In this workshop, we will explore how place – and placelessness – impact a poem’s potency. Being grounded fully in a specific place allows for the poet to swim in unique images and evoke sensory details that breathe life into the poem. Attendees will discuss various grounded poems and move into the “in-between” that are less identifiable as real, specific, or singular places. How does the choice of setting and the establishment of a world’s rules serve the poetic purpose? Handouts will be provided with examples of poems that use place as a key tool in advancing the power of the words on the page. Participants will then respond to prompts during two ten-minute free writes. As a third and optional exercise, participants are encouraged to bring in a photo of a place of significance to them, with the goal of marrying the visual images with the poetic.
Bio: Sam Leon is an MFA candidate in poetry at Florida International University, where she teaches undergraduate writing. She is the Assistant Managing Editor for GulfStream Magazine. Leon earned her BA in English Writing from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, where she was a two-time recipient of the Carroll Creative Writing Scholarship. Her book reviews and author interviews have been or will soon be published in Gulf Stream Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, and The Iowa Review.
The public is invited to participate in what could be the largest poetry reading in history. The Palm Beach Poetry Festival is hosting this annual open-mic event in partnership with 100 Thousand Poets for Change. This global happening will be taking place at the same time in over 1,000 venues in 120 countries. Poets will read and perform work to promote social, political, environmental sustainability, and change, simultaneously across the planet. Attendees are welcome to read their own work or favorite poems by other poets. Between poetry readings, special guest musicians will play songs for peace. Attendees are welcome to play or sing along. As in previous years, the event will be photographed by Dr. Allen and archived by Stanford University.
Join us October 17th us for a round-robin poetry reading in the beautiful Green Cay Wetlands Nature Preserve. We will spend a lovely afternoon reading poetry informally around the circle in the Green Cay Club House Community Room. Please bring up to four poems (favorites, or your own) to share with the group. Non-poets are welcome to join us, we love and audience!
WORKSHOP APPLICATIONS CLOSED ON NOVEMBER 10, 2020.
A reading by our Conference Faculty.
Stuart Dischell: How to See Without Using Your “I”
Aracelis Girmay: How Time Might Mean: How Poems Signal Time
Gregory Pardlo: This is not a pipe: Craft and Authenticity 
Ellen Bass: Sound and Sense: Bringing Music Into Your Poems
The Palm Beach Poetry Festival invites you to submit an original poem inspired by the 
Palm Beach Poetry Festival invites you to join us at this beautiful assisted living facility to read your favorite holiday poems and sing holiday songs to an enthusiastic audience of residents. All ages are welcome.
Participants, please bring 4 single page poems (they may be your own poems, or your favorite poets) to read around the circle as we pass the mic. Non-poets are welcome to join us, we love and audience!
This generation-based workshop will explore the emulative possibilities of elegies written by poets as diverse in voice and style as Jericho Brown, Eugenia Leigh, Larry Levis, and Muriel Rukeyser. We’ll also consider what the elegy borrows from the ode, its lyric cousin, in paying homage to a beloved person, place, or thing.
Poetry and prose? Writers often reach new depths in their work when they immerse themselves in the nebulous poetry/non-fiction divide. In this workshop, poets will use lyric essay techniques to prompt and guide their work. We will read and learn from different types of lyric essays including braided, flash, collage and hermit crab. By opening themselves up to hybrid possibilities, participants will see their work to spill into new territory, either revisiting existing themes in new ways and/or plunging into previously unexplored spaces.
The perfect setting for this workshop is the beautiful landscape of the Morikami Museum and Gardens. The festival returns for the 12th year to explore this poetic form with Yaddyra Peralta, who will lead participants to be inspired by the form and their surroundings.
YADDYRA PERALTA is a poet who teaches writing and literature at Broward College and Miami Dade College. Her poems have been published in Eight Miami Poets (Jai Alai Books) and Ghazals for James Foley (Hinchas Press). Her poems have also appeared in Ploughshares, Jai Alai, Abe’s Penny, Tigertail, The New Poet, and Hinchas de Poesia. In 2013, she was a Visiting Writer at the Betsy Hotel’s Writer’s Room in South Miami Beach, Florida and one of six collaborative Helen M. Salzberg Artists-in-Residence at Florida Atlantic University’s Jaffe Center for the Book Arts where she contributed to the collaborative artists’ book Conversation, Too (Extra Virgin Press). Before becoming Assistant Director of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, she attended workshops as a participant, an auditor, an intern, and, in 2013 to 2014, served as the festival’s Director of Social Media.
Registration packets will be made available to workshop faculty, participants and auditors for pick up.
Welcome reception with light snacks and cocktails for workshop faculty, participants and auditors.
The Palm Beach Poetry Festival’s Ekphrastic Poetry Contest, based on select paintings exhibited at the 
Readings with Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Chard deNiord and Tim Seibles, followed by book signing in the Festival Book Store, Ocean Breeze Room in the Crest Theatre Building.
Performances by Slam Champions Elizabeth Acevedo and Aja Monet, followed by book signing in the Festival Book Store, Ocean Breeze Room in the Crest Theatre Building.
Readings with Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Rodney Jones followed by book signing in the Festival Book Store, Ocean Breeze Room in the Crest Theatre Building.
Evening reading with Special Guest Poet Coleman Barks, followed by book signing in the Festival Book Store, Ocean Breeze Room in the Crest Theatre Building.
Readings with Beth Ann Fennelly, Ross Gay, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil, followed by book signing in the Festival Book Store, Ocean Breeze Room in the Crest Theatre Building.
We are honored to have Coleman Barks as our Special Guest for an interview by faculty poet Chard deNiord.
A Festival Favorite! All nine faculty poets share and discuss beloved poems that have been influential in their lives and in their writing. Panel will be moderated by poet/writer Julie Marie Wade.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: “I, you, him, her and who? (Pronoun Choice in Four Contemporary Poems)”
Ross Gay & Aimee Nezhukumatathil: “Poetry & Friendship: Collaboration & Inspiration”
Gabrielle Calvocoressi: “One Poem, Endless Possibilities: Close Reading as a Gateway to Experimentation in Our Own Work” 
Chard deNiord: “From First Thought to Final Draft: The Making of a Poem”
Save the Date to join us in spreading the love of poetry in summertime, and the living is easy reading at Sunrise Assisted Living Facility. Our poetry troupe will take to the mic to read poems of summer and, if the mood strikes, sing happy songs of yesteryear. Please bring 5 (one-page) poems, your own or your favorites. Feel free to sing some golden oldie songs as this group responds to the lyrics and poetry of music! Sunrise always has a large audience to welcome us, so join us for this rewarding experience.
Michael Mackin O’Mara has lived and worked in West Palm Beach, Florida since the 1980s. Before that he studied under Hans and Ilse Juergensen at the University of South Florida. He is the managing editor of the South Florida Poetry Journal and has been fortunate enough to attend Palm Beach Poetry Festival events since 2005. Visit his website 
excerpts by award-winning Spanish filmmaker Lois Patiño, this innovative documentary explores Levis’s childhood working alongside Mexican-American field hands, three marriages, friendships with America’s greatest poets, and his own words and poems for answers.
The 2018 Palm Beach Poetry Festival will be presented in loving memory of 
From Academy Award® winning writer/director Jane Campion (Best Original Screenplay, The Piano, 1993) comes an film based on the true story of love between renowned poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw, The International) and his spirited muse Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish, Stop-Loss). In the wilds of 19th century England, a forbidden passion draws the two lovers ever closer—even as fate conspires to tear them apart. Bright Star takes you to a world where, though life may be fleeting, great art – and great love – last forever. Hosted by Professor Bonnie Bonincontri
version appears to follow word for word Shakespeare’s original masterpiece, only exchanging the time and place of the story from classical Athens to the village of Monte Athena, Italy, at the turn of the Nineteenth Century as the setting for this enchanting version of William Shakespeare’s play, directed by Michael Hoffman.
Save the date! We hope you will join us for our Eleventh year of this much loved and well attended quarterly event. We will spend a lovely afternoon reading poetry round-robin style in Green Cay Club House Community Room. Please bring up to four poems (favorites, or your own) to share with the group.
The Palm Beach Poetry Festival in collaboration with the Astronomical Society of the Palm Beaches would like to invite you to an over-the-moon poetry reading! While observing of the moon and stars, we will be reading poetry round-robin style. You are invited to bring up to three single-page poems on the subject of the solar system: planets, moon and stars. The poems can be your own work, or your favorites of other poets relating to the night sky. We will read as many poems as time permits. While a poet is reading, others can view the night sky through the telescopes provided by the Astronomical Society in the 
The Astronomical Society is composed of a group of individuals dedicated to the pursuit of observational astronomy and to the education of the general public on astronomy. During the observation sessions, members bring and use a wide variety of equipment…from binoculars and small refractors to 20-inch reflectors.
Join us for our 10th annual collaboration with Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens.
This workshop is taught by Yaddyra Peralta, a poet who teaches writing and literature at Broward College and Miami Dade College. Her poems have been published in Eight Miami Poets (Jai Alai Books) and Ghazals for James Foley(Hinchas Press). Her work has also appeared in Ploughshares, Jai Alai, Abe’s Penny, Tigertail, The New Poet, and Hinchas de Poesia. In 2013, she was a Visiting Writer at the Betsy Hotel’s Writer’s Room in South Miami Beach, Florida and one of six collaborative Helen M. Salzberg Artists-in-Residence at Florida Atlantic University’s Jaffe Center for the Book Arts where she contributed to the collaborative artists’ book Conversation, Too (Extra Virgin Press). She is the Assistant Director of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival and has an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University.
