Mission Statement

To bring to Vashon Island from our Northwest region an ongoing, shifting kaleidoscope of poetic styles and voices, bringing the full energy and force of poetic imagination and language to life in our community.

Description

The first Poetry Festival took place over Memorial Day Weekend of 2009 and was a solid success and already we are busy planning for Memorial Day Weekend, May 27-31 of 2011. We are looking to provide something for everyone: poets of all ages speaking to all ages, with a vibrancy coming from many poetic styles; poets of different ethnicity, sexual and political orientation; meditative poetry; ‘green’ poetry; haiku; rap and ‘spoken word’ poetry; poetry woven into music; provocative, edgy poetry; celebratory poetry—as many threads as we can bring together in front of our Vashon Island audiences. We’re planning an entire weekend celebration of poetry, bringing it alive, from a variety of voices, on our Island stages, as well as offering workshops and opportunities to meet the poets.

Memorial Day weekend, May 27-30, 2011 the Vashon Poetry Fest will produce the second of what we hope will be a long-lived, biannual weekend-long festival devoted to poetry. We’re expanding our range of poets in 2011, adding to the more traditionally defined poets we featured last time (and will include again) a selection of younger poets, many of whom will be ‘spoken word’ poets, action poets, and rappers. And we’re reaching for a multi-generational audience with a broad taste range.

Two years ago, under the leadership of Ron Irvine, owner of the Vashon Winery, we held the first Poetry Fest. The 2009 Festival was highly successful—Sam Green, then poet-Laureate of Washington State, was the featured poet, and stayed through the weekend to offer a workshop and participate in an ‘open mike’ event blending Island and off-Island poets. With him we had a strong range of performers/presenters and well-attended workshops over the weekend of Memorial Day.

Our overall theme/title for the weekend is ‘A Passport to Poetry’ to point to poetry’s power to cross and erase borders and boundaries. Everyone attending the readings and workshops will hold a passport (which we are designing). Our two featured poets who will read the first evening have also offered to visit Vashon High School earlier in the day to make a presentation. The two poets are Tess Gallagher and Lawrence Matsuda. Their presentation will be as much about culture and politics as about art. Matsuda was born in the Minidoka, Idaho War Relocation Center during World War II, and his poetry in A Cold Wind from Idaho is about this experience. The session with students will be designed to bring to life for them this important piece of history. Saturday evening will feature Storme Webber, Jourdan Keith, Karen Finneyfrock, and Seattle Slammaster Daemond Arrindell in an all-out performance at the Red Bicycle.  Sunday’s reading will feature American Book Award winner Judith Roche, Floating Bridge Chapbook contest winner Holly Hughes, and Cal Kinnear. Monday’s poet will be founder of Copper Canyon Press Sam Hamill, who, in addition to a reading, will offer a talk on the relation of poetry to war and cultural memory. During the day on Saturday and Sunday the poets will offer a variety of workshops. Sunday evening there will be a celebratory dinner for poets and the Vashon community at the Hardware Store Restaurant. Times of events and other details are available at the Poetry Fest web site at www.vashonpoetryfest.com.

"Our overall theme/title for the weekend is
‘A Passport to Poetry’
to point to poetry’s power to cross
and erase borders and boundaries."