Saturday April 2 events will be held at Carl Sandburg Home NHS. The celebration begins at noon kicking off with an open-mic from 12:15-1:00 p.m. This year’s featured poet will be a poetry performance with Asheville’s own Poetry Alive! at 1:00 p.m., then a short musical interlude will be provided by West Henderson High School’s Fiddle Group, and the day wraps up with a poetry workshop, also by Poetry Alive! beginning at 2:30 p.m.

Come share your poetry. The open-mic session is available for anyone interested in sharing their poetry at the celebration. There is a time limit of five minutes per poet. Registration is required to secure a spot for the open-mic. Please keep in mind this is a family event as you select your poems for sharing.

Participants must pre-register for the open-mic and poetry workshop by Friday April 1, 2005. To register for the workshop or to sign up for the open-mic, call 828-693-4178.

Since 1984, Poetry Alive! has been presenting high-energy poetry shows for audiences of all ages. Based in Asheville, North Carolina, this professional company regularly travels throughout the United States and has appeared in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and as far away as Puerto Rico, Guam, South Korea, Saipan, the Bahamas and Peru. In order to bring poetry from the page to the stage, Poetry Alive! presents verse as theatre, transforming the poems into scripts and the audience members into fellow actors. The result is a non-stop tour de force of words with a twist of sorrow and a dash of silliness and every emotion in between.

Returning to the bardic tradition of long ago, some of the Poetry Alive! actors have memorized literally hundreds of poems from the classics to the popular to the contemporary. The company sends out actors in pairs to schools, libraries, festivals, and anywhere there is an audience for “poetry with a twist”. Poetry Alive! also presents teacher workshops, conducts a summer institute for teachers, and offers a celebrated line of educational books, CDs and audiotapes. Visit Poetry Alive! on the net at http://www.poetryalive.com.

The West Henderson High School Fiddle Group will provide a short musical interlude between the poetry performance and the poetry workshop. This is a good time for you to relax and enjoy some of Carl Sandburg’s favorite fiddle tunes of America.

The 2005 Poetry Celebration is supported by the National Park Service, the Arts Center of Henderson County, Henderson County Arts Council, Friends of Carl Sandburg at Connemara, Eastern National, and the North Carolina Poetry Society.

All events are free and open to the public and are held at Carl Sandburg Home NHS.

The Poetry Celebration occurs during National Poetry Month. Carl Sandburg’s contribution to our national heritage is recognized greatly through his poetry as well as through his children’s books, biographies of Abraham Lincoln, his social activism, and through his collection of folk music.

Carl Sandburg Home NHS is located three miles south of Hendersonville off the Greenville Highway/Rt. 225 (formerly known as U.S. 25) on Little River Road in Flat Rock. Guided tours of Carl Sandburg Home are provided throughout the day at a cost of $5 per person. Children are free. Park Service passports are accepted and sold. The grounds are open to the public from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. For more information about the event, call the park at 828-693-4178.

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