INKubator coming- and it's free

Literary Cleveland says:

CLEVELAND INKUBATOR, REGION’S LARGEST FREE ANNUAL FESTIVAL FOR WRITERS AND READERS, SET FOR MONDAY JULY 24th – SATURDAY JULY 29th

Literary Cleveland, a nonprofit organization committed to nurturing a vibrant community of readers and writers in Northeast Ohio, is hosting the third annual Cleveland Inkubator in partnership with Cleveland Public Library from Monday July 24th – Saturday July 29th.

Cleveland Inkubator, Northeast Ohio’s largest free annual festival for writers and readers, will offer an array of free performances, readings and social events as well as a day-long literary conference packed with workshops and craft talks on July 29th.

Inkubator is made by possible with the support of Cleveland Public Library and the residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

“Literary Cleveland continues to put Cleveland’s literary scene on the map and work with partners to build a strong community of writers and readers,” says director Lee Chilcote. “Over the past two years, we’ve helped thousands of people connect with Northeast Ohio’s diverse writing community, learn from professional and amateur writers, and share their talents with the public. Inkubator is a big part of that!"

The schedule for the FREE Cleveland Inkubator includes:

• Monday 7/24, 7:00-9 pm: Read Ohio: Janice Lowe, New York-based author of Leaving CLE: Poems of Nomadic Dispersal, a musical performance, reading and author talk at the Bop Stop in Ohio City
• Tuesday 7/25, 6:30-9 pm: Second annual Lit Cleveland Book Swap at Market Garden Brewery
• Wednesday 7/26, 7:00-9 pm: Between the Lines with Detroit-area writers Kelly Fordon and Laura Hulthen Thomas at the Happy Dog at the Euclid Tavern
• Thursday 7/27, 7:00-8 pm: Crossing Borders: Immigrant Narratives performance on Public Square
• Friday 7/28, 6:30-9 pm: Lit Cleveland Live: Open Mic Night at Cleveland Public Library Eastman Reading Garden
• Saturday 7/29 all day (8:30am-5 pm): Cleveland Inkubator literary conference, readings, craft talks and workshops in Cleveland Public Library’s Stokes Wing

The full schedule for 2017’s Cleveland Inkubator can be found on our website. Literary Cleveland’s mission is to create and nurture a vibrant literary arts community in Northeast Ohio.

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Free all-day writers’ conference on Saturday, 7/29!

http://www.litcleveland.org/cleveland-inkubator.html

• An Inkubator Who's Who
• Registration link

Quotidian words, or enigmatic riddles- what should poetry be?

In the New York Times, Matthew Zapruder wrote "One of the great pleasures of reading poetry is to feel words mean what they usually do in everyday life...".  He suggests that a good poem never hides its meaning:

• Understanding Poetry Is More Straightforward Than You Think
• Matthew Zapruder Celebrates Poetry’s ‘True Strangeness’ (commentary by Harriet Staff)

But now, commenting to the note on the Poetry Foundation's site, poet and translator Johannes Göransson disagrees.  He suggests that sometimes good poems do hide their meaning:

• To Vibrebrate: In Defense of Strangeness

He says "Zapruder mostly reiterates a dominant U.S. rhetoric about poetry and art, a rhetoric that tends to dismiss the excessive and the strange, emphasizing the importance of "accessible" poetry", and suggests "If we can leave behind the constant injunction of our gatekeepers and tastemakers to comply with aesthetics of the "straightforward," we can embrace intense meadows and ecstatic riddles. Jäderlund, Hopkins, Zurita, Lynch, Jefferson all offer a different route, an ecstatic, visionary route that says: poetry is a strange force that can take over your minds and bodies, transport you out of what you think you know and take you into a new kind of mysterious knowledge."

A new battle in an old war.  But, does a weird and ecstatic poem necessarily have to be one that can't be literal? Possibly they're both right.