29th annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival

29th ANNUAL WATERSHED ENVIRONMENTAL POETRY FESTIVAL SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2024 Main Stage, Noon to 4:30 pm, free Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park, MLK Jr. Way at Allston Way, alongside the Farmers' Market, downtown Berkeley, two blocks from BART Poetry & Music Celebrating Writers, Nature, & Community! Featuring San Francisco Poet Laureate Genny Lim; James Cagney, Martian: The Saint of Loneliness, James Laughlin Award-winner from the Academy of American Poets; John Shoptaw, Near-Earth Object, Northern California Book Award in Poetry, Notre Dame Review Book Prize; Ellery Akers, A Door Into the Wild: Poetry and Art; Marsha de la O, Creature, Pitt Poetry Series; Cintia Santana, The Disordered Alphabet, winner of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry 2024, We Are Nature Open Mic, and much more! Strawberry Creek Walk 10:00 am, free Meet Center at Oxford, edge of UC Berkeley campus Poetry, nature commentary, and an easy walk along beautiful Strawberry Creek through UC Berkeley, with Chris Olander, Nevada County Poet Laureate 2019-2021; Claire Blotter, Expanding. Water. Ways; Emilie Lygren, What We Were Born For, Elizabeth Dougherty, founder and director of Wholly H2O, and more! To exhibit, email [email protected], with WATERSHED in the subject line. Tables, chairs, and 10x10 canopies available! (Berkeley, CA) Poets, musicians, environmentalists, and community members will gather on Saturday, October 5, 2024, for the 29th annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival, to celebrate Writers, Nature & Community, and to deliver an urgent message, with poetry and music, to consider the earth and climate change in our daily lives. Our belief is that we need the inspiration of poetry and music to meet our collective challenge. The Festival begins with the Strawberry Creek Walk, poetry, nature commentary, and an easy walk along beautiful Strawberry Creek through UC Berkeley. To participate, meet at 10:00 am, at the southeast corner of Oxford at Center, on the edge of the UC Berkeley campus. All Festival events are free. The Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival continues on the Main Stage at Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park, at Center Street, Berkeley, Noon to 4:30 pm. Please gather for a free afternoon of poetry, music, and nature writers in the park. Watershed will begin with the We Are Nature Open Mic. To enter the drawing for one of 8 three-minute open reading spots, go to the onsite Festival Info Tent by noon. California Poets in the Schools student will also perform. Poet-teachers Tureeda Mikell, The Body: Oracle of Memory, and Brennan DeFrisco, Not Too Young For Wonder: 2023 California Poets in the Schools State Anthology mentored youth involved in the program. To exhibit your books, magazine, project, or organization at the Festival, email [email protected]. Tables, 10x10 tents, and chairs are available. Exhibit information will be posted on the Watershed page at Poetryflash.org soon. For updates, see: Poetryflash.org. Books by presenters will be offered for sale by Pegasus Books Downtown. Berkeley has a rich literary culture with poetry at its base. Poetry Flash has represented that base since 1972 with literary events, articles, and reviews. Since 1995, Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival has blended art, culture, and the environment to celebrate Writers, Nature, & Community in northern California. Robert Hass, the first U.S. Poet Laureate from the West, co-founded the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival during engaged community discussions between environmental groups and poets. The first Watershed Festival took place in April 1996 at the Golden Gate Park bandshell, with over a thousand people in attendance to hear poets Joy Harjo, Michael McClure, and many others. The late Mark Baldridge, for many years Director of the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival, left an amazing legacy. The Watershed logo is a wood block print by Shane Eagleton. Admission is free. Thanks to the Berkeley Civic Arts Program for their support, and to our community partners, Pegasus Books Downtown, and the Berkeley Farmers’ Market and Ecology Center. Presented by Poetry Flash review & literary calendar, Poetryflash.org.

Event Links

Website: https://go.evvnt.com/2652007-0

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