Mass Poe Fest Bios and Schedule Web

Poetry is a desperate act,the last-minute decisionagainst self-annihilation,life a shedding of

embiered circumstance,

but poetry has done so much

in terms of supercial grace,

a million situations aided by her manoeuvre.New friends made, bad companions

le behind, even violence oended

through her charm.And we the benefactors –these trying moments will pass, but poetry

endures, her prot as a glass to count time.

John Wieners

from the forthcoming

A NEW BOOK FROM ROMEfrom Bootstrap Press, Lowell MAwww.bootstrapproductions.org

THE MASSACHUSETTS POETRY FESTIVAL is a three-daycelebration of the poets, poetry, and literary heritage of a statewhose contribution to American poetry is unsurpassed in the na-tion. Join us as we pay tribute to the poets and writers of the pastwhile experiencing the creative energy of today’s literary artists.This first-ever, state-wide event includes readings by renownedand emerging poets, teacher workshops, performance poetry,films & music, programs for children and young writers, literaryheritage tours, a small press fair, poetry in the streets, and muchmore.

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THE MASSACHUSETTS POETRY FESTIVAL

NICK FLYNN

Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night inSuck City (Norton, 2004), won the PEN/

Martha Albrand Award, was shortlisted

for France’s Prix Femina, and has been

translated into thirteen languages. He isalso the author of two books of poetry,

Some Ether (Graywolf, 2000), and BlindHuber (Graywolf, 2002), for which he

received fellowships from, among other

organizations, The Guggenheim Foun

-

dation and The Library of Congress. Some of the venues his poems,essays and non-ction have appeared in include The New Yorker,the Paris Review, National Public Radio’s “This American Life,” andThe New York Times Book Review. His lm credits include “eldpoet” and artistic collaborator on the lm “Darwin’s Nightmare,”

which was nominated for an Academy Award for best feature

documentary in 2006. One semester a year he teaches at the Univer

-sity of Houston, and he then spends the rest of the year elsewhere.

RHINA P. ESPAILLAT

Born in the Dominican Republic, RhinaEspaillat has lived in the United Statessince 1939. Her work has appeared innumerous magazines, including TheLyric, Poetry, Sparrow, Orbis, The For

-

malist, and The American Scholar, as

well as some forty anthologies. Espail-lat has eight poetry collections in print,including

Where Horizons Go

, which

won the 1998 T. S. Eliot Prize;

Rehearsing Absence

, which won the 2001 Richard

Wilbur Award; and most recently,

Play-ing at Stillness

. In 2004 she became the rst winner of the Tree at MyWindow Award from the Robert Frost Foundation for her Spanishtranslations of Robert Frost and her English translations of Saint John of the Cross and César Sánchez Beras. That same year she alsoreceived the Dominican Republic’s Salome Ureña de Henríquez

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LOWELL, MA

OCTOBER 10-12 2008

Award for service to Dominican culture and education. Espaillat

lives in Newburyport, MA, with her husband Alfred Moskowitz,

a sculptor. For 14 years, she coordinated the Newburyport Art As

-

sociation’s Annual Poetry Contest, is on the planning commiee ofthe Newburyport Literary Festival, and is a founding member and

former director of the Powow River Poets. She has also been instru-mental in bringing about bilingual poetry readings in the area north

of Boston, and has assisted teachers Debbie Szabo and César Sán

-chez Beras with the planning for bilingual activities shared by high

school students of Lawrence, Massachuses, and Newburyport.

REGIE GIBSON

Poet, songwriter, author, workshopfacilitator, and educator Regie Gibsonhas performed, taught, and lectured atschools, universities, theaters, and vari-ous other venues in seven countries on

two continents, including The Art Insti

-

tute of Chicago, Harvard University’s

Longfellow Hall for the Cambridge Po-

etry Festival, and Chicago’s SteppenwolfTheater’s award-winning Trac Serieswith David Amram, which included

a collaboration with Jack Kerouac andAllen Ginsberg. He has worked with artists such as Gwendolyn

Brooks, Yosef Komunyakaa, Lisel Mueller, The Last Poets, Amiri

Baraka, Kurt Vonnegut, members of the world-famous Associationfor the Advancement of Creative Musicians, and Hip Hop artist

Mos Def. He has taught, lectured, and facilitated workshops forthe Cambridge Poetry Festival at Harvard University, the PoetryCenter of the Art Institute of Chicago, Detroit Black Writers Guild,and the University of Chicago Lab School. In 1998, Gibson was the

National Poetry Slam Individual Champion and won the Chicago

Tribune’s Artist of the Year for Excellence for his poetry. In 1999, Re

-

gie founded the Church of The Funky Word, a literary and musical

arts ensemble utilizing ancient, contemporary, and original literarytext combined with world music and rituals from various worldcultures. Widely published in anthologies, magazines, and journals,

he released his rst full-length book of poetry,

Storms Beneath TheSkin

(EM Press) in 2001. He partnered with renowned percussionist