Blogalicious: West Caldwell Poetry Festival: A Photo Tour

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

West Caldwell Poetry Festival: A Photo Tour

The West Caldwell Poetry Festival was held on Sunday, May 18. This was the 11th year I've run this event, but this year I made significant changes to the format. It seemed like time for a change. In the past the focus was on literary journals and the event was called Poetry Festival: A Celebration of Literary Journals. Each of 12 journal editors invited two representative poets to read, so we had a total of 24 poets reading.

This year I changed the focus from journals to poets with new books. I invited six such poets. I invited journals but only eight this time as I knew I would need table space for the four book publishers I also invited. Then I structured the day into four time slots: two for readings, one for a publishers' panel, and one for a creative process panel with the six poets. I built in twenty minutes between each time slot so that visitors would have time to purchase books and journals.

The day was absolutely exhilarating. I could not have been happier with the entire event. We had a much better turnout than last year with a number of people coming for the first time. We sold more than twice as many books as we sold last year. And everyone seemed to have a good time. I only wish we'd had a bit more time to soak up even more poetry and poetry conversation.

To give you a sense of the day, here are some photos.

I welcome the audience

Priscilla Orr reads from Losing the Horizon

Gary J. Whitehead reads from A Glossary of Chickens

Michael T. Young reads from The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost

Publishers' Panel: Anna Evans (Barefoot Muse Press), Roxanne Hoffman (Poets Wear Prada Press),
Joan Cusack Handler (CavanKerry Press), Ellen Foos (Ragged Sky Press)