Over 20,000 people attended the 2008 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, the largest poetry festival in North America.  The biennial event was held at Waterloo Village in Stanhope, New Jersey, about an hour from Manhattan, from September 25 to 28.  It has been declared “the new Woodstock” by the Christian Science Monitor, and called “Wordstock” by The New York Times. 

Bohemian poetry aficionados and, well, regular suburbanites alike enjoyed featured poetry readings by heavy-hitters like former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins, Mark Doty, Franz Wright, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Lucille Clifton.  The festival has been recorded and broadcast on PBS Television, and now even has a presence on facebook and YouTube.  (Who said poetry was old-fashioned?)

According to festival director Jim Haba, who has led the festival since it began in 1986, ”We have an archive of 2,000 hours of broadcast quality video, often with multiple cameras, and broadcast quality audio. It’s a completely extraordinary collection.”

Aside from the captivating poetry, one of the most memorable moments involved some political commentary from the 72-year-old Clifton, who told the mostly left-leaning crowd, “We have a vice-presidential candidate who shoots caribou.  Well, I like caribou.”  Oh, that Sarah Palin…she shows up just about everywhere these days.

For more information, visit www.dodgepoetry.org or Poets Online – the blog.

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