Harvard Square Poetry Festival

Will Woo with Words this Weekend

By Susie Davidson

CORRESPONDENT

Words will figuratively and literally be flying off the shelves this weekend when Wordsworth Books’ Harvard Square Poetry Festival kicks off with a marathon of 15 minute readings. Over the four day period of July 24-28, 50 poets will read each evening beginning at 7 p.m. (Sat. and Sun. also from11 a.m. to 5 p.m.), at the 30 Brattle St. location.

Organized by Wordsworth’s Events Director Jim Behrle, the fest will feature national poets Eileen Myles, Prageeta Sharman, Franz Wright, Michael Franco, Joseph Torra, Brenda Coultas, Edmund Berrigan and lots of other scribes and scribblers of the spoken art. Behrle, who is a roving poet for WBUR’s noontime “Here and Now” radio program, formerly directed events at Waterstone’s and Brookline Booksmith before coming to the local Wordsworth. His first chapbook, “City Point,” was a Boston Globe bestseller, and his most recent work is called “Recent Sonic News”.

“This festival was a chance to bring young poets from New York, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston together,” said Behrle, “to read and to listen. I've always found these type of readings to be overwhelming in the best sense. They represent a chance to discover great new poets and also a chance to hang out with friends who don't get to town much. It's an eclectic bunch: different voices, different rooms, all together in the same room for the first and maybe only time.”

Behrle’s interest and involvement is longstanding, and sincere. “I helped organize last year's Boston Poetry Marathon in July 2001 at the Art Institute of Boston, which was born out of the Boston Poetry Conferences that Aaron Kiely ran for three straight summers in July. They've been invaluable opportunities to hear lots of young avant garde poets in a single weekend.”

Also, the timing was right. “Summers are generally a slow events time for bookstores in town, and so another poetry conference seemed like a good way to use the space here at Wordsworth and cause some traffic for the store.” He wants to start the ball of verse rolling in the area. “I got into this out of my love for poetry and my desire to create a scene here in Harvard Square - I hope that this will be the start of more events like this.”

Here is the schedule of readings:

Thursday: 7:00 Sean Cole; 7:15 Kevin Grant; 7:30 Kevin Gallagher; 7:45 Christopher Mattison; break; 8:15 Amie Keddy; 8:30 Beth Woodcome; 8:45 John Landry; 9:00 Michael Franco; break; 9:30 Fred Marchant; 9:45 Jason Shinder; 10:00 Jonathan Aaron;

Friday: 7:00 G. L. Ford; 7:15 Alison Cobb; 7:30 Matvei Yankelevich; 7:45 Arielle Greenberg; break; 8:15 Karen Weiser; 8:30 Darlene Gold; 8:45 Daniel Bouchard; 9:00 Heather Fuller; break; 9:30 Buck Downs; 9:45 Joseph Torra; 10:00 Brenda Coultas;

Saturday: 11:00 Mark Lamoureux; 11:15 Sara Veglahn; 11:30 Geneva Chao; 11:45 Brian Morrison; break; 12:15 Rob Morris; 12:30 Anna Ross; 12:45 Ethan Paquin; 1:00 Timothy Liu; break; 1:30 Jessica Chiu; 1:45 Yuri Hospodar; 2:00 Sue Landers; 2:15 Murat Nemet-Nejat; break; 2:45 Jennifer Nelson; 3:00 Christina Strong; 3:15 Anna Moshovakis; 3:30 Edmund Berrigan; break; 4:00 Becky Rosen; 4:15 Mitch Highfill; 4:30 Charles Shively; 4:45 Shin Yu Pai; 7:00 Ethan Fugate; 7:15 Alexandra Friedman; 7:30 Kathleen Ossip; 7:45 John Mulrooney; break; 8:15 Macgregor Card; 8:30 Prageeta Sharma; 8:45 Jo Ann Wasserman; 9:00 Michael County; break; 9:30 Joyelle McSweeney; 9:45 Brendan Lorber; 10:00 Douglas Rothschild;

Sunday: 11:00 Aaron Kiely; 11:15 Soraya Shalforoosh; 11:30 Elliza McGrand; 11:45 Brenda Iijima; break; 12:15 Jack Kimball; 12:30 Michael Bucell; 12:45 Brandon Downing; 1:00 Jen Coleman; break; 1:30 Jordan Davis; 1:45 Noah Gordon; 2:00 Jill McDonough; 2:15 David Eberley; break; 2:45 Rebecca Wolff; 3:00 Lisa Bourbeau; 3:15 Richard Carfagna; 3:30 Natalia Cooper; break; 4:00 Bill Knott; 4:15 Jean Houlihan; 4:30 Franz Wright; 4:45 James Dunn

Takoma Park, Maryland’s Heather Fuller (9 p.m., Friday) has worked with non-profits on homelessness and poverty issues and edits poetry and book reviews for The Washington Review.

Brendan Lorber of Manhattan (9:45 p.m., Saturday), edits LUNGFULL! Magazine, is the cocreator, with Tracey McTague, of Book of the New Now, and his Welcome Overboard, is forthcoming. “He has poems & essays in journals from Fence to The Chicago Tribune and has been translated a number of times,” said Behrle.

Fred Marchant (9:45 p.m. Thursday) authored Tipping Point, which won the 1993 Washington Prize in poetry and has two more forthcoming. A professor of English, he directs the Creative Writing Program at Suffolk University, is a teaching affiliate of the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at UMass-Boston, and is on the Executive Board of PEN-New England.

Jo Ann Wasserman (8:45 p.m. Saturday) has authored two chapbooks; her work will appear in the forthcoming issue of The World. She has just completed a book-length series of poems entitled The Escape.

Brenda Coultas (10 p.m. Friday)’s 2003 book is pending from Coffee House Press, is working on a project about The Bowery, and appears in the 20th Anniversary issue of Conjunctions.

Jordan Davis (1:30 p.m. Sunday) edits The Hat, contributes to the Poetry Project Newsletter, and has authored a dozen chapbooks, most recently Yeah, No (Detour) and A Winter Magazine (Situations).”

Mitch Highfill (4:15 p.m. Saturday) authored The Blue Dahlia (Detour), Turn (Situations) and Liquid Affairs (United Artists), with another in the works.

Jack Kimball (12:15 p.m. Sunday) is recently back from several years in Japan, practices feng shui and translates poems by Celan and essays by Freire. Kimball has taught at MIT, Harvard and the Chinese Wushu Institute and has several books out.

Allison Cobb (7:15 p.m. Friday) has authored several chapbooks; a full collection, Born Two, is due in 2003 from Chax Press. She is a Brooklyn-based former DC resident and curator of the DC In Your Ear reading series.

The event is free and does not require tickets; Wordsworth collects canned goods during their events for the Cambridge Food Pantry.