The Annual Poet Invasion of Delray Beach

For 15 years in a row, Miles Coon and his wife Mimi have brought poets from all over to Delray Beach. It is a week-long event of workshops, craft talks, readings, and bonding over a love of poetry. The Palm Beach Poetry Festival creates a space for poets who might be seeking their first publication to work with and alongside poets who may be finishing a manuscript and writers looking to train in a new form. There are hundreds of participants who work in the same workshop group all week, taught by some truly incredible poets, and some of us are lucky (or perhaps naive) enough to volunteer our time to help for the week.

Florida Atlantic University is a short 20-minute drive from Old School Square in Delray Beach, where the festival takes place. Thanks to the proximity of our campus, Florida Atlantic University MFA students make for the ideal volunteer interns for the Festival. There were four of us from FAU this year—Caitlyn GD, Colton Martin, Kelsey Moghadospour, and myself—along with some students from Florida International University’s MFA program and some independent volunteers both local and from far away. The diversity amongst volunteers matches the diversity of the Festival faculty.

I was lucky enough to work with two poets in my workshop, Jessica Jacobs and Nickole Brown (and their sweet golden retriever, Solace). Our workshop group progressed so much from our first meeting on Monday through the end of our time together on Saturday. What really made the experience worth it to me was picking up great tools for my own writing and getting some new methods for my teaching. Plus who doesn’t want to hang out with poets like Laureanne Bosselar, Sharon Olds, and Tyehimba Jess for a week? It’s a lot of work, but it’s something I’m already looking forward to next year. In the workshop time, I was able to compose two new poems and got inspiration for some assignments for my Teaching Creative Writing course. I also made some great friends from FIU, got closer with my FAU cohort, made connections with staff from some journals and presses, and bonded with my workshop faculty. Jessica, Nickole, and I have been eagerly making plans to meet up in Portland at AWP later this month. Volunteering is never easy work, but it is a vital part of being a model literary citizen. I’m so grateful I had the opportunity to be a part of the PBPF this year.

Kelsey Allman is a first-year MFA student at Florida Atlantic University. She earned her BA in Writing & Linguistics from Georgia Southern University. In addition to writing creative nonfiction, poetry, and tweets about football, she is working on a graphic memoir about mental illness. Her dog Remington controls most of her life decisions.