About this Event
Join Delaware Poets, Inc. for an evening celebrating the creation of The Delaware Poets Almanac: Semiquincentennial Edition, a literary time capsule bringing together 250 years of Delaware’s poetic history!
Created in recognition of the nation’s 250th anniversary, the Delaware Poets Almanac gathers historic and contemporary voices into a single collection, tracing the people, places, experiences, and changing character of the First State through poetry. The book looks backward at the literary record Delaware has inherited while preserving the voices writing its next pages.
The Delaware Poets Almanac Recital & Celebration brings that collection to life!
Throughout the evening, a selection of poems from the Almanac will be performed by some of Delaware’s most distinguished literary voices, spanning generations, traditions, and styles. Featured poets include Delaware’s current Poets Laureate, The Twin Poets, Nnamdi Chukwuocha and Albert Mills; former Delaware Poet Laureates JoAnn Balingit and e. jean lanyon; poet, editor, and educator Phillip Bannowsky; spoken-word artist and educator Dr. Traci Currie; and acclaimed Delaware arts leader, writer, and performer Raye Jones Avery, alongside other poets represented in the collection.
Rather than a conventional reading, the recital is designed as a journey through the Almanac itself. Selected poems will carry the audience across different moments in Delaware’s history and into the present, allowing voices separated by decades or even centuries to share the same stage.
At the heart of the evening is the idea that Delaware’s literary history is something living. It survives not only in archives and old books, but in poems spoken aloud, communities remembering their own stories, and writers continuing to record what it means to live here.
Guests can expect an evening of poetry, history, storytelling, and celebration centered on the completion of a book created to outlast the anniversary that inspired it.
Come celebrate the making of a Delaware literary time capsule, and hear 250 years of the First State in its own words.
Event venue & nearby stays
The Schwartz Center for the Arts, 226 South State Street, Dover, United States
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