Poetry Festival Continues

When Christina Sergeyevna, director

of this year's Austin International Poetry Festival, says, "It's hard to structure without it being carnival-like," she's giving an entry-level history lesson to the annual event.

In years past, the Festival, now in its fifth year, has had a reputation for filling every possible minute of every available stage with words. This is, after all, the event that gave us the Day of 100 Poets and last year's all-night open mike stage at Cafe Metro. Yet the Festival has stretched to six days this year -- it started Tuesday -- and will feature nearly 400 poets, some performing in multiple capacities, over the weekend.

At first, the organizers intended to have no overlapping shows -- a departure from past AIPFs -- but the number of participants made this impossible. Still, there are plenty of AIPF events that stand alone on the schedule (including this year's biggest feather-in-the-cap, the Robert Bly reading on Sunday), and some of the Festival's toughest choices-to-make, such as the Performance Poets showcase versus the National Poets showcase on Friday night, are somewhat mediated by the close proximity of the venues - the National Poets will read at BookPeople while the Performance Poets read across Lamar at the Waterloo Ice House. In the past, Slams competed with other events; this year, they'll be the only AIPF event on both Thursday and Sunday nights, and the only AIPF events at the Electric Lounge.

Much of the emphasis of this year's festival shifts to BookPeople. From Friday to Sunday, the bookstore (at 603 N. Lamar) will stage 31 hours of poetry. The biggest draw, of course, is Sunday's 5pm appearance by Bly, one of the few literally household-name poets in America today. Although BookPeople arranged to bring Bly to Austin, AIPF made the smart, somewhat serendipitous, move of pairing him with William Davis, who will read at 4pm and introduce Bly.

As in past years, Mexic-Arte Museum (419 Congress) will be a principal site for AIPF events. Perhaps the most noteworthy show at Mexic-Arte will be Saturday night's Festival Iberoamericano, from 7-11:30pm, featuring over 20 Spanish-language poets in one showcase. Co-host Nestor Lugones, a lecturer at UT-Pan American specializing in medieval Spanish literature, calls the event a "first-quality gathering of writers." Lugones, an Argentinean native, conceived the "Iberoamericano" name to show both the Spanish, Native American, and South American roots of the readers, whom he has met through a network of faculty and former fellow students. Although one Austin-based and British-born writer, Christopher Middleton, will read some work in English, much of the evening's work will be in Spanish.

Two other new AIPF venues will be tied to an AIPF first -- the instant anthology. Instant anthologies have been tied to open mike culture for years, which makes sense because the principles are the same. Each poet brings a specified number of copies of a poem, and once the piles are placed around the room, participants assemble the copies into a book and bind them to a pre-made cover. On Friday at midnight at the Public Domain (807 Congress), former Austin poets Walker and Shana Hickman will host a Midnight Anthology, providing covers for the participants and charging a one dollar/one poem admission fee. On Saturday at midnight at Quackenbush's (2120 Guadalupe), John Hawk will host the Witching Hour Anthology reading - he's calling for each poet to bring 100 copies of his or her favorite poem.

These events, along with Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon open mike events at Mojo's (2714 Guadalupe), are the only open mike events at the festival -- a marked de-emphasis on the free-form format from past AIPFs. According to Sergeyevna, a lot of that has to do with poets from other places wanting to come to Austin. She says most of the Austin slots feature poets who either work in collective groups or have more informal, yet significant, affiliations with one another -- reflecting a trend of poet collaboration she's noticed over the past two years.

And while that may be disheartening for the poet who hasn't made connections within the local poetry community, it may prove to make for a more cohesive, more thoughtfully presented festival, which is exactly what the organizers want. "The hardest thing about planning these festivals is bringing talented people from far away and not being able to guarantee them an audience," Sergeyevna said. "We don't want to necessarily see poets categorized. But it's a strategy we're using in order for the audience to see what they want to see."

The Austin International Poetry Festival continues through Sunday night; schedules are available at BookPeople. For info, call 335-8599 or e-mail aipf97@aol.com -- Phil West