Immerse yourself in the northeast Ohio poetry community and kickstart your poetic creativity with the Literary Cleveland Poetry Summer Camp. A five-week mix of in-person interactive field trips and online group workshop meetings, Poetry Summer Camp is designed to create solidarity, camaraderie, and connection among Northeastern Ohio poets of all experience levels.
Celebrated Cleveland poets Danny Caine and Michelle R. Smith will lead campers on a journey from ekphrasis to the mechanics of small press publishing to everything in between. The month of poetry fun and community will culminate with an open mic showcase at the Lakewood Arts Festival.
Poets of all experience levels are welcome. Each class week will feature: one Saturday in-person interactive field trip, some outside-of-class generative writing time, and one Wednesday evening class meeting via Zoom. Each Wednesday session will feature a mix of work sharing, group discussions, mini craft lessons, best practice sharing, and/or writing sprints.
Saturday Field Trip activities will take place from 1-3 PM at the following locations:
- Saturday July 6, Mac's Backs Books on Coventry
- Saturday July 13, Edgewater Park
- Saturday July 20, Cleveland Museum of Art
- Saturday July 27, Wick Poetry Center
- Saturday August 3, Lakewood Arts Festival Poetry Showcase (time TBD)
Instructors:
Danny Caine is the author of the poetry collections
Continental Breakfast,
El Dorado Freddy's,
Flavortown, and
Picture Window, as well as the books
How to Protect Bookstores and Why and
How to Resist Amazon and Why. His poetry has appeared in
The Slowdown,
Cleveland Review of Books,
DIAGRAM,
HAD, and
Barrelhouse. His prose has appeared in
Literary Hub, Kansas City Star, and elsewhere. In 2019, the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association named him Midwest Bookseller of the Year. He's the program operations coordinator at Literary Cleveland, and a co-owner of the Raven Book Store,
Publishers Weekly's 2022 bookstore of the year.
Michelle R. Smith is a writer, poet, educator, cultural facilitator, and native Clevelander. She is the Programming Director for Literary Cleveland and a teaching artist for Lake Erie Ink. She is the author of the poetry collections
Ariel in Black (2015) and
The Vagina Analogues (2020). She has been published in
poemmemoirstory,
Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism,
The Normal School,
The Gasconade Review, New Note Poetry, Merge Magazine, and
io Literary Magazine. She has been a featured reader, instructor, and panelist at The Lakewood Public Library, The East Cleveland Public Library, The Cuyahoga County Public Library, The Cleveland Museum of Arts, Cleveland Drafts – Brews + Prose, PNC Fairfax Connection, Case Western Reserve University’s Writers House, and Literary Cleveland’s Inkubator Conference. She is also the creator, co-producer, and director of BLAX MUSEUM, an annual performance showcase for Northeast Ohio artists open to all forms and dedicated to honoring notable black figures in American history and culture
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Details: Poetry Summer Camp with Danny Caine and Michelle R. Smith will meet Wednesdays July 3 - March 31 from 7-9PM via Zoom, and in-person on Saturdays from July 6 - August 3 from 1-3 (not including travel time).
