Teen poets will read their work as part of U.S. poetry’s biggest bash
By: Carolyn Foote Edelmann
Since 1986, the biennial Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival has been bringing many of the world’s and the nation’s most noteworthy poets to New Jersey, as well as spotlighting the state’s own poets. The festival is the single biggest poetry event in the English-speaking world, attracting audiences from near and far for readings, colloquies and concerts.
The 2004 festival, which took place at Duke Farms in Hillsborough, quite overwhelmed the site as some 19,000 attendees turned out in the pouring rain. This year’s festival, which has returned to historic Waterloo Village in Stanhope, opens on Thursday, Sept. 28, and will feature a special event that deserves special attention a reading by the 19 winners of Dodge’s statewide High School Poetry Contest.
Among the winners are Yannick LeJacq of Princeton and Aniella Perold of Hopewell, students of Dodge poet-teacher Judy Michaels at Princeton Day School. Both students are seniors. Also a winner is Alexandra Kramer, a student of Dodge poet-teacher Lois Marie Harrod at Voorhees High School in Glen Gardner.
The teachers are members of Cool Women, a group of Princeton-area poets who have appeared extensively in Central Jersey and issued two poetry collections. Ms. Harrod and Ms. Michaels are Hopewell residents.
Yannick is looking forward to his own "little place in the sun." He sees his contest victory as "an invitation to continue growing with my work."
For her part, Aniella said she was "surprised and honored" to win the Dodge contest because poetry "is not something I’ve been consistently interested in, so I wasn’t expecting this."
Even so, she has come to value a poem’s ability "to capture the essence of an experience or a memory and put it down in a very concise way. Unlike prose, really effective poetry can capture a whole lot of complexity in a few words."
Dodge Teen Poets are found in two groups the winners of its annual New Jersey competition and the roughly 5,000 students who pour into the festival from secondary schools all over the state and the nation.
Teen festival-goers are selected by teachers and administrators "because they really like poetry beyond the writing," says Ms. Harrod. "They’ve worked on the literary magazine, attended a literary club. I asked mine to submit a poem and a paragraph in effect, ‘What I Want to Get Out of Dodge.’"
The festival will be dedicating its first two days to students from 300 schools, then teachers representing approximately 800 schools. Teens arrive on Day One (Thursday, Sept. 28), information packets in hand, from around the state and the nation. The festival box office provides each with a day-long pass to carefully selected events. Teachers endeavor to schedule pupils into performances and "conversations" keyed to their individual preferences.
Most classes have thoroughly read and discussed this year’s featured poets. "The students always love it," Ms. Harrod says. "Dodge really knows how to work it."
On Day One the students are given priority seating; on Day Two (Friday, Sept. 29), pre-registered teachers receive priority seating for discussions and readings addressing particular needs and interests. The public, welcome on all four days, faces daunting choices among seven to 10 simultaneous hourly events.
During the course of the festival, audiences will be steeped in readings/performances and spirited discussions about the writing life. Participants invariably revel in the company of thousands of others who are passionate about poetry.
"Students’ most frequent response is surprise at the power of seeing and hearing live poets read their work," says Ms. Michaels. "I play Bill Moyers’ PBS videos (of past Dodge festivals), but even that doesn’t bring work off the page for students like live readings. The festival gives poetry a new validity."
Sarah Maloney, who was chosen as a Dodge Teen Poet while at student at PDS, says there’s no substitute for encountering famous poets in the flesh, not just as names on a page.
"I got to hear Yusef Komunyakaa and C. K. Williams (both professors at Princeton University) ‘saying the unsayable,’ and Cecilia Vicuna taught me to be enthralled with my work as I read it, to be loud and musical whenever possible," says Ms. Maloney "Above all, the Dodge taught me the importance of community."
A more colorful way of making the point was articulated by Christine Salvatore of Mays Landing: "Famous poets turn out to be like rock stars!" A winner of Dodge’s 1992 high school contest, Ms. Salvatore now holds a master’s degree in poetry from the University of New Orleans and a poetry fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Recalling the experience of reading her work on the festival’s Main Stage, "from that moment, I accepted myself as a poet," Ms. Salvatore says.
More than one young winner admits that having to face 2,000 people from the Main Stage was "nerve-wracking. " Yet Emily Van Duyne, now a resident of Sonoma, Calif., treasures her memories. "Suddenly, these people you’ve been reading for months or years are walking among you, drinking coffee, arguing fiercely on some panel over poetry’s role in the world, or the poet’s role in time of war," she says.
Tammara Lindsay, who was a Dodge Teen Poet then living in a beleaguered section of Atlantic City, recalls that "reading to an audience of such diversity, achievement and fame was somewhat overwhelming it meant that I could turn my fondness of language into a cultural passport."
Now married and living in England, Ms. Lindsay credits poetry for having been "my means of survival" during her teen years.
"Poetry and writing provided alternative realities as my peers were being consumed by our circumstances, our poverty," she says.
For more information about the 2006 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, running from Thursday, Sept. 28, through Sunday, Oct. 1, in historic Waterloo Village in Stanhope, Sussex County, see today’s TIMEOFF or visit www. www.dodgepoetryfestival.org.
A resident of West Windsor, Carolyn Foote Edelmann is a member of Cool Women poets, a freelance writer and an avid amateur naturalist.

