Poets and City College faculty Estha Weiner and David Groff to read at 47th annual poetry festival
New York’s longest-running poetry celebration, the annual City College Poetry Festival, will take place on Friday, May 3, at the college’s Harlem campus. CCNY’s own accomplished faculty members David Groff and Estha Weiner will be the featured guest poets.
More than 150 students from as many as 50 schools are expected to recite their poems at the day-long event. Now in its 47th year, some children who participated in the festival’s early years are now teachers who bring their classes.
The event includes readings by elementary school students, followed by junior high school poets. The winners of the festival's citywide high school poetry contest then recite their poems, with the top three winners receiving the Knopf Publishers Prize.
A reading by Groff and Weiner will follow. The festival concludes with college students, alumni, faculty and published poets from around the country reading their works.
The all-verse event runs from 9:15 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Aaron Davis Hall’s Marian Anderson Theater.
Groff’s book Clay was chosen by Michael Waters for the Louis Bogan Award. His first book Theory of Devolution was selected by Mark Doty for the National Poetry Series. He teaches in the M.F.A. creative writing program at The City College of New York.
Weiner’s newest poetry book is at the last minute. Winner of a Paterson Prize and Visiting Scholar at Shakespeare Institute, Stratford, England, she is a professor at City College and Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute.
For more information about the 47th CCNY Spring Poetry Festival, please contact Pamela L. Laskin at (212) 650-6356, or visit the Poetry Outreach Center online.
About The City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its role at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.2% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. More than 16,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight professional schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.