This year’s Sierra Poetry Festival is upon us, the seventh annual event taking place Saturday, April 15 at The Center for the Arts with this year’s theme being (Be)longing.
The Nevada County Arts Council works hard each year to produce the festival, which coincides with National Poetry Month. This year, California’s Poet Laureate Lee Herrick will make an appearance and lead a workshop titled Against Silence: Sound And Proximity in Poetry.
“I’m thrilled to be visiting Grass Valley and the Sierra Poetry Festival, which I’ve loved from afar for some time now,” Herrick said. “The thoughtful organizers, the stellar line-up, and the wonderful poetry community will surely make for an inspiring day.”
Sierra Poetry Festival is a live international festival, conceived in the spirit of bringing together the poetry community for a day of workshops, spoken word performances, and highlighting Nevada County’s two cultural districts as determined by the California Arts Council: Grass Valley-Nevada City and Truckee.
“This year’s Sierra Poetry Festival offers an extraordinarily diverse array of voices and a rich menu of ways to engage with those voices,” said Maxima Kahn, a programmer for the festival as well as member of the festival committee. “From poems set to music to deep conversations to workshops to poetic cinema. From California poet laureate Lee Herrick’s un-keynote on this year’s theme of (Be)longing, this year’s Festival dives deep into who we are, how we form our identities, and the role that poetry plays in helping us express both our uniqueness and our common ground.”
Poets performing and workshopping Saturday include Dorianne Laux, a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Joseph Millar, winner of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts; Jamaica Baldwin, associate editor of Prairie Schooner, whose debut poetry collection Bone Language published by YesYes Books comes out this month, Maw Shein Win, Burmese American poet, editor, and educator whose most recent book Storage Unit for the Spirit House was nominated for a Northern California Book Award and shortlisted for the Golden Poppy Award, and Indigo Moor, poet laureate emeritus of Sacramento, whose award-winning works include Tap-Root, In the Room of Thirsts & Hungers, and Through the Stonecutter’s Window.
The festival will also feature a live-from-Australia conversation with poet, essayist, and teacher Mark Tredinnick along with Judith Nangala Crispin, an aboriginal artist and writer.
“The why of a Poetry Festival in any form is a legitimate question and the answer is, because it’s art and story and we need both,” said Catharine Bramkamp of the Poetry Festival Committee, and member of the Nevada County Arts Council Board Member. “Poetry feeds our souls by illuminating our world with words we hadn’t considered before. Poetry makes the world a better, more creative place. Who wouldn’t want to indulge in a day devoted to beauty and belonging?”
“From the time earliest man saw sunrise, heard birdcall, wept for loss, and celebrated success, there’s been a desire to share these things: through storytelling, drawing, chanting, singing — and eventually, with the advent of alphabets and printing presses, to preserve these efforts to describe, mourn, and praise,” said Sands Hall, programmer for the Sierra Poetry Festival. “Our word ‘poet’ comes from ‘maker,’ and indeed, like those early humanoids, we continue to ‘make’ the world by reflecting it in our art and words and song.
“With readings and workshops, music, (and) an Open Mic, the Sierra Poetry Festival provides our community an opportunity to participate in pleasures that are not only timeless but necessary,” Hall said.
KNOW & GO WHAT: Seventh Annual Sierra Poetry Festival WHERE: The Center for the Arts, 314 West Main St., Grass Valley WHEN: Saturday, April 15 9 a.m. TICKETS & INFO: www.sierrapoetryfestival.org or call 530-264-7031 {related_content_uuid}7ee6848f-dc0d-4261-b0da-c74e072220cd{/related_content_uuid}
On the Cover Mikhail Usov, artiste Cirque du Soleil and international performer, shared “The Fisherman” at last year’s Sierra Poetry Festival. In addition to a variety of performers, this year’s festival will also give budding poets a chance to recite at a 5:30 p.m. Open Mic. | PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo {related_content_uuid}16a7ad3c-312f-4ad5-8ff3-21437c2dec0d{/related_content_uuid}