On April 19th, the 5th Street Coffee and Bagel Shop will sponsor a poetry festival from noon – 3 p.m. at the Innovation Center in downtown. They will read and write poems, including those that are from the distributed notebooks. They will also have a booth for spontaneous writing. The event is a part of the Richmond Community Poetry Effort.

From Newslink Indiana: An Earlham college professor and his students are urging people in Richmond to participate in an effort to bring back poetry to the community.

English professor David Ebenbach started the Richmond Community Poetry Effort, which is funded by a grant from the college. The effort distributed composition notebooks to different establishments. They hope that people who see the notebooks will write in them.

“Its not that people are petrified and it’s not that poetry is a bad four-letter word. It’s just that people aren’t given the resources or the opportunity to share poems,” said Earlham senior Gabriel Kalmuss-Katz.  continue reading »

From the Pal-Item: Indianapolis poet Fran Quinn will give a public reading of his work at 4 p.m. Tuesday in the community room of Whitewater Hall on the Indiana University East campus.

After the reading, Quinn will serve as guest lecturer in an evening creative writing course, "Vision and Revision." The university's division of humanities and fine arts has arranged Quinn's visit, which is not his first. "He has visited us before to speak, read to classes, and teach magazine editing skills to our students," said T.J. Rivard, chairman of the division. "His visit here will give students the opportunity to work with an established writer and to learn more from his experiences in writing, publishing and editing. "... Quinn is a very engaging reader and never fails to surprise and delight his audience," Rivard said. Quinn's poetry collections include "Milk of the Lioness," "The Goblet Crying for Wine" and "A Horse of Blue Ink." For more information, call (765) 973-8229.  continue reading »