More than a hundred poets and poetry enthusiasts rallied at “the intersection of text and image” to connect and share perspectives.
As April comes to a close, so too does National Poetry Month, a time for celebrating the importance of poets and poetry in our culture. In Cleveland, the community has come together to showcase and encourage both established and emerging voices. This year’s Cleveland Poetry Festival, hosted by Literary Cleveland, welcomed more than 100 guests to a series of events spanning April 12-14.
“There is a wealth of literary genius in this town,” said Caryl Pagel, Cleveland State University (CSU) Poetry Center director and creative writing professor, who has been a partner in planning the festival since its inception three years ago.
When first approached by Literary Cleveland’s Executive Director Matt Weinkam about the development of a city wide poetry festival, Pagel said she was excited to work with them because they did a good job with programming. Impressed with their fall Inkubator Writing Conference, known as one of the largest free writing conferences in the country, Pagel felt confident that come the spring, “We could do more.”
Weinkam credits Pagel with identifying local and regional poets for topical panels and workshops year after year. According to Pagel, connecting with other poets is one of the key benefits to attending festivals like this one. But what set the Cleveland Poetry Festival apart from others taking place nationally this year was the theme of Image and Text.
“I don’t know of another festival with that theme,” Pagel said. “And there are a lot of people talking about the intersection of text and image, poem and the visual.”
Starting Friday, April 12 at the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA), the CSU Poetry Center hosted poets Zach Savich and Joyelle McSweeney for the Festival Kickoff: Lighthouse Reading. The students from CIA decorated the gallery space to appear as if the poetry readings were happening inside pages of literary journals, creating an experiential event for the audience that brought the theme to life.
The following Saturday, an all day conference was held at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Community Arts Center. Attendees were offered the choice of participating in workshops where they could try their hand at Poetry and Photography, Ekphrastic Poetry, or Poetry and Comics; or listen to panel discussions about Image and Text, Poets and Artists, or On Looking.
During the On Looking panel, five poets whose work could be heard – and seen – throughout the festival were in conversation with moderator Alyssa Perry.
The initial question Perry asked of Zavich led him to explore another question, “What is selective seeing?” The conversation touched on the concept of “an ethics of deciding to see“ that could be passive, as in “wait and see” or active, as in “wanting to see what will come.”
Zavich then posed another question; “What would it mean for thinking to feel like seeing in poetry?” To which he determined, “looking is a way of thinking not limited by one’s own ideas.”
Ideas on the topic of looking were limitless as the poets further questioned the influence of language on the ability to express what one can or cannot see.
McSweeney shared a quote that served to inspire her recent work. Andre Breton, a French writer and poet, considered the father of Surrealism, once wrote:
Beauty will be convulsive or not at all …
This idea is explained through the lens of Photopedagogy.com as follows, “Breton’s definition of beauty in the final sentence of his novel Nadja, that it will be ‘convulsive’ (i.e. violent and uncontrollable like an involuntary spasm) ‘or not at all’ summarizes the combination of attraction and repulsion that can be found in many Surrealist photographs.”
The complexity of duality, of beauty vs repulsion, how opposing forces can be two sides of the same coin, and that polarization exists not only within each of us but also in the context of our daily lives, is at the center of Diana Khoi Nguyen‘s work.
“The flipped side of looking, is being looked at,” she said.
Nguyen explained her use of archiving old family photographs to both reflect and make meaning of lives past and present, which prompted her question; “What is in a photograph? All the years and layers, what came before and what came after.”
She suggested accessing all of one’s senses in order to understand what it means to see more fully.
“Do you see me when you look at me? What if you lose your sense of sight? Are you also attuned via other senses to receive data more fully?”
JP Hernandez, who goes by the artist name Barrio Boy, shared that what he saw and heard growing up in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood made him who he is today: a social activist working with youth to embrace the idea that “art isn’t just visual life. Art is life.”
The Barrio Boy Community Garden on West 33rd Street was a vision he could see when others couldn’t.
“We used to be called forest city but there are no more trees,” Barrio Boy said.
His determination led to the creation of a community gathering space that reflects the beauty of the people who live there and where he hosts a community program called Poetry in the Barrio. Through his artistic passions, he works to extend opportunities for expression to others.
“I always needed an outlet,” Barrio Boy said. “And writing was my outlet. When it comes to hip hop, it was created by people who were afraid to speak up, so what we do is create music to write to, because music is vibration, and it saved my life and helped me find my voice.”
The power of poetry, the panel agreed, is that language provides a writer with an opportunity to not only name what they witness but also express what they feel in response. A writer (or reader) can then see themselves in the context of what could be considered a surrealist world, rife with the complexity of duality that is both within us and outside of our control.
McSweeney said she feels it is her job as a poet to finish Breton’s quote,
Beauty will be convulsive or not at all…
adding her own sentiment,
And I will not look away.
The conference concluded with a poetry reading at the Maelstrom Collaborative Arts building, hosted by Kevin Latimer, and featuring celebrated local poets Carrie George, Lauren Haldeman, Philip Metres, Cindy Juyoung Ok, Diana Khoi Nguyen and Alyssa Perry. After the reading, a community open mic offered writers of all experience levels a chance to take the stage and share their work with a supportive crowd, snapping fingers for applause.
The applause continued through to Sunday evening, when audiences wrapped up the weekend by gathering once more for Con Tu at ATNSC: Poetry Edition, hosted by Stephanie Ginese and TJ Maclin.
The Cleveland Poetry Festival may be over for this year, and National Poetry Month may be coming to its annual conclusion, but the discussions and workshops will continue. Pagel offers three next steps for those interested in connecting to programs and poetry throughout the year:
- Attend CSU Poetry Center events and buy their books.
- Register for Literary Cleveland events and classes, which are accessible for all skill levels and flexible for most schedules.
- Patronize Mac’s Back Books on Coventry, an independent book seller that consistently shows up, supports local authors and stocks small-press books.
The festival was presented with ATNSC, Cleveland Museum of Art, CSU Poetry Center, Future Ink Graphics, Grieveland, Maelstrom Collaborative Arts, Rescue Press and Zygote Press; and was sponsored by Mac’s Backs Books on Coventry and the Cleveland Western Reserve University Department of English.
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