First Mackinac Island Poetry Festival Scheduled for July 28-29

The first Mackinac Island Poetry Festival will take place the weekend of July 28 and 29, featuring four of the "next generation" of important American poets, Susan Firer, Thomas R. Smith, Freya Manfred, and Jim Hazard.

The festival opens at 4 p.m. Friday at the Mackinac Island Public Library with Susan Firer, poet and professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, delivering a new lecture, "American Poetry in Lilacs, Lilacs in

American Poetry," for this Island famous for its lilacs. On Friday evening at 8 p.m. at Little Stone Church, widely published poets Freya Manfred and Thomas R. Smith will read favorites such as "Men's' Tears" and "The Reply" from their latest books, along with new work. On Saturday, July 29, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., Mission Point Resort will host a series of writing workshops by each of the visiting poets, all of whom are revered writing teachers, Firer and Hazard at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee, Freya Manfred at the University of Minnesota, and Thomas R. Smith at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Saturday at 8 p.m., again at Little Stone Church, Mr. Hazard and Ms. Firer will read.

All events will be introduced by Island summer resident Jim Lenfestey, director of the Ojai, California Poetry Festival and the Literary Witnesses poetry series in Minneapolis. All events are free.

Poet Susan Firer grew up along the western shore of Lake Michigan, where she now lives, writes, and works. She is the author of four books of poetry, including "The Laugh We Make When We Fall," winner of the 2002 Backwaters Prize. Her previous collection, "The Lives of the Saints and Everything," won the Cleveland State Poetry Prize and the Posner Award. She is published widely in literary magazines and in anthologizes. Her work is often read on National Public Radio's Writer's Almanac. For many years she worked with the Great

Lakes Poem Band, a collaborative effort joining poems and music.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins says, "To read the poetry of Susan Firer is to enter a unique building constructed by the imagination... These poems reveal a love of language both for its own dear sake and for it's ability to deliver the news some of us cannot live without." The magazine Free Verse adds, "Many recent poets with larger reputations than Firer's have ended up sacrificing feeling to verbal cleverness or vice versa. Firer does neither. As a poet, she has it all."

Ms. Firer is an adjunct professor of English at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee, where she teaches creative writing and literature. She is married and is the mother of three children.

Thomas R. Smith is a poet, essayist, editor, and teacher living in River Falls, Wisconsin. He is the author of three major collections, as well as many chapbooks. He has published hundreds of poems and essays and reviews in periodicals and anthologies in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. His work has been selected for Editor's Choice II and The Best American Poetry and his poems have been read several times on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac on National Public Radio.

As an editor, Mr. Smith introduced a new generation of American readers to the great Canadian poet Alden Nowlan by editing "What Happened When He Went to the Store for Bread: Selected Poems of Alden Nowlan," now in its second edition. He also edited Walking Swiftly, a festschrift for Robert Bly's 65th birthday and is editing a selection of the correspondence between Mr. Bly and the Swedish poet, Tomas Transtrmer.

American Poets from top left: Susan Firer, Thomas R. Smith, bottom left: Freya Manfred, and Jim Hazard.

Mr. Smith has been the regular poetry reviewer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, St. Paul Pioneer Press, and Ruminator Review, among other publications. He teaches poetry classes at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and was recently a guest at the Northrop Frye Literary Center in Moncton, New Brunswick.

Poet Jane Hirshfield says Mr. Smith's poems bring "an eye for the telling image and a tongue for the flavors of truth." Poet Robert Bly puts it this way: "Thomas R. Smith is a spirited poetry-horse riding across the plains of emotion."

Poet Freya Manfred lives with her husband, screenwriter Thomas Pope, and twin sons, near Bass Lake, Wisconsin. She has published five poetry books and her work appeared in many reviews and magazines and

more than 25 anthologies. She has taught advanced poetry at the University of Minnesota and the University of South Dakota and has presented poetry or creative writing workshops in many venues, including Carleton College and Harvard University. Her literary memoir of her novelist father, Frederick Manfred, "A Daughter Remembers," was nominated for a Minnesota Book Award and an Iowa Historical Society Benjamin F. Shambaugh Award. Her half hour poem for television, The Madwoman and the Mask, appeared on public television. Pulitzer Prize winning author Philip Roth says of her work, "Freya Manfred startles me by how close she gets to everything she sees. That's her tough luck, but it makes her a wonderful poet." Former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser calls her work "lovely and moving."

Poet and celebrated teacher James Hazard is the author of many poetry collections, including "The Thief of Kisses" (Great Lakes Books) and "A Hive of Souls: News and Selected Poems". Mr. Hazard is a professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a revered teacher, and a regular contributor to Milwaukee Magazine.

The Mackinac Island Poetry Festival is a program of the Mackinac Island Arts Council, supported by a grant from the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs.