The Massachusetts Poetry Festival 2017

If you don’t know where you come from, how do you know where you’re going? For poets, knowing where you come from includes knowing your “literary lineage” (aka influences). Knowing this lineage can reveal, and help you address, problems in your writing—this knowledge can help get you out of a writerly rut! Panelists will discuss how they “mapped out” or “came to understand” their lit lineage, and how this has helped (or hindered) their writing. This could include talking about being a mentee or a mentor (to "descendants"). Panel presentations are meant to be a guide for audience members to trace their own literary lineages so they may assess and advance their own writing.