19, traveling to New York for a seven-hour stopover, then heading westward toward Los Angeles over the course of 76 hours. The train will depart South Station on the evening of Sept. Now in its third year, Poetry Train is honoring Sylvia Plath, which means the festival will begin its 19-state and 64-city-and-town sojourn from Boston. To celebrate his 50th birthday, Erik van Loon, Dutch artist, activist, and literary rabble-rouser (he founded a bookstore in the Netherlands called House of Craziness), organized a cross-country train-based poetry festival, each year honoring a dead poet. Train-based festival honoring dead poets celebrates Sylvia Plath On the day of its opening, a handwritten sign in the window read “Welcome! Open today while still working hard to organize and alphabetize.” Rodney’s is open Monday-Saturday noon-9 p.m. Shaw named the store after his dog, who died the same year the Hyannis shop opened. Rodney’s got its start in Hyannis in 1996 before Shaw moved the business to Cambridge in 2000. (Raven, which had occupied the space since 2015, recently moved to Shelburne Falls in Western Mass.) The new Rodney’s is smaller than the Central Square location, about a third of the size, which will mean a tighter focus on books, with a basement area for keeping stock. Rodney’s reopened earlier this month in Harvard Square, taking over the space previously occupied by Raven Used Books at 23 Church St. Owner Shaw Taylor said at the time that he’d be keeping his eye out for another good home for the bookstore, and he found one recently in Cambridge. Rodney’s occupied a central spot in Central Square for over two decades, a singular shop for used books, vintage posters, and sturdy bookshelves for sale, but the end of a lease just as the pandemic began forced the place to close, and a bank took over the space. In short, Portland Book Festival’s new iteration celebrates contemporary literature in a way that feels, well, contemporary.Sara Deniz Akant won the Massachusetts Book Award in poetry. “The idea that you can have a festival of books and ideas that’s incredibly fun to be at, all distilled into downtown with a huge book fair and an entire museum, for $15 -$25 - this is something that could only happen in Portland.” “When you think of Portland’s profile, it’s a cool town with great food and wine and people who love to read and are serious about the arts,” says Proctor. Andrew Proctor, Executive Director of Literary Arts When you think of Portland’s profile, it’s a cool town with great food and wine and people who love to read and are serious about the arts. The festival is packed with on-stage author conversations, interviews, panels, interactive Q&A’s, pop-up readings in galleries and coffee shops, kids’ story times, live music, an expanded book fair and - in true Portland fashion - food trucks parked outside on festival day. (Other venues include the nearby Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, Powell’s City of Books, Pioneer Place, The Northwest Children’s Theater and School and Rontoms). As the festival’s rebooted primary venue, the museum provides a backdrop for art, history and culture to merge with conversation, books and ideas. But its original incarnation, held at the expansive Oregon Convention Center through–2013, wasn’t quite the “metaphorical public square” that Literary Arts Executive Director Andrew Proctor, the festival’s new leader, had in mind.Įnter the Portland Art Museum. When 8,500 people descended on the Portland Art Museum for the revived Portland Book Festival (formerly “Wordstock”) in 2015, the message to its new organizer, Literary Arts, was clear: Portlanders love to get their read on, and this festival - missing in action for more than two years - had not been forgotten.įounded in 2005 by local writer Larry Colton and renamed in 2018, the annual festival always featured an impressive lineup of local and national authors and a book fair.
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