The poems will go on.
Bookstock has folded, but a dozen acclaimed poets from around the country who were slated to appear at Woodstock’s 15-year-old literary festival will give readings at the inaugural Woodstock Poetry Festival next month.
Coproduced by Bookstock, Sundog Poetry and North Universalist Chapel Society, the new event takes place on Friday and Saturday, June 21 and 22 — the same weekend that Bookstock would have happened — the presenters announced on Thursday.
Three-time U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky, MacArthur fellow and former Vermont poet laureate Ellen Bryant Voigt, National Book Award winner Martín Espada and National Poetry Series winner (and former Vermonter) Alexandria Hall are among the poets scheduled to read their work.
Hall and Guggenheim fellow Cate Marvin will run poetry workshops, festival program director Chard deNiord said. Other events include readings by Poetry Society of Vermont members, a reception for poets and festivalgoers, and a performance by Los Lorcas, the poetry-music fusion trio of poets Partridge Boswell and Peter Money and guitarist Nat Williams.
All events are free and will be held at North Chapel in Woodstock.
Bookstock cofounder and board chair Peter Rousmaniere said conflicting visions for Bookstock forced its closure, which he announced on April 15. The literary festival relied on dozens of volunteers and spanned multiple sites, he said, and some participants wanted to see a large festival that attracted attendees from out-of-state, while others preferred a smaller affair catered to locals.
When some organizations decided not to participate, putting on the festival was no longer feasible, Rousmaniere said.
When he relayed the festival closure news to deNiord, a former Vermont poet laureate who was Bookstock’s poetry director, Rousmaniere said, “it took us about 10 minutes to figure out a way of continuing the poetry track.”
Poetry was a strong component of Bookstock from the beginning, Rousmaniere said. Over the years, the literary festival featured more than 75 poets, including Donald Hall, the New Hampshire poet who was a two-time Guggenheim fellow and the 14th U.S. poet laureate; Richard Blanco, who read his poem “One Today” at president Barack Obama’s second inauguration; and Louise Glück, the late Vermont poet who won a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award and the Nobel Prize in Literature.
“So therefore, when we closed Bookstock, it was very easy to continue the poetry section because it sort of had a life of its own,” Rousmaniere said. The fiction and nonfiction events will not occur this year, Rousmaniere said, though he indicated that they, too, may return.
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