CARRBORO — When Patrick Herron was selected as
Carrboro’s poet laureate last year, someone asked him
what he hoped to do with his new position of poetic
authority.
“I wanted to host a poetry festival,” said Herron,
whose one-year term as poet laureate expires in July.
“That was really the main reason I wanted to become poet
laureate.
“I know poets from all over the country, but, oddly
enough, I don’t know that many here. I thought a
festival would be a great opportunity to bring together
poets from other places and poets from this area.”
He’s doing just that. For the inaugural Carrboro
Poetry Festival, to be held at the Carrboro Century
Center Saturday and Sunday, Herron has put together a
lineup of 40 poets from down the block and across the
country. Poets will take turns reading, for 15 minutes
at a time, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and from noon
to 9 p.m. Sunday.
Admission is free.
“You can come and go, stay all day or just listen to
one or two, whatever you want to do,” Herron said.
“There’s going to be such a range of different stuff
that you’re bound to find some things to your taste.”
The collection is diverse in every way: age, race,
gender, subject, style, approach, publication history,
place of residence and so on.
“It’s a real stew,” Herron said. “It’s a really good
mix. The criteria for selection were extremely
subjective: I picked people whose work I really liked.
And I like people who work in styles that are all over
the map. Overly intellectual mannered poetry, slam,
elliptical, you name it.
“I never went the MFA route. I just sort of made my
own way, and it’s worked out really well. One nice side
effect of that is that I don’t owe anybody favors, I
don’t have to worry about tenure, I don’t have to worry
about getting published, I don’t have to worry about
somebody helping me get a job. So I could pick anybody I
wanted and ask them to come. A flattering number of them
said yes.”
Some of the poets scheduled to appear are nationally
renowned, published in highly regarded journals and
anthologies. Others haven’t yet produced ripples that
spread quite so far — but that’s part of the appeal of
the whole thing, said local poet Paul Jones, who is
slated to appear.
“Some of them I know, and some I’ve never heard of,”
said Jones, creator and editor of the Internet Poetry
Archive and winner of the 1990 North Carolina Writers
Network Poetry Chapbook Prize. “That’s one of the great
things about it. We’re going to hear so many different
voices, so many different approaches.
“I love that this is happening. There’s always been
poetry in Carrboro; it’s just not always in a
concentrated public display. I think it’s going to be
wonderful.”
Among the more prominent national poets who will
perform are Brian Henry, editor of the journal Verse and
founder of Verse Press; Linh Dinh, whose work has been
anthologized in “Best American Poetry 2000”; and Lee Ann
Brown, winner of the New American Poetry Prize.
Among the local poets set to appear are Herron,
Jones, Jeffery Beam, Jay Bryan, Judy Hogan, Michael Ivy,
Lou Lipsitz, David Manning and Andrea Selch. Other North
Carolina poets on the list include Carl Martin, Gerald
Barrax, Jaki Shelton Green, John Balaban and shirlette
ammons.
“There are so many good poets around here, but they
don’t get heard a lot,” Herron said. “They deserve to.”
Herron and the Carrboro Recreation and Parks
Department had to work quickly to arrange such an
ambitious festival in such a short time.
“Patrick has done an incredible job putting this
together,” Carrboro Mayor Mike Nelson said. “I think
he’s taken this far beyond what any of us imagined. I
think it’s going to be great.”
