28-04-2025
Cleveland Poetry Festival returns this weekend
Literary Cleveland's annual poetry festival returns this weekend with a jam-packed lineup of readings, workshops and panel discussions.
State of play: The literary arts nonprofit has hosted the Cleveland Poetry Festival since 2022 to celebrate the work of regional poets and engage the community.
Driving the news: This year's festival theme is "The Body Politic" and will focus on the physical bodies of poets and poetry's role in the current political moment.
Visiting poets include Ajanaé Dawkins from Columbus, Aditi Machado from Cincinnati, Brittany Rogers from Detroit and Sony Ton-Aime from Pittsburgh.
Festival events include:
Friday: An opening reading hosted by the CSU Poetry Center at Transformer Station in Ohio City.
Saturday: A "poetry crawl" with readings at six local bookstores on Indie Bookstore Day.
Sunday: Workshops and panel discussions at CMA Community Arts Center at PIVOT.
What we're watching: After the crawl on Saturday, the Cleveland Review of Books and Community Mausoleum will host a bonus reading in the parking lot of the Cedar Lee movie theatre.
All poems will be parking lot-related.
The last word: "...poetry is not a shopping list, a casual disquisition on the colors of the sky, a soporific daydream, or a bumpersticker sloganeering," wrote poet June Jordan.
