The Soda City Poetry Festival is a day-long celebration of poetry for everyone in the city and surrounding areas. This event will be open for all ages; we offer an inter-generational and diverse festival where young and experienced poets can share the same space and learn from one another. Held at Richland Library, the purpose of the festival is to promote the reading, writing, and discussion of poetry and to showcase Columbia’s vibrant poetry and spoken word communities and the poets who work in them.
The festival will include panels on various topics such as the craft of writing poetry, poetry book talks, poetry workshops, how to write a slam poem, and how to compile a manuscript. Poets who participated in the teen workshops will have a panel where they discuss the process and what they learned from the experience. There will also be vendors where authors and booksellers can sell or promote their books and other materials.
The connection between art and poetry is natural, and to celebrate that we will have an Ekphrasis Poetry Pop Up. Ekphrasis is poetry inspired by or based on a work of art. Poets will have an opportunity to observe and/or listen and write their own ekphrasis poem, which they are welcomed to share in the Readings/Open Mic portion of the festival at the end of the day.
Sponsors: Richland Library Main, The Academy of American Poets, One Columbia, Cola Poet, and counting…
