Middlesex Community College to Host 2nd Annual Poetry Festival

Middlesex Community College will host the second annual La Guagua Poetry Festival to be held Friday and Saturday, April 20 and 21, in MCC’s Federal Building on the Lowell campus, 50 Kearney Square. Admission to the two-day festival is free and open to the public.

The festival begins at 7 p.m. on Friday with “Poetry Through Music – With a Focus on Robert Pinsky,” a concert featuring music composed by MCC faculty inspired by the work of former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky. To be held in the Federal Building Assembly Room, the concert will also feature Pinsky reading one of his poems, accompanied by an improvised jazz flute solo.

Saturday, from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., poetry readings will be given by more than 20 U.S. and international poets. Poems will be read in their original language and in English, in the Federal Building Assembly Room.

The festival’s keynote presentation will be delivered by Dominican-American poet and award-winning playwright Leonardo Nin, and Haitian poet and translator Jean Dany Joachim.

The second La Guagua Poetry Anthology, titled “Mother of Exiles/Madre de los Exiliados,” will be published. The multilingual anthology will be given out free to festival attendees.

MCC’s La Guagua Poetry Festival is part of a one-credit Interdisciplinary Studies Weekend course (IDS 105) examining themes of cultural diversity and social inequality through literary work. To enroll, call 1-800-818-3434.

For further information, contact Willy Ramirez at ramirezw@middlesex.mass.edu or 978-656-3108.

Middlesex Community College is your pathway to success. As one of the largest, most comprehensive community colleges in the state, we educate, engage and empower a diverse community of learners. MCC offers more than 70 degree and certificate programs, plus hundreds of noncredit courses, on our campuses in Bedford and Lowell, as well as online. Middlesex Community College: Student success starts here!