Celebrate National Poetry Month

Poet Coleman Barks

Who can think of a better location to celebrate National Poetry Month than picturesque Block Island? We certainly cannot and we think Block Island Poetry Project (BIPP) creator and Rhode Island Poet Laureate Lisa Starr would agree. This springtime event has occurred each April since 2004 and has attracted some of the most well known poets of our time.

As an island resident, Starr developed this event as a way to combine her life as a poet with her love for the Block Island landscape and community. She even hosts participants of the workshops at the Hygeia House, the inn that she and her husband own. Each weekend, different workshops; they’re amazing opportunities for the community to meet and connect in conversations about issues that affect our world today, through the group’s wonderful shared passion for poetry. This year is the project’s ninth, and features Billy Collins, who served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003, and Coleman Barks, a renowned poet whom is most known for his interpretations of mystic poets from Persia.

The 2012 BIPP begins on April 12 with celebration of self-expression through yoga, Nia, poetry and art; come prepared to “dance, write, draw, stretch, breathe, scribble, sing, eat, share, laugh and even bang a drum.”