Berkeley’s Annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival (2023)

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Poets, musicians, environmentalists, and community members will gather on Saturday, October 14, 2023, for the 28th annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival, to celebrate Writers, Nature and Community, and to send an urgent message to consider the earth and climate change in our daily lives. Our belief is that we need the inspiration of poetry and music to meet our collective challenge.

The Festival begins with the Strawberry Creek Walk, poetry, nature commentary, and an easy walk along beautiful Strawberry Creek through UC Berkeley. To participate, meet at 10:00 am, at the southeast corner of Oxford at Center, on the edge of the UC Berkeley campus. All Festival events are free.

The Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival continues on the Main Stage, next to the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, at Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park, at Center Street, Berkeley, Noon to 4:30 pm. Please gather for a free afternoon of poetry, music, and nature writers in the park.
Watershed will kick off with jazz by The Barry Finnerty Trio and We Are Nature Open Mic.

Featured poets include:
Robert Hass, Summer Snow, Pulitzer Prize-winner and US Poet Laureate 1995-97, reading and introducing surprise guests;
Brenda Hillman, In a Few Minutes Before Later, Pulitzer Prize finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Northern California Book Award-winner;
Danusha Laméris, Bonfire Opera, Northern California Book Award-winner;
Michael Warr, award-winning poet, Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin
Chun Yu, Little Green: Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, a memoir in verse, award-winning Chinese/English bilingual poet-scientist;
Sam Sax, Pig, winner of the National Poetry Series and James Laughlin Award;
Elizabeth C. Herron, In the Cities of Sleep, Poet Laureate of Sonoma County;
Erin Rodoni, And if the Woods Carry You, Northern California Book Award-finalist;
Chris Olander, River Light, Nevada County Poet Laureate 2019-2021;
Dave Seter, Don’t Sing to Me of Electric Fences;
Michaelyn Logue, poet, musician, visual artist;
Lara Gularte, Fourth World Woman.
More Poets to be announced!
For updates, and exhibitors, see: Poetryflash.org, or https://www.poetryflash.org/programs/?p=watershed_2023.
Eco-Dance with Sharon Coleman and Ranko Ogura, under the trees, to poetry by Creek Walk poets. And on the Main Stage: Chris Olander performs his poetry and Sharon Coleman dances accompanied by jazz guitarist Barry Finnerty.
California Poets in the Schools students will read with poet-teachers Maureen Hurley and Fred Dodsworth; The Barry Finnerty Jazz Trio, with acclaimed jazz guitarist Barry Finnerty, who has toured and played with Miles Davis, The Crusaders, and Hubert Laws, will be the onstage house band.
Elizabeth Dougherty, Ph.D, founder and director of Wholly H2O will speak both on the Main Stage and during the Strawberry Creek Walk. Wholly H2O encourages California residents to become engaged members of their “waterhoods” and active stewards of watershed ecosystems by forging personal connections with nature.
Hosts include Chris Olander; Kirk Lumpkin, Storm Warning anthology; Joyce Jenkins and Richard Silberg from Poetry Flash.
To read at the We Are Nature Open Mic, enter the lottery at noon (at the info booth) for three-minute reading slots. To exhibit your books, magazine, project, or organization at the Festival, tables, canopies, and chairs are available, email editor@poetryflash.org. Exhibit information will be posted on the Watershed page at Poetryflash.org.
Exhibitors include: Manic D Press, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Sixteen Rivers Press, Tea Roots collective for emerging visual and literary artists, Poets for Science poem banners selected by Jane Hirshfield, Eco-dress art by the late artist Patricia Bulitt, California Poets in the Schools, Making Puppets – a family art project using re-cycled materials with artist, Francesca Borgatta.
Berkeley has a rich literary culture with poetry at its base. Poetry Flash has represented that base since 1972 with literary events, articles, and reviews. Since 1995, Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival has blended art, culture, and the environment to celebrate Writers, Nature, and Community in northern California. Robert Hass, the first U.S. Poet Laureate from the West, co-founded the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival during engaged community discussions between environmental groups and poets. The first Watershed Festival took place in April 1996 at the Golden Gate Park bandshell, with over a thousand people in attendance to hear poets Joy Harjo, Michael McClure, and many others. The late Mark Baldridge, for so many years, the Director of the annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival, left an incredible legacy of support for this Festival. The Watershed logo is a wood block print by Shane Eagleton. Admission is free, and the Main Stage Festival is wheelchair accessible.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.