4/11/2023

The young literary event sizzles this year, offering readings by a stellar cadre of international poets, in addition to round-table discussions, a book fair and workshops.

— by Skye Jackson

Like any proper New Orleans institution, the origin of the New Orleans Poetry Festival begins with a good story.

Actually, it just might begin with two.

“It all started after a poetry reading at BJs,” one of the founders of the festival, Bill Lavender starts to explain. He’s the author of 14 books and director of Lavender Ink/Diálogos, a press he founded in 1995. Bill is wearing a baseball cap and stylish blue glasses that reveal an ever-present twinkle in his eye. We’re sitting across from each other in Megan Burns’ spacious and Zen/bohemian home just off the Bayou and a short drive away from lush City Park.

Megan Burns, his co-founder interjects, smiling, “No. Remember, we decided to do it over hot sausage po-boys at Gene’s!” The blue and green highlights in her hair shake across her shoulders as she retells the tale with animation. Like Bill, Megan is also a poet and a publisher, founder of Trembling Pillow Press, which she began in 2006.

The two go back and forth playfully before concluding that perhaps, like all good New Orleans lore, there is a nugget of truth to both stories. One thing is certain: the New Orleans Poetry Festival has been touching the lives of poets and writers across this country – and in others – since its inception in 2015.

The New Orleans Poetry Festival is filled with readings, writing workshops, performances, events, and bookselling – a model that borrows all the fun elements of the mega annual gathering of the Association of Writers & Writers Programs (AWP), but distills it with an emphasis on poets. Together, co-founders Bill and Megan have birthed and matured a literary event that is as exciting as it is inclusive – encouraging both locally and internationally based writers to find community in their shared passion.

This year, the Festival will host a Locals Night, replete with New Orleans poets, as well as an International Night with a focus on Brazilian poets.

“We were fortunate that Tulane sponsored the poets who are flying in from Brazil,” Bill says.

Inspired by his travels all over the world when he ran the study abroad program at the University of New Orleans, Bill wanted to make sure that the Festival maintained a strong international presence – so that poets from all over the world could fully immerse themselves in New Orleans culture all while making global connections.

“We wanted people in New Orleans to have an immersive poetry experience,” Megan explains, “whether they’re local or traveling in from another city. This festival gives them four days to envelop themselves in poetry. It becomes the forefront and priority when you’re surrounded by people who also feel that way. It’s a super gumbo for amazing creativity.”

This year promises to be no different – as the festival returns to a full in-person schedule of events that will take place from Thursday, April 13th to Sunday, April 16th. For the first time ever, the Festival is completely free of charge – so there are no cost barriers for those who want to attend readings, workshops, panels, and events. The free admission highlights one of the goals of the Festival.

“As long as the festival is serving the people of New Orleans and they love it, then we’ve accomplished what we’ve set out to do,” says Megan.

The Festival also provides a rare opportunity to witness Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tyehimba Jess and Harmony Holiday, a Fence Books Motherwell Prize-winner and choreographer, as they light up the stage on Saturday, April 15th at 7:00pm. The event takes place at the New Orleans Healing Center (see below for more details).

Bill hopes that visitors to the French Quarter Festival, which will be happening that same weekend, will visit NOPF for a change of pace.

“It’s free, it’s easy, it’s not as crowded as French Quarter Festival. We would love for some poetry fans to stumble in,” he says.

Here’s a “broad brush” festival schedule. For complete details, see this page on the NOPF website.

• Thursday, April 13, 7 PM: Locals Night Opening Gala and Fundraiser at Saturn Bar, featuring lots of local (or nearby) poets and performers, with poetry, music, and special Neo-Benshi performance of A Streetcar Named Desire by Roxi Power.

• Friday, April 14, 6 PM: International Night Focus on Brazil, featuring bi-lingual and English readings by Brazilian and Brazilian-American poets Catarina Lins, Salgado Maranhão, Omar Salomão, Narlan Matos Teixeira, and Lia Vieira, co-sponsored by Tulane University Department of Spanish and Portuguese, on the Tulane campus, Stone Auditorium in the Woldenberg Art Center on Newcomb Place, entering from Willow St. (Bldg 82 on this campus map). (Thank you to Tulane University, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, for co-sponsoring this exciting event.)

• Saturday, April 15, 9 AM to 5 PM, book fair and concurrent readings, roundtables, workshops, and more at the New Orleans Healing Center, 2372 St. Claude. 

• Saturday, April 15, 7 PM, Main Event featuring Tyehimba Jess and Harmony Holiday, at Cafe Istanbul (inside New Orleans Healing Center.)

• Sunday, April 16, 9 AM to 5 PM, Bookfair and concurrent Readings, Roundtables, Workshops, and more at the New Orleans Healing Center, 2372 St. Claude.

Below are two poems by 2023 NOPF headliners:

Mercy

— by Tyehimba Jess

the war speaks at night
with its lips of shredded children,
with its brow of plastique
and its fighter jet breath,
and then it speaks at daybreak
with the soft slur of money
unfolding leaf upon leaf.
it speaks between the news
programs in the music
of commercials, then sings
in the voices of a national anthem.
it has a dirty coin jingle in its step,
it has a hand of many lost hands,
a palm of missing fingers,
the stump of an arm that it lost
reaching up to heaven, a foot
that digs a trench for its dead.
the war staggers forward,
compelled, inexorable, ticking.
it looks to me
with its one eye of napalm
and one eye of ice,
with its hair of fire
and its nuclear heart,
and yes, it is so human
and so pitiful as it stands there,
waiting for my hand.
it wants to know my answer.
it wants to know how i intend
to show it out of its misery,
and i only want it
to teach me how to kill.

Split This Rock: The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database

This poem is from Palávora, by Salgado Maranhão, translated by Alexis Levitin, published by Diálogos Books.

Original followed by translation:

Palavra

a palavra coexiste no dilúvio
ao açoite do sangue nas pedras.
a palavra é a pedra—e o arquétipo
que dança.
e o tempo do fogo flama
e a memória das águaslavra em
canto e plenilúnio.
a palavra lavra o tempo
naja imaginária
submersa no invisível mar,
godiva do cais dos loucos
deusa do silêncio.
a palavra em si é cio
virtude
a divertir o vício
de saber saber.

Word

the word coexists in the downpour
with the beating of blood on stones.
the word is the stone—the archetype
that dances.
and the time of fire flares
and the memory of waters working the earth
a song, a full-moon spell.
the word works time
a serpentine mirage
submerged in an invisible sea,
godiva of the madmen’s docks,
goddess of silences.
the word itself pure urge
virtue
playing with the vice
of knowing that one knows.