Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, October 20-23, 2016. This marks the Festival’s 30th anniversary since its debut at New Jersey’s Waterloo Village in 1986 and the fourth time the Festival will be held at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) as well as other venues in Newark’s Downtown Arts District, all within easy walking distance of NJPAC.
“We need poetry now more than ever,” said Martin Farawell, Poetry Director, “These days, we don’t have to look very far to be bombarded with language that is ugly and thoughtless. Just spend a few minutes searching the internet or watching television: someone or some group is always insulting or bullying another. Poetry reminds us our incredible gift of speech is also there to connect us. Poets invite us, complete strangers, inside their most private thoughts. I have never witnessed people experiencing this more powerfully than at the Dodge Poetry Festival.”
In its 30-year history, the Dodge Poetry Festival has involved nearly 600 poets, including Nobel Laureate and U.S. Poet Laureates; Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners; Guggenheim, Fulbright, MacArthur and NEA fellows; and an unparalleled array of much-published and award-winning poets.
This 30th Anniversary Dodge Poetry Festival inaugurates an historic collaboration with the renowned Academy of American Poets that will fully integrate their annual Poets Forum into the Festival. The Poets Forum, previously held in New York City, brings together the Academy’s Board of Chancellors for readings and conversations. Members of the Board of Chancellors who will participate in the Poets Forum as well as other events at the Festival, include: Juan Felipe Herrera, recently appointed by the Library of Congress to a second term as U.S. Poet Laureate; Elizabeth Alexander, a Pulitzer Prize finalist who was the official “inaugural poet” at President Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009; National Book Award winner Mark Doty; Linda Gregerson, Brenda Hillman, Jane Hirshfield, Marilyn Nelson, Alberto Ríos and Arthur Sze, all of whom received Guggenheim Fellowships among other honors; National Book Award finalist Alicia Ostriker; NEA Fellowship recipients Claudia Rankine and Anne Waldman; and Khaled Mattawa, recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.
Poets who will be giving Featured Readings from the stage of NJPAC’s Prudential Hall during the Festival include former U.S. Poets Laureate Billy Collins, Kay Ryan and Robert Hass; Pulitzer Prize winners Gary Snyder and Vijay Seshadri; National Book Award winner Robin Coste Lewis and National Book Award finalist Tim Seibles; NEA Fellowship recipients Marilyn Chin and Katha Pollitt; and Guggenheim Fellowship recipients Martín Espada and Li-Young Lee. Academy Chancellors who will offer Featured Readings in Prudential Hall are U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, Brenda Hillman, Jane Hirshfield and Claudia Rankine. Parkington Sisters, who participated in the 2014 Festival, will return to be among the musical artists presented during the Festival.
Poets from several significant area and national poetry and writing organizations will offer special readings during the Festival, including: Kundiman, dedicated to the cultivation of Asian American creative writing; Cave Canem, a writers center with a focus on African American poets and writers; CantoMundo, a national organization devoted to Latina/o poets. Special readings will also include Warrior Writers, which provides a creative community for the artistic expression of veterans, and Brick City Voices , featuring some of Newark’s brightest emerging poets.
The Festival will also feature, for the first time, readings by the winners of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. The Fellowship recipients are the winners of a national competition sponsored by the Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. Established in 1989 by the Indianapolis philanthropist Ruth Lilly, the fellowships are awarded to U.S. citizens or residents between the ages of 21 and 31 and are intended to encourage the further study and writing of poetry.
Anchored by events at NJPAC, the Festival will transform Newark’s Downtown Arts District into a “Poetry Village,” with many of the performances and readings occurring at multiple venues and cultural destinations in the city, all within easy walking distance of NJPAC. At times during the Festival ten or more separate stages will offer events simultaneously for audiences from 100 to 2,000 people, including at the Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, NJPAC’s Center for Arts Education, First Peddie Baptist Memorial Church, the New Jersey Historical Society, the Newark Museum, Newark Symphony Hall, North Star Academy, and Trinity & St. Philip’s Cathedral. Each evening and Sunday afternoon all readings will take place in NJPAC’s magnificent Prudential Hall.
“From the very first day of the first Festival held in Newark in 2010 we knew that the city and the various venues at NJPAC and in the Downtown Arts District were great places to experience poetry,” said Chris Daggett, President and CEO of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. “The board and staff of the Foundation are thrilled to return to NJPAC and the City of Newark and we look forward to offering audiences the opportunity to see and hear some of the icons of the age as well as newer voices in poetry. From Poets Laureate to slam champions, there’s something for everyone, even people who don’t yet know how powerfully poetry can speak to them.”
“We are delighted to welcome back the Dodge Foundation and join with them and the City of Newark in hosting the largest Poetry Festival in the country,” said John Schreiber, President and CEO of NJPAC. “The Dodge Poetry Festivals have brought thousands to Downtown Newark, including students from across the country, to experience the power and poignancy of the world’s greatest poets in addition to the myriad cultural and culinary offerings in our hometown. We look forward to anchoring the Festival’s ‘Poetry Village’ again in 2016.”
