Roxbury Poetry Festival

The Schedule

10:00am - 11:15am

Panels & Workshops

Journalism 101

Facilitated by Cristela Guerra

Before working in public radio, she was a newspaper journalist for more than a decade, working at The Boston Globe and The News-Press in Fort Myers, Florida. She is one of 24 journalists from around the world selected for the 2024 class of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Her work received a regional and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2014 and most recently received another regional Edward R. Murrow in 2023 as part of “Continuing Coverage” for her work at the U.S.-Mexico border on the journey of Venezuelans migrants. She was chosen as a 2019 Latina Leader by Amplify Latinx and selected by YW Boston to be inducted into its 2023 Academy of Women Achievers and receive the organization’s Sylvia Ferrell-Jones Award. They are the vice-president of the New England Chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, vice-chair of the board at RAW Art Works, and a board member at The Jar.

Cristela Guerra is a senior arts and culture reporter at WBUR in Boston, a queer Panamanian journalist of color, and a moderator who facilitates and leads conversations around race, identity, and equity.

Not Poetry: Word Play With A Purpose!

Workshop by Regie Gibson

since he was a kid. After doing so, and studying the craft of writing and performing poetry for decades, he has gathered and developed many techniques to open the creative mind. This will be a lively writing workshop for students who want to write without all the rules. Let's peep under the left and right sides of the brain and see what peeps back!

Literary Performer, Educator, and Former National Poetry Slam Champion, Regie Gibson, has been having fun with language

Dreamscape: Future of Roxbury II

Panel Discussion by Eric “Pops” Esteves

others to discuss a dreamscape for Roxbury's future. This discussion will be curated by Eric “Pops” Esteves.

This panel discussion will explore the past and presentfuture of Roxbury. It offers a space for natives, transplants and

11:30am - 12:45pm

Workshops & Panels

How We Take Up Space: A poetic workshop on spatial justice

Workshop by Nakia Hill

The space we live in can have negative as well as positive consequences on everything we do.

In this workshop, poets, writers, and beautiful beings will reflect on the concept of spatial justice and how that shows up in their mind, body, and personal life. Together, we will redefine spatial justice. Then, craft and share original poems on our collective and individual concepts.

Note: All participants must come prepared to be empowered to be vulnerable + ready to take up space on the page and mic.

Spatial justice involves “the fair and equitable distribution in space of socially valued resources and opportunities to use them” (Soja 2009).

Intro to Screenwriting: Learn the Basics in 90 Minutes

Workshop by Paloma Valenzuela

This class is a great place to start! In this introductory workshop, we will start with idea generation and then move to structure, format, and a discussion of software and online resources to begin your script. From there, we will study scenes, feature length plot structure. This class is meant to be for beginners and by the end of this fast-paced workshop students will walk away with basic knowledge of screenwriting to give them the foundation to continue bringing their script ideas to life!

Do you have an idea for a feature length screenplay, but you aren't sure how to begin?

Culture as Container: How Identities Serve as Forms for Writing

Reading & Panel by Quintin Collins, Imani Davis, Matthew E. Henry and Sarah Kersey

Plot lines, images, and other craft elements take on some unique approaches, creating containers that the writers find themselves within or rail against from piece to piece. Four writers will read from their poetry and discuss how their cultural backgrounds serve as forms for their work, highlighting specific craft elements in their own work and work of their kin writers, as well as distinct aspects of craft that they see as originating from within their communities.

Identity and ancestry can create recurring signatures in writing.

1:00pm - 2:15pm ET

Lunchtime Reading & Craft Talk

This lunchtime keynote will feature poet and professor, Nate Marshall. Lunch will be provided for festival participants Nate Marshall is an award-winning writer, editor, educator, and MC. His most recent book, Finna, was recognized as one of the best books of 2020 by NPR and The New York Public Library. His first book, Wild Hundreds, was honored with the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s award for Poetry Book of the Year and The Great Lakes College Association’s New Writer Award. He was also an editor of The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. Marshall co-wrote the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks with Eve Ewing. He also wrote the audio drama Bruh Rabbit & The Fantastic Telling of Remington Ellis, Esq., which was produced by Make-Believe Association. Marshall records hip-hop as a solo artist and with the group Daily Lyrical Product.

2:30pm - 3:45pm ET

Workshops & Readings

Transitions and Seasons: When things we love are no longer

Youth Writing Workshop + Mic by Alondra Bobadilla

We discussed that odd and complex combination of feelings when you want to move on but also want to start fresh. When you want to relive something, but have to accept that it’s changed. It’s that icky and odd space in between the process of something ending and the process of something new taking its place. Poets in this workshop will spend time writing about the inbetween, non existent transitional space, the white page.

This workshop sprouted from a conversation I had with a good writer friend of mine over a poem she sent me.

Poetry and Songwriting Inspired by Mediation

Workshop by Naomi Westwater

allow you to relax and come back to yourself, and then, from a place of calm, begin to write. We will start with a visualization meditation on nature, then move into a free write, and end the workshop focusing on writing lyrics or a poem in the form of a villanelle. This workshop is open for poets and/or songwriters.

Often as writers we find it hard to tap into creativity with the constant pull and stress of daily life. This workshop is designed to

S(Mothering)

Facilitated by Crystal Valentine, Anna Ross, and Yara Liceaga-Rojas

Poet will explore motherhood in all of its glorious, and inglorious ways.

This curated reading and discussion will feature poets who write about their mothers, or who write about mothers.

4:00pm - 5:15pm ET

Workshops & Readings

How to Write a Poem

Writing Workshop by Eileen Myles

and space and what they do in general and then we'll write one poem at least on the spot and I'll leave you with a list of ways you can make another poem and then another instantly without getting in your own way. My philosophy is make more poems rather fixing one over and over. So this is a lots of poems workshop as a matter of fact.

This is a sophisticated workshop for beginners and advanced folks. We will look at a handful of poems and think about how they manage time

BARS with Brandie Blaze

Writing Workshop by Brandie Blaze

Blaze will move through, instructing folks on how to write a bar while also adding nuance to ensure your voice, tone, rhyme is as slick as its intended to be. All levels are welcome

This writing workshop with MC Brandie Blaze is an introduction to the structural song unit of a rap BAR.

If You Can Feel It, You Can Speak It

Open Mic Movement by Jha D, D Ruff, If You Can Feel It

This space is open to all. Come, sign up to read something you just wrote, sign up to read your favorite please or just attend and listen! Sign up sheets will be available on site.

Boston's only monthly open mic movement dedicated to voices & experiences of the LGBTQ+ communities of color.

5:30pm - 6:30pm ET

Keynote Address w/ Hanif Abdaraquib

His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain't Worth Much, was released in June 2016 from Button Poetry. It was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in winter 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. He released Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest with University of Texas press in February 2019. The book became a New York Times Bestseller, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. His second collection of poems, A Fortune For Your Disaster, was released in 2019 by Tin House, and won the 2020 Lenore Marshall Prize. His newest release, A Little Devil In America (Random House, 2021) was a winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burn Prize, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pen/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award . In 2021, Abdurraqib was named a MacArthur Fellow. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times.

7:00pm - 9:00pm ET

Publisher’s Poetry Slam

This poetry slam is taking place at the Bruce C Bolling Building. It will be filmed by Button Poetry and allots the winner of the slam, a local writer, a chapbook deal from the publisher, Button Poetry. This event is only open to poets living in Massachusetts. Hosted by Harlym 125.

More info about the slam