Festival brings war and peace to library

Lolita Harper

War and peace are on the minds of many in the community, and tonight

a group of poetry aficionados will share the words of acclaimed

writers whose works symbolize that theme.

Participants of the sixth annual Poetry Festival at the Newport

Beach Public Library on Avocado Avenue will select poets they wish to

honor and poets who have influenced their own creative writings,

organizers said.

Jacquelyn Beauregard Dillman, the founding chairwoman and

underwriter of the poetry festival, said the festival was created as

a gift to the community to share creative words, thought-provoking

ideas and a meditative night of entertainment. It also corresponds

with National Poetry Month, which is April.

Dillman, who began the series while a graduate poetry student at

UC Irvine, said the festival has become an event that people look

forward to, drawing about 100 to 150 attendants.

The timely theme of war and peace was not chosen to be politically

divisive, but provocative and inspiring, Dillman said.

While it may or may not prove controversial, poetry can always be

a soothing influence, she said.

“Sometimes it is helpful, like meditation,” she said. “It is

something you can lean on in uncertain times.”

Newport Beach resident and UCI poetry graduate student Joe Goetz

said he will share two contrasting poems in an interpretive way. His

selections, “The Rebel” by Patrick Pearse and “Easter 1916” by WB

Yeats offer distinctly different views on the Irish rebel uprising of

1916, he said.

Pearse, the Irish nationalist who led the famous uprising, in his

poem contends he was inspired by God.

“It gives insight into the mind of an extremist,” Goetz said. “It

shows how tenacious these people can be. How those who feel they have

been oppressed will not be bought off.”

Goetz will also share the Yeats piece, which is much better known

and taught in high school literature classes. “Easter 1916” takes a

very ambivalent view of the uprising and its necessity, Goetz said.

It questions the bloodshed and offers balance to the extreme view of

Pearse.

Works to be read at the festival are not limited to those that

directly apply to a call to arms, but incorporate other “warring

principles,” Dillman said.

“There is the war of the sexes, war within oneself, warring

families,” she said. “Whatever the theme may symbolize to the

presenters is what they will share.”