Lowell Sun

Holly Clarke-McAlary    Boston, MA

Posted at 10:42am on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

Poetry of Resilience takes place Friday, October 16th at 4:00 PM at the Dharma Buns café in downtown Lowell. Six poets from Boston, Cambridge and West Falmouth will read work which demonstrates personal, cultural and environmental recovery as Hard Times (the festival’s theme) elicit stories of fortitude and hope.

Holly Guran, co-organizer of the event and author of River Tracks imagines the life of a new “mill girl” in the 19th century: “spare hand to one/ who knows the weaving — / strong warp to the soft weft / interlacing into fabric, the colors / will show, but oh, my ears ring — I pray to hear / this throbbing as music”. Alice Kociemba, also co-organizer, will read “Death of Teaticket Hardware”, a reminder of the vulnerability of small businesses in a corporate age.

For Lisa Beatman, author of Manufacturing America: Poems from the Factory Floor and Ladies’ Night at the Blue Hill Spa, resilience resonates in “Hot Flash”: “Sacrifice yourself / your white-hot pure self / will emerge / from the ashes / winged”. In Promise Supermarket, Elizabeth Quinlan summons a stone-burying ritual, which gave hope: “as if we believed the soil / in those backyards / of our childhood / would grow treasures”.

Susan Eisenberg’s poem “Search” follows her sister after she has been shot, “after 30 hours trolling the universe, / her mind finds its own way home // when it snags on — Where’s my purse? / — last memory, and rubs / to smooth the jagged edge from where it broke. / Her bag is not in her hand, Where’s / my purse!?! And, the very object // that catapulted this horror becomes / the hook to lash / for mooring.”

The Massachusetts Poetry Festival offers an exciting mix of readings, workshops, theater, and a small press fair—all at no cost. Events across Massachusetts kick off on Thursday, October 15th. Between Friday the 16th and Sunday the 18th, a wide variety of voices (teenagers, graduate students, slam poets, known and less-known figures) will be heard in Lowell.

Friday Café Reading: Poetry of Resilience, October 16th, 4:00 to 5:00 PM, Dharma Buns, 26-A Market Street, Lowell.

All events at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival are free, advanced reservations are advised. For a full schedule, visit www.masspoetry.org/schedule