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Sonoma Poetry Festival - April 2019

by Meg Hamill

California Poets in the Schools (CalPoets), a nationally renowned, 54-year-old nonprofit organization based in Sonoma County, launches the Sonoma Poetry Festival on April 1st – a month-long celebration of local poetry during the month of April – National Poetry Month. Offerings are meant to be accessible by nature, and geared towards families, children and the general public. There are ways for classrooms and workplaces to participate.

All festival opportunities and events can be found here:

https://www.californiapoets.org/sonoma-poetry-festival

This list will continue to grow throughout the month.

The vision for the Sonoma Poetry Festival is to create a public poetry experience by and for the people –incorporating poetry into the daily lives of everyone in our county. Starting in February, the public was invited to submit ideas for poetry projects that were public in nature, with a wide reach. The current listed festival activities reflect the diversity of ideas that came back through this submission process.

The

Sonoma Poetry Festival is inspired by a similar festival in Miami-Dade county put on by the nonprofit O’Miami. The festival is generously supported by The Awesome Foundation (SF Branch), The Billy Graham Memorial Foundation and the County of Sonoma.

About California Poets in the Schools

California Poets in the Schools, a non-profit founded in 1964, is one of the nation's largest literary Artists-in-the-Schools programs. CalPoets serves 28,000 youth throughout California each year. Over 50 trained, professional Poet-Teachers deliver poetry sessions throughout California to students in K-12 classrooms and a variety of other venues, such as children’s homes, juvenile halls and hospitals. Students are empowered to express their creativity, imagination, and intellectual curiosity through writing, performing and publishing their own poetry.

Since its founding in 1964, CalPoets has inspired over one million students in sixty thousand classrooms to create six million poems. Many of the young people reached through our programs are low-income, rural or second language learners. Student poetry is published in an annual, juried statewide anthology. High-school students from many counties are coached by our Poet-Teachers to compete in tiered Poetry Out Loud competitions from the classroom to the national level. Poet-Teachers gather at yearly symposia for ongoing professional development and community building.

www.californiapoets.org

Meg Hamill Executive Director California Poets in the Schools PO Box 1328 Santa Rosa, CA 95402 www.californiapoets.org (ph)415-221-4201

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