NORTHAMPTON — Flabbergasted. Brick. Stripes.
With a single word at a time and 5-minute sessions, Adam Grabowski created poems one after another, on-demand, for lovers of language from the front porch of the Florence Civic Center on Saturday afternoon.
The cacophony of clickety-clack from the Holyoke resident’s typewriter blended with the resonance of a poet with a baritone speaking voice reciting free verse beneath a green-and-white-striped big top tent of the Florence Poetry Carnival.
The community art event, which came at the tail-end of National Poetry Month, melded games and art together to present poetry as an inclusive and demographically accessible expressive art, according to the event’s organizer, Rachel Cyrene Blackman.
Through her research, Blackman said, she has never found another event like it.
“I wanted to bring something unique to this funky little village,” she said. “This carnival — not a festival — makes poetry accessible to all through interactive activities.”
In 2019, Blackman, who is also a writer and visual artist, helped to organize the first poetry carnival. She had hopes to expand the event in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic put those plans on pause.
On Saturday, the big top tent also featured the likes of some students from Smith College, who designed carnival-style games, such as one that included balloons and darts.
With one dart in hand, 5-year-old Brock Johnson of Amherst lunged a dart at the chair of balloons, popping one and exposing a paragraph of words. While his twin sister Audrey Johnson lined up to pop her own balloon, Brock sat down with his random paragraph of words and Smith College student Eva Weigand-Whittier.
“Each balloon has a different set of lines, sentences or even a paragraph from a random book that we hope helps inspire people to write a poem of their own,” said Weigand-Whittier.
The Johnson siblings and their father, Ben Johnson, attended the carnival in support of Jane McPhetres Johnson, their grandmother and mother, respectively. Jane McPhetres Johnson, who is the author of “Maven Reaches Mars: Home Poems and Space Probes in Four Fascicles,” shared some of her poetry at the afternoon event. The book features a collection of her poems curated through her life and touch upon topics like climate change and her family.
“We came to support and watch Mimi,” said Ben Johnson.
In addition to the poetry-themed games and frivolity, the carnival also featured a poetry stroll around downtown Florence led by Tommy Twilite, the Beat Poet Laureate of Massachusetts.
Inside the Florence Civic Center were tables set up with poetry-themed craft making and ’zine-making as well as a petition to support House Bill No. 3383, which seeks to create a poet laureate position for Massachusetts. Although individual cities in the state celebrate their own poet laureates, Massachusetts is one of four states that do not have a position for a poet laureate. The others are New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
The petition was launched with the help of community art volunteer Liesl Swogger and state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, D-Northampton.
The Tourism, Arts and Cultural Development Committee recommended in March that the bill, which is sponsored by state Rep. Sarah K. Peake, D-Provincetown, ought to pass and be referred to the House Ways and Means Committee. Attempts to create the position have been made in the past few years, but have not been successful.
“It seems sort of ridiculous that all these other states have a poet laureate, but Massachusetts doesn’t,” said Blackman. “So, we felt it seemed pretty important for a poetry carnival to highlight that.”
Emily Thurlow can be reached at ethurlow@gazettenet.com.
