Los Angeles, Augustus 1, 2022
Press Release – 2nd Poetry Train stops in 64 cities
The Poetry Train 2022 will depart on Wednesday, September 21st at 6.45 am from Penn Station, New York and in just 76 hours i.e. 3 days, the Poetry Train will arrive on Saturday, September 24th at 08.00 am in Los Angeles. The Poetry Train brings once a year poets from 64 big cities and small towns to LA Poetry Beach Festival.
Big Cities and Small Towns
The Poetry Train stops not only in the two biggest cities of US but also in big urban cities like Philadelphia, Washington DC, Chicago, Kansas City and Albuquerque each with more than 500,000 citizens. And then there is Prince and Lamy and Thurmond and other rural towns; their inhabitants may be few in number, yet they out-number their ‘big brothers and sisters’ in another way, because there many of these these ‘little sisters and brothers’ – they do count: the Poetry Train stops in all of them.
Finding poets
In order to find poets in your state that are willing to take part in the festival, this April – National Poetry Month – Erik van Loon covered 4,500 miles by car, all the way from New York to Los Angeles. On the way he visited 247 independent bookstores, 50 public libraries and 64 train stations. He asked them all to hang the LA Poetry Beach Festival 2022 poster in order to find local poets willing to hop on the Poetry Train.
At https://poetrydowntown.com/about-us/national-poetry-month you can find all the 360 adresses.
AmTrak
In 2021 and this year the poets will travel by AmTrak. Hopefully, this year the train takes at least 64 poets (one poet at least each stop) to poetry paradise Los Angeles. This number (64) is too small to lease a whole train, but Erik van Loon is hoping to find, for next year’s festival, enough sponsors and poets to lease his own train. The 2022 Poetry Train will have, in addition to the coach, the restaurant and the sleeper car, also a disco, a bar and a library car where poets can meet each other.
Lectures, Workshops, Talk Show and Poetry Talks
Bringing poets together and, further, bringing them into contact with the audience helps communities to fight illiteracy; for example by letting people write Haiku poems, nothing easier than writing Haiku – or perhaps not?! Writing Haiku or other forms of poetry may make people enthusiastic for literacy, and may help them to increase their ability to read and write – and we let them discover that writing (poetry ot other) is fun!
By the way, fighting illiteracy is the subject of one of the lectures on the Poetry Train.
LA Poetry Beach Festival is also developing a new type of Haiku called American Short.
Anthology
A Poetry Train Anthology will be published, briefly after the journey. For this anthology we will select one poem from each poet on the Poetry Train.
Additional information:
April National Poetry Month Promotion Tour
Last April, Erik van Loon from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, visited 247 independent bookstores, 49 public libraries, and 64 train stations between NY and LA to find poets for the 2nd LA Poetry Beach Festival.
Five Days Poetry Festival
LAPD is part of the five days poetry festival LA Poetry Beach Festival. It starts each year in New York with the Poetry Train. This year the Poetry Train will depart on Wednesday September 21st at 6.45 am from New York and in just 76 hours i.e. 3 days, it arrives in poetry paradise Los Angeles. Poets – local, national, and from abroad – can hop on the train in one of the 64 cities (in 20 states), where the Poetry Train makes a stop. On Saturday, September 24th, the poets on the Poetry Train and all selected poets for the LA Poetry Beach Festival get the opportunity to present their work at LAPD (Los Angeles Poetry Downtown). More info about the Poetry Train and LAPD you can find in our pressletter www.lapoetrybeach.com/press-releases .
Crowdfunding
To finance this five days Poetry Festival Erik van Loon recently recently started crowdfunding. Go to https://poetrydowntown.com/crowdfunding for more info.
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More info:
Los Angeles Poetry Beach Festival
Erik Van Loon
www.lapoetrybeach.com
lapoetrybeach@gmail.com
EU +31 6 E VAN LOON (+31 6 3 826 5666)
US +1 323 744 7494
Facebook/Instagram/Twitter: @lapoetrybeach
