Poetry Events in Tampa Bay – 2023

Happy National Poetry month! I hope you all sent a few haiku to OLLI Connects.

St. Pete hosts its first City of Writers Poetry Festival. Click here for more Information. And follow this link for events throughout April in St. Pete for the inaugural City of Writers Poetry Festival.

From Creative Loafing:

In recognition of National Poetry Month, the Hillsborough County Library hosts Poetry & Jazz, a reading at the Brandon Regional Library Sunday, April 27 at 2:00 p.m. (619 Vonderburg Drive, 813-744-5630). The reading will feature jazz by bassist Michael Ross and saxophonist Jack Wilkins and readings by two well-known poets who live in the area and two up-and-coming poets. Their work is featured on these pages.

The reading also presents the winners of the library’s Wit Lit Poetry Contest, in which contestants were instructed to write their own humorous poem or a parody of a well-known poem. George M. Jenner won first place for “The Shell Game,” a sibilant parody of “She Sells Seashells,” and Thomas E. Schott won second place for “He Sawed off the Limb He Was Sitting On,” a take-off of “Jack Be Nimble” and other children’s rhymes.

National Poetry Month readings at Eckerd College

To celebrate National Poetry Month, the Eckerd College Creative Arts Collegium is bringing in three award-winning poets for readings on campus and at the Salvador Dalí Museum on April 6th, April 12th and April 20th.

At 7 p.m. on April 6th, Irish poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama, whose work centers on themes of language, power, conflict and religion, will share selections of his work at Eckerd College’s James Center for Molecular and Life Sciences.

In conjunction with the Dalí Museum’s monthly “Poetry at the Dalí,” series, Victoria Chang will read from her upcoming book of poems, “With My Back to the World,” in the Dalí Museum Will Raymund Theater at 6:30 p.m. on April 12th. Chang is a Guggenheim Fellow whose poetry collection “OBIT” was named a New York Times Notable Book and a TIME Must-Read Book and received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry and the PEN/Voelcker Award.

At 7 p.m. on April 20th, Iranian-born poet and educator Rooja Mohassessy will have a reading at Eckerd College’s Helmar and Enole Nielsen Center for Visual Arts. Mohassessya is a MacDowell Fellow and the author of “When Your Sky Runs Into Mine,” which won the 22nd annual Elixir Poetry Prize.

For more information, go to Eckerd College events.

–Cath Mason

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