Tap into your inner bard with the Open Space Visitor Center Poets Picnic

“I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree,” the poet Joyce Kilmer wrote. But why choose?

At Albuquerque’s annual Poets Picnic at the Open Space Visitor Center, you can have both.

Walk or lounge beneath the trees, while you unlock your inner poet in this family-friendly celebration of creative wordsmithing. This day-long free event, organized by Albuquerque poets Dale Harris and Scott Wiggerman, combines fresh air with fresh approaches to language.

Kicking things off at 10 a.m. Wiggerman will lead a popular workshop, “How to Haiku: What Teachers Never Taught You,” where you can practice expressing your deepest thoughts in just 17 syllables.

Headlining this year’s event is New Mexico’s poet laureate, Lauren Camp, who has spent the past three years bringing poetry to rural and arts-underserved areas of the state.

“It’s been exciting to meet with people, some of whom are secret poets, or even poets out in the open, but some of whom have no real experience with poetry and are just open to having a conversation about it and trying their hand at it,” she said.

Camp believes poetry can enrich anyone’s life who’s open to it.

“For me, poems often carry a mystery, or a kind of magical awareness of the world,” she said. “It isn’t telling a whole story that’s as prescribed and clear as a short story or a novel or a letter. So, it lets the reader or listener have the chance to bring their own experience or curiosity or personal history into the poem.”

Camp will be reading from her most recent book of poetry, “In Old Sky,” which she wrote in a residency program at Grand Canyon National Park. While there, she focused on what she called the “pristine natural darkness” of nighttime in the canyon.

“It was a life-changing experience,” she said. “I had to keep figuring out a way to experience the darkness anew — to describe the sounds and the quality of the air, and to just use different senses to come at the subject, to use different language, to take out the word ‘dark’ sometimes and say, How else can I define this that is both true and real and surprising?”

Other featured poets reading in the afternoon include Albuquerque Poetry and Beer founder Matthew John Conley, Chicharra Poetry Slam Festival founder Zachary Kluckman and “ABQinPrint” poetry editor Hilda Raz. Then, beginning at 3 p.m., Harris and Wiggerman will host an open mic.

Throughout the day, the Escribiente Calligraphers will be demonstrating their weathergrams — strips of paper inscribed with poetic verses, which they will tie to tree branches to flap in the breeze like Tibetan prayer flags. Get close and you can read their messages — a multi-vocal poetic chorus.

There will also be food and music, plus a chance to purchase books from New Mexican small presses, including Casa Urraca Press, Dos Gatos Press, Hummingbird Hollow Press, Jules’ Poetry Playhouse and Read or Green Books.

“I just think it will be glorious to be out in nature with a forum that is powerful and very much like a gift,” Camp said.

Tap into your inner bard with the Open Space Visitor Center Poets Picnic