The 11th Annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival was held January 19-24, 2015. Our faculty included Chard deNiord, Linda Gregerson, Thomas Lux, Maurice Manning, Molly Peacock, Brenda Shaughnessy, Patricia Smith, and Robert Wrigley. We presented six days of reading events, interviews, craft lectures, and, of course, poetry workshops. Malcolm London and Rachel McKibbens headlined the annual coffee house and performed for local high school audiences. Additional conference faculty Sally Bliumis-Dunn, Nickole Brown, and Ginger Murchison taught one-on-one conferences. Our special guest poet was Dana Gioia, poet, essayist, critic and former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (2003-2009). The phrase we chose to represent this festival was, “Poetry Is Alive.

A special event, “Ballet’s Child,” inspired by the poems of Lani Scozzari with choreography by Donna Goffredo Murray was presented on Friday night. See the trailer for this beautiful and moving collaborative performance.

2015 Workshops

Chard deNiord: ALL THINGS COUNTER, ORIGINAL, SPARE, STRANGE
Linda Gregerson: POETIC ‘YIELD’ with LINDA GREGERSON
Thomas Lux: WORD BY WORD, LINE BY LINE
Maurice Manning: LISTEN TO THIS: SOUND & STRUCTURE IN WRITING POEMS
Molly Peacock: THE RIB CAGE OF THE POEM: WRITING FORM FROM THE INSIDE OUT
Brenda Shaughnessy: NAMING THE NAMELESS
Patricia Smith: STRAINING THE BORDERS
Robert Wrigley: TO DELIGHT, TO INSTRUCT, AND TO WOUND

2015 Craft Talks

Chard deNiord: Like A Book At Evening: Truth & The Imagination
Linda Gregerson: Marianne Moore & The Zipper
Thomas Lux : The Epistolary Poem, Famous Examples
Maurice Manning: Loaded Lines
Molly Peacock: Snap! A Sonnet
Brenda Shaughnessy: Learning To See: The Craft Of Lived Experience (In Plath, Oliver & Orr)
Patricia Smith: Initiating The Squirm: Writing The Poems That Changed My Life
Robert Wrigley: He Who/She Who Listens, But Does Not Speak