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Apr 21

Cleveland Poetry Festival

A celebration of poetry, creativity, and community, designed to help you envision new work, advance your craft, and get published.

By Literary Cleveland

When and where

Date and time

April 21 · 7pm - April 22 · 10pm EDT

Location

Bellflower Hall 11427 Bellflower Road Cleveland, OH 44106

Refund Policy

Contact the organizer to request a refund.

Eventbrite's fee is nonrefundable.

About this event

1 day 3 hours
Mobile eTicket

Join Literary Cleveland, with CSU Poetry Center, CWRU English Department, Mac's Backs Books, 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.

Attendees can register for the entire festival, including all April 21 and April 22 events, or you can register to attend the Opening Reading & Open Mic and/or Closeout Reading & Open Mic. You cannot register for individual breakout sessions.

Sponsored by Mac's Backs Books and University Circle Inc.

Agenda

7:00 PM

Friday Festival Kickoff: Reading & Open Mic

To kick-off the Cleveland Poetry Festival, we will celebrate the genre and city with an evening of awesome original poetry performed by writers Kisha Nicole Foster (Bloodwork), Phil Metres (Shrapnel ...

10:00 AM

Saturday Festival Check In

11:00 AM - 12:30 PM

Saturday Session One: Poetry & Publishing Panel

Join Walt Hunter (CWRU Chair of English), 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) a...

11:00 AM - 12:30 PM

Saturday Session One: Sound & Rhythm & Music & Noise: Playing with Poetic Form

Zach Savich

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 w...

12:30 PM - 2:00 PM

Saturday Lunch

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.

2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

Saturday Session Two: LGBTQIA+ Poetics Panel

Join poets J. David (founder of Starlight Elsewhere Reading Series), Delilah McCrae (editorial assistant at University of Michigan Press), Eric Matthew Odum (founder of One Mic Open), and Elizabeth L...

2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

Saturday Session Two: Embracing the Raw, Honest, & Real (Workshop)

Ali Black

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, p...

4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

Saturday Session Three: Poetry in the Community Panel

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 Rosenblut...

4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Saturday Session Three: 13 Ways of Looking at a First Draft (Workshop)

Robin Beth Schaer

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 reima...

7:00 PM

Saturday Festival Closeout: Reading & Open Mic

To close out the Cleveland Poetry Festival, we will showcase more amazing original poetry performed by writers Jon Conley (House Hunters International :: Sonnets, forthcoming), Raja Belle Freeman (“N...

About the organizer

Organized by

Literary Cleveland

Literary Cleveland develops writers, amplifies voices, and transforms our community through storytelling.