Northfield Poetry Festival kicks off with a group reading featuring Minnesota Poet Laureate Joyce Sutphen. And coffee and donuts.

Saturday, September 29th @ 10 am

Join us at Content to enjoy a Saturday morning reading featuring coffee, donuts, and Minnesota Poet Laureate Joyce Sutphen, as she's joined by Northfield poets Leslie Schultz, Steve McCown, Susan Jaret McKinstry, Diane LeBlanc, D.E. Green, and Becky Boling!

Joyce Sutphen grew up on a farm in Minnesota. She earned a PhD in Renaissance drama from the University of Minnesota, and has taught British literature and creative writing at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota. Her first collection of poems, Straight Out of View (1995), won the Barnard Women’s Poets Prize. Subsequent collections include Coming Back to the Body (2000), a Minnesota Book Award finalist, Naming the Stars (2004), winner of the Minnesota Book Award, and First Words (2010).She has received a McKnight Artist Fellowship and a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship and was named Minnesota's Poet Laureate in 2011.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

Find more details on our website. Let us know you're coming on Facebook.

Patrick Scully's Leaves of Grass -- Illuminated at the Northfield Arts Guild Theater

Sunday, September 30th @ 7:30 pm @ Northfield Arts Guild Theater

Join us for a free performance of Patrick Scully’s Leaves of Grass – Illuminated at the Northfield Arts Guild Theater, co-sponsored by Content, the Northfield Poet Laureate, Carleton College, and the Northfield Arts Guild.

This solo performance by Patrick Scully summons the spirit of America’s great poet, Walt Whitman, revealing Whitman’s many sides: from the furtive—changing genders to “straighten things up”, to the fierce—defying the censors and getting banned in Boston. We celebrate, approaching Whitman’s 200th birthday (May 31, 2019) that Whitman is also an important artist for our era; a poet who loved America, and used his writing to strategically transform what he believed needed to be changed.

Leaves of Grass – Illuminated is the product of over 10 years of research and development, and will be featured at the Guthrie Theater in Summer 2019. A large cast version of this show opened in Minneapolis to critical acclaim in 2014. Scully developed that version into a one man show in a residency at MANCC at Florida Sate University in 2015, and premiered Leaves of Grass – Illuminated in New York City and Minneapolis in 2016. In 2017/18, he toured it to 24 communities in Minnesota, with support from the Minnesota State Arts Board’s Legacy Funds. In 2018/19, again with MSAB  touring support, he is touring it to another 24 communities.

“Both Whitman and Scully are major figures; they contain multitudes.” (Village Voice)

“Patrick Scully was born to play Walt Whitman.” (Lavender Magazine)  

“Scully is the perfect caretaker for Whitman’s legacy.” (Minneapolis StarTribune)

Find more details on our website or at the Northfield Arts Guild.

Poetry Night: Minnesota Book Award Winner Bao Phi

Monday, October 1st @ 7 pm 

Content is delighted to host Minnesota Book Award winner Bao Phi for our October Poetry Night. 

He is a multiple Minnesota Grand Slam poetry champ and National Poetry Slam finalist who has been on HBO's Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry and whose work was included in the Best American Poetry anthology of 2006. He won a Minnesota Book Award in 2018 for his children's book, A Different Pond. His poetry publications include Thousand Star Hotel and Sông I Sing and he is currently the Program Director of the Loft Literary Center.

"At once tender and taboo-busting, pithy and sprawling, effulgent and expository, Thousand Star Hotel is a compendium of 'warring ideals' spoken through the voices and seen through the eyes of a refugee child turned poet adult, his embattled parents, neighborhood pals and bullies, past flames and would-be lovers, an exotifying culture--not to mention Phi's young daughter, for whom the collection is a record with which she might one day construct her own consciousness." --Kenyon Review

"[Phi] has few peers that can match him in his assessment of contemporary culture and social justice." --Cultural Weekly

Poetry Nights are presented in collaboration with the Northfield Poet Laureate. The Northfield Poet Laureate program is sponsored by the City of Northfield and funded by the Northfield Public Library and the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council (SEMAC), in partnership with the Northfield Arts and Culture Commission.

Find more details on our website. Let us know you're coming on Facebook.