Watershed Festival: Robert Hass, Maxine Hong Kingston, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Kim Shuck, more

7 OCTOBER 2017 — saturday

22nd Annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival, "Stand Up for the Earth" with dynamic readings of over thirty poets and writers, including Robert Hass, Maxine Hong Kingston; Tongo Eisen-Martin; Tess Taylor; San Francisco Poet Laureate Kim Shuck; Alison Luterman; invocation and reading by Berkeley Poet Laureate Rafael Jesús González with Gerardo Omar Marín on conch and flute, more featured poets and speakers to be announced; California Poets in the Schools students reading led by poet-teachers John Oliver Simon and Maureen Hurley; Chapter 510 Oakland students read from The Biography of Water; more readings by poets Kirk Lumpkin, Tiffany Higgins, Raphael Block, Jahan Khalighi, and Maw Shein Win, Poet Laureate of El Cerrito, with Nevada City eco-poet Chris Olander; We Are Nature Open Mic, (to read, enter drawing at noon); hosts Richard Silberg and Kirk Lumpkin, music by The Barry Finnerty Trio; River Village exhibits by literary and environmental organizations; Pegasus Downtown book tent with books for sale and signing; a 100 Thousand Poets for Change event, sponsored by Poetry Flash, Ecology Center, Pegasus Books Downtown, Moe's Books; wheelchair accessible, Civic Center Park, Martin Luther King, Jr. Way and Center Street, downtown Berkeley, noon-4:30 (510/525-5476; to table or exhibit, e-mail: info@poetryflash.org)