10th Little River Poetry Festival: This is How We Do It
It’s the 10th annual Little River Poetry Festival in the meadow on Thunderstruck Road. Katherine and I opened the festival with a new Soulful Aging Tour call-and-response reading titled Ars Poetica.
Poems about poems and writing poems was inspired by the 19 century Roman poet Horace who wrote a long poem called Ars Poetica, which translates to the art of poetry.
We also talked about the process of writing poetry and we interacted with the poets in the big tent who had comments and questions.
Speaking of Don, he may have notebooks full of poetry but he doesn’t use them to read because he knows them by heart.
We had two workshops before dinner. One fun one was led by festival co-founder Judith Stevens that really got our poetry gears rolling.
She titled her poem Evangelica, after a dear LRPF volunteer and poet who recently passed away. Seven lines starting with E words followed. It was a sweet tribute.
First-time poetry festival-goer Mark, who claims not to be a poet but a technical writer, took a shot at it and got a round of applause.
Long-time LRPF-goer Cas led another workshop that involved poetry written for drawn Tarot cards.
There were a couple of open mics, a festival mainstay. It was Rachel Anne’s birthday.
The tent was full. There were three Dons and two Marks in attendance. This Mark was member of the Poets Society of Virginia.
Piper from the Blacksburg poetry readers was featured reader.
Dinner by Adam of Two Trees Catering was fantastic!
There is still time to drop by and check it out today and tomorrow. Drop-ins welcome $20 a day.
Festival Day One is HERE. Day two HERE.
June 7th, 2025 4:30 pm
How wonderful that you filmed this event. I felt as if I were in the audience listening to people read their creative and thought-provoking poetry.
June 7th, 2025 5:00 pm
I have more clips but had to slap it together before I started day 2.