CHESTERTOWN — MacArthur Foundation Fellow and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown will headline the Robert Earl Price Poetry Festival, formerly the Kent County Poetry Festival, taking place later this month in Chestertown.
All festival events are free, but registration is required for some.
Links to all the events, tickets and sign-ups are available on Kent Cultural Alliance’s website, https://kentculture.org/poetryfest/.
Brown’s collection titled “The Tradition” won the Pulitzer Prize in 2020.
He also is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of a Whiting Award, based on early accomplishment and the promise of great work to come.
Brown’s first book, “Please” [New Issues, 2008], won the American Book Award.
His second book, “The New Testament” [Copper Canyon Press, 2014], won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.
His third collection, “The Tradition” [Copper Canyon Press, 2019], won the Paterson Poetry Prize as well as the Pulitzer Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Brown will be the centerpiece of the festival’s main event at 7 p.m. on Saturday, March 28 at the Garfield Center for the Arts, located at 210 High St. There will be a public reading followed by an on-stage conversation with James Allen Hall, director of Washington College’s Rose O’Neill Literary House.
In addition to the main event Saturday evening, Brown will offer two student workshops during his visit — one at Kent County High School and one at Washington College.
Brown first visited the Eastern Shore a decade ago.
“Jericho Brown returns to Maryland’s Eastern Shore 10 years after his first visit,” said Hall. “Those 10 years have seen Jericho’s work achieve international prominence. … ‘A poem is a gesture toward home,’ Jericho Brown says in a poem. This poetry festival will indeed be a celebration, a kind of homecoming.”
The festival also will welcome back Maryland’s Poet Laureate Lady Brion as host of the Poetry Jam event 7 p.m. Friday, March 27 at the Garfield Center for the Arts. Performers must sign up in advance.
Started in 2025, the Poetry Jam offers another opportunity for local and regional poets to perform their work in the style of the old “jam” events of the 1990s with a full band improvising behind the poets. Returning to perform are Gerry Werner [piano], JR McKinney [drums] and Vaughn Bratcher [bass]. Lady Brion will host and perform her own work during the event.
Another newer component of the festival, the Eco Poetry Workshop, will continue this year with well-known local poet Meredith Davies Hadaway, the current Sophie Kerr Poet-In-Residence at Washington College.
The workshop, limited to 15 participants, will take place at 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 28 at Sultana Education Foundation’s Lawrence Wetlands Preserve at 301 S. Mill St. Registration is required.
The festival will conclude on Sunday, March 29 with the Open Mic, the event that started it all 17 years ago in the back room of The Bookplate with Robert Earl Price, Christopher Ames and Tom Martin. This year’s Open Mic will begin at 2 p.m. in the Robert Ortiz Studios at 207 S. Cross St. [Ortiz is retiring and will be closing his studio.] You must sign up for a reading slot in advance.
Price passed away in April 2025.
The festival committee of Meredith Davies Hadaway, James Allen Hall, Tess Jones, Tom Martin, Robert Ortiz, Leslie Raimond and John Schratwieser unanimously voted to rename the Kent County Poetry Festival after receiving permission from Price’a wife, Carol Colgate.
“With the passing of the poetry festival’s founder, Robert Earl Price, our committee felt it was important to honor his legacy by changing the festival’s name,” said Schratwieser, Kent Cultural Alliance’s executive director.
“For 17 years the festival had stayed rooted in Kent County, but it was Robert Earl who helped push us to expand in recent years, securing the likes of Naomi Shihab Nye, Richard Blanco and this year’s guest, Jericho Brown,” Schratwieser said
Hall added, “Robert Earl was a dedicated writer and teacher, having instructed a popular poetry and performance course for years at Washington College. Now, he’ll continue to teach us, through the festival, the value of being in community with each other.”
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Hosted each year in Chestertown by Kent Cultural Alliance, the festival’s success is rooted in the deep involvement of Washington College’s Rose O’Neill Literary House.
For more than 50 years, the “Lit House” has served as a cultural anchor, fostering a community where young writers can make a positive impact on the world.
“By bringing world-renowned figures like Jericho Brown to Chestertown, the Literary House ensures that students and locals alike have access to transformative literary experiences,” a news release states.
This alignment of mission — “using poetry to attest to our shared humanity” — is a hallmark of the festival’s programming. From the Eco Poetry Workshop at the Lawrence Wetlands Preserve to the high-energy Poetry Jam hosted by Maryland Poet Laureate Lady Brion, the weekend is designed to be as inclusive as it is prestigious.
