(Be)longing: The Serra Poetry Festival celebrates its seventh year | Entertainment

“I’m excited to visit Grass Valley and the Sierra Poetry Festival, which I’ve fallen in love with from afar,” Herrick said. “Thoughtful organizers, a stellar lineup, and a wonderful poetry community are sure to make for an inspiring day.”

The Sierra Poetry Festival is a live, international festival that brings together the poetry community for a day of workshops, spoken word performances and highlights two of Nevada County’s cultural regions identified by the California Arts Council: Grass Valley-Nevada City and Terra base.

“This year’s Sierra Poetry Festival offers a very diverse range of sounds and a wealth of ways to interact with those sounds,” said Maxima Kahn, a programmer for the festival and a member of the festival committee. “From poetic scores to in-depth conversations to workshops to poetic films. With California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick’s off-keynote address on this year’s (Be)longing theme, this year’s festival delves into our who we are, how we form our identities, and the role poetry plays in helping us express our uniqueness and our individuality.”

Poets for Saturday’s performance and workshop include Dorianne Laux, a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Joseph Miller, recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts fellowship; Jamaica Baldwin ) is associate editor of Prairie Schooner, whose debut collection of poetry, Bone Language, is published this month by YesYes Books, and Maw Shein Win, a Burmese-American poet, editor, and educator, whose latest book, The Spiritual House Storage Unit for the Spirit House was shortlisted for the Northern California Book Award and the Golden Poppy Award, and Sacramento’s Poet Laureate Indigo Moor, whose credits include Tap-Root, In the Room of Thirsts & Hungers and Through the Stonecutter’s Window.

The festival will also feature live conversations with poet, essayist and teacher Mark Tredinnick and Aboriginal artist and author Judith Nangala Crispin.

“Why a poetry festival of any kind is a legitimate question, and the answer is because it’s both art and story, and we need both,” said Catharine Bramkamp of the poetry festival committee. She is also a board member of the Nevada County Arts Council. “Poetry nourishes our souls by illuminating our world with words we never considered before. Poetry makes the world a better place and a more creative place. Who wouldn’t want to indulge in a day of beauty and belonging?”

“Since the earliest humans saw the sun rise, heard the birdsong, cried of loss, and celebrated success, people have longed to share these things: through storytelling, painting, chanting, singing—eventually, as the alphabet and printing Machines, efforts to preserve those descriptions, condolences, and praises,” said Sands Hall, a programmer for the Sierra Poetry Festival. “Our word ‘poet’ comes from ‘maker’, and indeed, like those early humanoids, we continue to ‘make’ the world by reflecting it in our art, words and songs.

“Through readings and workshops, music and/or the open mic, the Sierra Poetry Festival offers our community an opportunity to engage in fun that is not only timeless but necessary,” Hall said.

Unity of knowledge and action What: Seventh Annual Sierra Leone Poetry Festival Where: Arts Center, 314 West Main St., Grass Valley when: Saturday, April 15 at 9:00 am Tickets and Information: www.sierrapoetryfestival.org Or call 530-264-7031 {related_content_uuid}7ee6848f-dc0d-4261-b0da-c74e072220cd{/related_content_uuid}

On the cover, artist Cirque du Soleil and international performer Mikhail Usov shared “The Fisherman” at last year’s Sierra Poetry Festival. In addition to a variety of performers, this year’s festival will also offer budding poets the opportunity for an open-mic reading at 5:30 p.m. | PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo {related_content_uuid}16a7ad3c-312f-4ad5-8ff3-21437c2dec0d{/related_content_uuid}