Readings! Workshops! Panel Discussions! New Book Club! Craft Talks! Portfolio Consultations! Special Features! Lunch! Dinner! Silent Auction! More! (Stay tuned for the April 25-27, 2025 Poetry at Round Top schedule. The 2024 schedule below will give you a sense of the weekend’s flow.)
Mark Doty will offer our Saturday afternoon craft talk at P@RT 2025 on
Poetry and the Inner Life
My friend, the luminous poet Tracy K. Smith has a new book of prose coming from Norton called THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE IS FEAR: Poetry as a Spiritual Technology. “Spiritual technology” is an apt description of what we’re doing when we write and read poetry; paying the closest attention we can to feeling, thinking and perceiving, and to the language we use to represent them. Poetry, of all the arts. is perhaps the most capable of representing subjectivity. Because we have the epic of Gilgamesh, and The Book or Job, Song of Myself and Emily Dickinson’s Wild Nights, we have access to souls we could reach in no other way, we have the passionate and desolate treasury of what it has meant to be human. In our time individuality, interiority, reading and even attention seem under siege. Reading and writing may not be the cure, but this talk will focus on poetry’s power to bring thinking and feeling together, to shift our perceptions, build empathy and sustain hope.
2024 Festival Schedule
Friday, April 19
3:30 p.m. Time to Write or Optional Workshops or Portfolio Consultations
- Kimiko Hahn, “Talking Back”
- James Crews, “The Wonder of Small Things: Mindful Description in Poetry”
- Nick Courtright, “The Magic of Directness”
Portfolio Consultations
- David Meischen
- William Wenthe
5:00 p.m. Panel Discussion: “Heartfulness”
Danusha Laméris, James Crews, ire’ne lara silva, José Antonio Rodríguez
6:00 p.m. Dinner
7:30 p.m. Silent Auction opens
8:00 p.m. Featured Readings
Danusha Laméris
Naomi Shihab Nye
Book Signing and Kafe Kaffeine, Round Top Fellows Reading, to follow immediately
Saturday, April 20
9:00 a.m. After-Breakfast New Books Club! hosted by Cindy Huyser
A showcase of new books by our P@RT community members
10:30 a.m. Open Mic or Optional Workshops or Manuscript Consultations
- Naomi Shihab Nye, “Earth Verse”
- Danusha Laméris, “Strata”
- William Wenthe, “Metaphor and Simile: The Inner Workings”
Portfolio Consultations
- David Meischen
12:00 p.m. On Craft
Poetic Closure: Ending a Poem with Resonance by Kimiko Hahn
So often a poem feels abandoned in the final lines, as if the writer just wanted to get the revision over with. So often, the endings feel tacked on or just good-enough. How to take the poem further and deeper? My talk will describe how tools of craft can enable a writer to find resonance.
1:00 p.m. Lunch
2:30 p.m. On Craft
You, You, You: The Art of the Lyric Address in Poetry by Pádraig Ó Tuama
A poem is a word event going in many directions at once. Sometimes the you of a poem is a specific person, other times it’s the poet, other times it’s a general audience, and still other times, there’s no you at all, so the poem addresses itself to the world. In this talk, Pádraig Ó Tuama will explore the direction, implication and inspiration contained in poetic verse.
3:30 p.m. Featured Readings
José Antonio Rodríguez
James Crews
Book signing to follow immediately
4:30 p.m. Open Mic Optional Workshops
- ire’ne lara silva, “Contemplating Mortality to Fuel Your Writing Practice”
- David Meischen, “Writing the Prose Poem”
Portfolio Consultations
- William Wenthe
6:00 p.m. Dinner
7:45 p.m. Silent Auction closes
8:00 p.m. Featured Readings
Kimiko Hahn
Pádraig Ó Tuama
Book Signing and Reception to follow immediately
Sunday, April 21
9:00 a.m. Distance Avails Not! Hosted by Judy Jensen
10:15 a.m. Featured Reading
ire’ne lara silva
11:00 a.m. Time to Write or Optional Workshops
- Pádraig Ó Tuama, “Poetry and Story”
- José Antonio Rodríguez, “Setting and Writing the Self”
- David Meischen, “Intersections of the Other and the Personal in the Ekphrastic Poem”
Portfolio Consultations:
- William Wenthe
12:30 p.m. Garden Party and P@RT Anthology Reading