Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The biennial Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival is the largest poetry event in North America.Dodge overview

Background

The four-day celebrations of poetry have been called “poetry heaven” by the 1995–1997 US Poet Laureate

Poet Laureate

A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...

Robert Hass

Robert L. Hass is an American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. He was awarded the 2007 National Book Award and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Time and Materials.-Life:...

, “a new Woodstock

Woodstock Festival

Woodstock Music & Art Fair was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969...

” by the Christian Science Monitor, and “Wordstock” by The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

. The festival has been sponsored by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation was created in 1973 with an $85 million bequest following the death on August 13, 1973, of Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge. Dodge was the youngest child of Standard Oil tycoon William Rockefeller and Almira Geraldine Goodsell....

in even-numbered years since 1986.The festival immerses audiences and more than five dozen internationally acclaimed poets in discussions, readings, and conversations focusing on poetry. Events are held all day and evening in performance venues accommodating anywhere from 100 to over 2,000 people. Each day, ten or more separate stages simultaneously offer different activities. The 13th biennel festival took place in Newark, New Jersey

Newark, New Jersey

Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...

at NJPAC, Newark Symphony Hall

Newark Symphony Hall

Newark Symphony Hall at 1020 Broad Street in Newark, New Jerseywas built in 1925 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. It was known for many years as The Mosque Theater.-Design and construction:...

, and other venues around the city.

The 11th Festival, held from September 28 through October 1, 2006, at Waterloo Village

Waterloo Village

Waterloo Village is a restored 19th Century canal town in Byram Township, Sussex County in northwestern New Jersey and was approximately the half-way point in the roughly 102-mile trip along the Morris Canal, which ran from Jersey City to Phillipsburg, New Jersey Waterloo Village is a restored...

in Stanhope, New Jersey

Stanhope, New Jersey

-Transportation:Route 183 is the main access road that serves the borough. U.S. Route 206 also passes through in the western section and is partially a limited access road which connects to I-80 in neighboring Mount Olive.-Demographics:...

, attracted nearly 17,000 people. The 12th festival took place from September 25 to 28, 2008. Soon after, on January 13, 2009, the Foundation announced that financial challenges were forcing the Foundation "to take a different approach to our poetry activities in 2009 and 2010." Specifically, and most importantly, the Foundation announced that it would be unable to produce a Poetry Festival in September 2010 on the scale of past Festivals. The announcement noted that "We will maintain much of our work with New Jersey teachers of poetry this spring, and we will actually expand our efforts to make the audio and video archives of past Festivals readily available via YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

and other means for all who want to enjoy them. Yet we must at least take a cycle off from the biennial Festival as you have known it and, depending on how things turn out, we may need to 'reinvent' the Festival on either a more affordable scale or in a more affordable venue. (Unfortunately, over the last three Festivals, the production costs have more than doubled, and a mere 20% of the Festival budget went toward hiring the poets at the very center of the event.)"

Among the poets who have participated in past festivals are Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe

Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe popularly known as Chinua Achebe is a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic...

, Taha Muhammad Ali

Taha Muhammad Ali

Taha Muhammad Ali was a Palestinian poet.-Biography:Taha Muhammad Ali fled to Lebanon with his family when he was seventeen after their village came under heavy bombardment during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The following year, he returned to Nazareth, where he lived till his death...

, Claribel Alegría

Claribel Alegría

Clara Isabel Alegría Vides is a Nicaraguan poet, essayist, novelist, and journalist who was a major voice in the literature of contemporary Central America. She writes under the pseudonym Claribel Alegría.-Early life:...

, Yehuda Amichai

Yehuda Amichai

Yehuda Amichai was an Israeli poet. Amichai is considered by many, both in Israel and internationally, as Israel's greatest modern poet. He was also one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew....

, Jimmy Santiago Baca

Jimmy Santiago Baca

Jimmy Santiago Baca of Apache and Chicano descent is an American poet and writer.- Life and career :...

, Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...

, Coleman Barks

Coleman Barks

Coleman Barks is an American poet. Although he neither speaks nor reads Persian, he is nonetheless renowned as an interpreter of Rumi and other mystic poets of Persia.- Biographical notes:...

, Ekiwah Adler-Belendez, Robert Bly

Robert Bly

Robert Bly is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement.-Life:Bly was born in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota, to Jacob and Alice Bly, who were of Norwegian ancestry. Following graduation from high school in 1944, he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving...

, Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American poet. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.-Biography:...

, Marilyn Chin

Marilyn Chin

Marilyn Chin is an American poet who grew up in Portland, Oregon, after her family immigrated from Hong Kong. She received an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. Her awards include two National Endowment for the Arts grants, the Stegner Fellowship, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award,...

, Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton was an American writer and educator from Buffalo, New York. From 1979–1985 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland...

, Billy Collins

Billy Collins

Billy Collins is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York and is the Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute, Florida...

, Bei Dao

Bei Dao

Bei Dao is the pseudonym of Chinese poet Zhao Zhenkai . He was born in Beijing, his pseudonym was chosen because he came from the north and because of his preference for solitude...

, Toi Derricotte

Toi Derricotte

Toi Derricotte is an American poet and a professor of writing at University of Pittsburgh.At Wayne State University she earned a B.A. in 1965 and an M.A...

, Mark Doty

Mark Doty

Mark Doty is an American poet and memoirist.-Biography:He was born in Maryville, Tennessee, earned his Bachelor of Arts from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and received his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Goddard College in Vermont.In 1989, his partner Wally Roberts tested...

, Rita Dove

Rita Dove

Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and author. From 1993-1995 she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now popularly known as "U.S. Poet Laureate"...

, Stephen Dunn

Stephen Dunn

Stephen Dunn is an American poet. Dunn has written fifteen collections of poetry. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 2001 collection, Different Hours and has received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Dunn completed his B.A. in English at...

, Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

, Jorie Graham

Jorie Graham

Jorie Graham is an American poet. The U.S. Poetry Foundation suggests "She is perhaps the most celebrated poet of the American post-war generation". She replaced poet Seamus Heaney as Boylston Professor at Harvard, becoming the first woman to be appointed to this position...

, Linda Gregg

Linda Gregg

Linda Alouise Gregg is an American poet.-Biography:Although born just miles northwest of New York City, Ms. Gregg grew up on the other side of the country, in Marin County, California. She received both her Bachelor of Arts, in 1967, and her Master of Arts, in 1972, from San Francisco State College...

, Donald Hall

Donald Hall

Donald Hall is an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2006.-Personal life:...

, Robert Hass

Robert Hass

, Tony Hoagland

Tony Hoagland

Anthony Dey Hoagland is an American poet and writer. His poetry collection 2003, What Narcissism Means to Me, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Other honors include two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2000 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, and a...

, Linda Hogan

Linda Hogan (writer)

Linda K. Hogan is a Native American poet, storyteller, academic, playwright, novelist, environmentalist and writer of short stories.She is currently the Chickasaw Nation's Writer in Residence.-Early life:Linda Hogan is Chickasaw...

, Edward Hirsch

Edward Hirsch

Edward Hirsch is an American poet and critic who wrote a national bestseller about reading poetry. He has published eight books of poems, including The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems , which brings together thirty-five years of work. He is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial...

, Galway Kinnell

Galway Kinnell

Galway Kinnell is an American poet. He was Poet Laureate of Vermont from 1989 to 1993. An admitted follower of Walt Whitman, Kinnell rejects the idea of seeking fulfillment by escaping into the imaginary world. His best-loved and most anthologized poems are "St...

, Carolyn Kizer

Carolyn Kizer

Carolyn Ashley Kizer is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet of the Pacific Northwest whose works reflect her feminism.-Life and work:...

, Yusef Komunyakaa

Yusef Komunyakaa

Yusef Komunyakaa is an American poet who currently teaches at New York University and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Komunyakaa is a recipient of the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, for Neon Vernacular and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He also received the Ruth Lilly...

, Stanley Kunitz

Stanley Kunitz

Stanley Jasspon Kunitz was an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress twice, first in 1974 and then again in 2000.-Biography:...

, Kurtis Lamkin, Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee

Li-Young Lee is an American poet. He was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese parents. His maternal grandfather was Yuan Shikai, China's first Republican President, who attempted to make himself emperor...

, Linda McCarriston

Linda McCarriston

Linda McCarriston, and holding dual citizenship of Ireland and the United States, is a poet and Professor in the Department of Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Alaska Anchorage, teaching Creative Writing and Literary Arts since 1994.-Life:McCarriston had completed her Master of...

, W. S. Merwin

W. S. Merwin

William Stanley Merwin is an American poet, credited with over 30 books of poetry, translation and prose. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's unique craft was thematically characterized by indirect, unpunctuated narration. In the 1980s and 1990s, Merwin's writing influence derived from...

, Andrew Motion

Andrew Motion

Sir Andrew Motion, FRSL is an English poet, novelist and biographer, who presided as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009.- Life and career :...

, Taslima Nasreen, Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet, songwriter, and novelist. She was born to a Palestinian father and American mother. Although she regards herself as a "wandering poet", she refers to San Antonio as her home.-Career:...

, Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...

, Sharon Olds

Sharon Olds

-Life:Sharon Olds was born in 1942 in San Francisco. She was raised as a “hellfire Calvinist”, as she describes it. She says she was by nature "a pagan and a pantheist" and notes "I was in a church where there was both great literary art and bad literary art, the great art being psalms and the bad...

, Alicia Ostriker

Alicia Ostriker

Alicia Suskin Ostriker is an American poet and scholar who writes Jewish feminist poetry.Alicia is married to the noted astronomer Jeremiah Ostriker who taught at Princeton University...

, Grace Paley

Grace Paley

Grace Paley was an American-Jewish short story writer, poet, and political activist.-Biography:Grace Paley was born in the Bronx to Isaac and Manya Ridnyik Goodside, who anglicized the family name from Gutseit on immigrating from Ukraine. Her father was a doctor. The family spoke Russian and...

, Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan is an American poet of Jewish background. From 1991–1995 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland. She is known for writing short poems that address topics like family life, domesticity, motherhood, the female experience, aging, death, loss and the fear of loss, as well as the...

, Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...

, Marge Piercy

Marge Piercy

Marge Piercy is an American poet, novelist, and social activist. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Gone to Soldiers, a sweeping historical novel set during World War II.-Biography:...

, Robert Pinsky

Robert Pinsky

Robert Pinsky is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. From 1997 to 2000, he served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Pinsky is the author of nineteen books, most of which are collections of his own poetry...

, Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...

, Sonia Sanchez

Sonia Sanchez

Sonia Sanchez is an African American poet most often associated with the Black Arts Movement. She has authored over a dozen books of poetry, as well as plays and children's books...

, Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...

, William Stafford, Gerald Stern

Gerald Stern

Gerald Stern is an American poet. His work became widely recognized after the 1977 publication of Lucky Life, which was that year's Lamont Poetry Selection, and of a series of essays on writing poetry in American Poetry Review. He has subsequently been given many prestigious awards for his...

, Ruth Stone

Ruth Stone

Ruth Stone was an American poet, author, and teacher.-Life and career:In 1959, after her husband, professor Walter Stone, committed suicide, she was forced to raise three daughters alone...

, Sekou Sundiata

Sekou Sundiata

Sekou Sundiata was an African-American poet and performer, as well as a teacher at The New School in New York City. Famous students include musicians Ani DiFranco and Mike Doughty. His plays include The Circle Unbroken is a Hard Bop, The Mystery of Love, Udu, and The 51st Dream State...

, Brian Turner

Brian Turner

Brian Turner may refer to:* Brian Turner * Brian Turner and field hockey representative* Brian Turner , drummer for the Seattle-based band Schoolyard Heroes* Brian Turner , British celebrity chef...

, Ko Un

Ko Un

Ko Un is a South Korean poet. His works have been translated and published in more than 15 countries and he has been imprisoned many times...

, Derek Walcott

Derek Walcott

Derek Alton Walcott, OBE OCC is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2011 for White Egrets. His works include the Homeric epic Omeros...

, Anne Waldman

Anne Waldman

Anne Waldman is an American poet.Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the “Outrider” experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activist....

, Richard Wilbur

Richard Wilbur

Richard Purdy Wilbur is an American poet and literary translator. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987, and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1957 and again in 1989....

, Adam Zagajewski

Adam Zagajewski

Adam Zagajewski is a Polish poet, novelist, translator and essayist.In 1982 he emigrated to Paris, but in 2002 he returned to Poland, and resides in Kraków. His poem "Try To Praise The Mutilated World", printed in The New Yorker, became famous after the 11 September attacks...

, and Daisy Zamora

Daisy Zamora

Daisy Zamora is one of the most prominent figures in contemporary Latin American poetry. Her work is known for its uncompromising voice and wide-ranging subject matter that dwells on the details of daily life while encompassing human rights, politics, revolution, feminist issues, art, history and...

.

An essential component of each festival is a series of special programs for high school students and for teachers at all levels, elementary through college. More than 4,500 students and 2,000 teachers from throughout the country participate in conversations and readings designed specifically for them during the first two days of the festival.

The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival has been extensively featured in four PBS television series with Bill Moyers

Bill Moyers

Bill Moyers is an American journalist and public commentator. He served as White House Press Secretary in the United States President Lyndon B. Johnson Administration from 1965 to 1967. He worked as a news commentator on television for ten years. Moyers has had an extensive involvement with public...

. The acclaimed eight-part The Language of Life series was filmed at the 1994 Festival providing a look at the overall activities of the Festival and in-depth conversations with the featured poets. More recently, Fooling With Words offered television audiences a front-row seat at the 1998 Festival.

External links

Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival website.

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