Nationally Known Poets Returning For CT Poetry Festival

MIDDLETOWN — The Connecticut Poetry Festival is returning for its second time around. The Festival, scheduled for Friday, August 17, and Saturday, August 18, will present a full slate of poetry readings, workshops, panel discussions, and open mikes.

Heading the poetry bill will be Mark Doty and Gayle Danley. Mr Doty is the author of five books of poems. Prizes his poetry has won include the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Ambassador Book Award, the Bingham Poetry Prize, and Britain’s T.S. Eliot Prize. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim, Ingram Merrill, Rockefeller, and Whiting foundations, and from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Mr Doty is no stranger to the central Connecticut area as he has read at the Sunken Garden poetry series in Farmington.

Gayle Danley’s explosive poetry combines movement, emotion, performance, and the exploration of contemporary issues. She is a former winner of the National Poetry Slam Championship and, at a competition in Heidelberg, Germany, was judged International Poetry Slam Champion.

During the festival, Ms Danley will present a workshop on how to develop poems suitable for performing as slam poetry.

Other poets appearing will include John Basinger, a storyteller, actor and member of the National Theater of the Deaf; Taylor Mali, a longtime competitor at the highest levels of slam poetry; Bessy Reyna, a columnist for The Hartford Courant; and Vivian Shipley, a professor at Southern Connecticut State University and the winner of numerous poetry prizes.

Most of the Festival events will be held on the campus of Middlesex Community College. The festival, however, will move off campus Friday for two late-night open mike sessions to be held at the Goodfellas Bar and Grill and Manhattan Bagel, both of which are on Middletown’s Main Street.

All of the Poetry Festival’s Friday night events are free to the public. For Saturday, there is a $15 pass that gets festivalgoers into all events. A $10 pass is needed if one is only interested in Saturday night events.

For more information about the Connecticut Poetry Festival or to make reservations call Middlesex

Community College’s Continuing Education Office at 860-343-5865 or call Faith Vicinanza at 426-3388.  For detailed information and online registration, see the festival’s Web site at http://www.ctpoetryfest.org.