The Milvia Street Club will be exhibiting journals at the 21st Annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival. Saturday, October 1, 2016, Noon–4:30 pm, Free. We will also have interactive writing and a Poet Tree. Below are photos from last year.

21st ANNUAL WATERSHED ENVIRONMENTAL POETRY FESTIVAL

“Stand Up for the Earth” with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Hass, poet and essayist Jane Hirshfield, famed journalist, ‘crazy’ wiseman, and Buddhist teacher Wes ‘Scoop’ Nisker, poet and nature writer Alison Hawthorne Deming, poets Juliana Spahr, John Shoptaw, Pireeni Sundaralingam, Ohlone Indian descendant Vincent Medina, California Poets in the Schools K-12 students, The Barry Finnerty Trio, and more!

Saturday, October 1, 2016, Noon–4:30 pm, Free,

Civic Center Park by the Berkeley Farmers’ Market

Martin Luther King Jr. Way, at Center Street, Berkeley

The Strawberry Creek Walk leaves from Oxford and Center Streets on the edge of the UC Berkeley campus at 10:00 am.

Poets, writers, and environmentalists will gather to “Stand Up for the Earth” with readings, music, and exhibits at the 21st annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival, Saturday, October 1, noon-4:30 at Berkeley’s Civic Center Park, one block west of downtown Berkeley BART. Poetry readings by renowned poets and authors, K-12 student poets, music, exhibits, and We are Nature Open Mic take place in front of Watershed banners by Bolinas artist Arthur Okamura. The Berkeley Farmers’ Market that will be in full swing as the presentations begin. Tents will provide shade; chairs and recycled carpet squares available for seating. Bring your lunch or visit the Farmers’ Market!

The Strawberry Creek Walk begins at 10:00 am, Saturday morning, September 26, just inside the UC Berkeley campus at Oxford and Center Streets. The public is invited to join the Creek Walk for poetry and natural history commentary, led by poet-performer-teacher Chris Olander, poet and naturalist Maya Khosla, poet Judy Halebsky, and two former Sonoma County poet laureates, Katherine Hastings and Bill Vartnaw. The Creek Walk will follow Strawberry Creek through the University of California campus and trace the creek’s path as it flows above ground then tunnels beneath the city to the festival site.

River Village exhibitors include Poetree Interactive Writing with Sharon Coleman; Berkeley City College’s Milvia Street: Art and Literary Journal, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Sixteen Rivers Press, California Poets in the Schools, St. Mary’s College MFA in Creative Writing Program, Deborah Kennedy’s Nature Speaks: Art & Poetry for the Earth, Robert E. Johnson and Janet L. Byron’s Berkeley Walks, Pegasus Books Downtown, and more. Creek Poems artwork will be installed over the footprint of Strawberry Creek (it runs under the park). Exhibit deadline: Sept. 24; e-mail info@poetryflash.org, or see Poetryflash.org.

Poet Trees:

Books by the readers will be available for purchase at the Pegasus Book Tent.

OPEN MIC:

• We Are Nature Open Mic, six three-minute reading spots, enter the lottery by noon at the Info Tent on site.