Us: Are you planning on participating in this weekend’s Massachusetts Poetry Festival (May 12, 13, & 14) in Salem?
You: Yes.
Us: Great, it will be a BLAST and it’s sure to leave you burgeoning with poetic fervor.
You: That’s cool.
Us: Exceedingly! Besides, lots of great MCC awardees are taking part. Ben Berman (Poetry Fellow ’08), for instance, is running the Grub Street Poem Generator workshop at Green Land Cafe, 12-1:30 PM, on Saturday, May 14 and reading in Follow the Fellows at the Phillips Library in the Peabody Essex Museum, 4:30-5:45 PM, on the same day. Ben will join a group of other MCC Poetry Fellows.
You: Can I find out more about the participants?
Us: Find out about the Follow the Fellows poets here, and about all of the festival’s poets here. And the following is our own 2008 nano-interview with Ben…
You: Wait, you’re including an interview within an interview? That’s meta.
Us: You meta believe it! Anyway, back to Ben’s nano-interview: three years later, it still makes us giggle. (As with all of our nanos, it’s brief, a bit silly – and did I mention brief?)
ArtSake: What are you working on these days?
Ben: A poem called The Great Molasses Flood (what a tidal!) It’s about The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 that killed 21 people in the North End.
ArtSake: What’s the most surprising reader response you’ve ever received?
Ben: A student once told me that my ears look like they’re made of wax.
ArtSake: Who wins the poets vs. prose writers paintball war?
Ben: The poets – paintball is an amateur sport no place for pros.
The Massachusetts Poetry Festival begins today and continues through Saturday.
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