Not the usual thing you”ll see here, this announcement, but if you”re interested in podcasting for your poetry, you”ll want to keep your eye out for PodCamp. The first PodCamp takes place this weekend in Boston, but if it goes well, there will be more scheduled in other parts of the country.

Direct from their web site:

Sept 9-10, 2006 Bunker Hill Community College, Boston, 9 AM – 5 PM

Welcome, Rocketboom viewers!

PodCamp is a FREE BarCamp-style meetup for podcasters and listeners, bloggers and readers, and new media types of all stripes. Our first PodCamp is PODCAMP BOSTON: SEPT 9th-10th, 2006 at Bunker Hill Community College (sponsored by the Museum of Science, Boston), accessible by public transportation. Get BostonDirections <– here.

You do NOT need to be a podcaster to attend. If you”re interested in podcasting, if you”re a listener, if you”re a podsafe musician (or want to be), or just someone curious, WELCOME!

The weekend will feature lots of info on how to: create, produce, publish, publicize and more. If you”re considering making podcasts of your poetry or anything else, this is bound to be one heck of a get together. The event gets started Saturday morning at Bunker Hill Community College at 9 AM sharp. There are seminars and presentations sheduled throughout the day, and dinner from 5-10 PM at the Grand Canal – free unlimited food and dinner after the sessions end for the day. The sessions will continue on Sunday.

Everybody on the bus – that”s the slogan of my local Regional Transit Authority – but it”s also good advice for poets these days. From Chicago, where poems by schoolkids are posted in bus stations and on busses, to New York”s subway readings to Seattle”s Wave Books” Poetry Bus Tour 2006, busses have taken a big part in poetry these days. Okay – poetry busses are not something new. The Merry Pranksters took to the road in 1964 on their own version of the poetry bus, and for the last few years, poets have criss-crossed the country on a Greyhound bus, stopping in various venues to perform, read, write and generally spread the love of poetry. This year, Wave Books sponsors the Poetry Bus Tour 2006, which will leave Seattle on Monday, September 4, and return to it on October 27 – just under two full months of traveling on a decked out bus with a bunch of poets.

In the interim, the poets will be visiting 55 cities and numerous venues. The tour includes:

The Space Needle in Seattle, WA; The Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD; The Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, MN; The Bama Theater in Tuscaloosa, AL; James Turrell”s Roden Crater in AZ; Dia:Beacon in Beacon, NY; Dia Art Foundation in New York, NY; as well as bookstores, galleries, clubs, prisons and schools across the continent.

Participating poets include: Eileen Myles, James Tate, Cole Swensen, Dean Young, Joshua Beckman, Erin Belieu, Noelle Kocot, Matthew Zapruder, Tyehimba Jess, Hoa Nguyen, Richard Siken, Katy Lederer, Dara Wier, Arthur Sze, Catherine Wagner, Srikanth Reddy, Matthew Rohrer, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Bhanu Kapil and over 100 more.

For more information – and to follow the tour once it starts – visit poetrybus.com

If you”re going to be anywhere in the neighborhood of Providence, Rhode Island this coming Tuesday night, you have GOT to be at Reflections Cafe on Wickendon Street. That”s the night that Patricia Smith will be featuring at the GotPoetry Live reading – and Patricia Smith reading her poetry is something not to be missed. I”ve written about Smith here before, and I promised then that I”d share dates when I had them. So here goes – Patricia Smith featuring at GotPoetry Live on Sept 5. Be there. If you miss her there…

Sept 11 louderEDGE: Patricia Smith”s BOOK LAUNCH PARTY + OPEN MIC

– Don”t miss the NYC launch of Patricia Smith”s latest book, “Teahouse of the Almighty,” which won the incredibly prestigious National Poetry Prize Don”t say no one told you.

If you”re in Boston on Monday, the place to be is MIT – yes, the high-tech school, proving that technology and poetry are not mutually exclusive. The Intercollegiate Poetry Slam is an outdoor, professionally emceed, poetry slam open to any student with a mind for performance and a heart for the spoken word. There will be both individual and team slam categories, as well as cash prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place.

Please come support the world of poetry at the collegiate level. The event will take place outside at the Kresge Oval on MIT”s campus in Cambridge, MA. For information on participation, please contact Victor Sinow at vsinow22@gmail.com

Boston isn”t the only venue featuring poetry on Labor Day. If you”re in St. Paul, drop by The Artist”s Quarter for the opening of their 2006-2007 Poetry Slam Season, with feature Bao Phi. For more information, drop by the Soap-Boxing.com web site.

On Sunday night at the Java Hut, Poetry Asylum will feature the astonishing Marty McConnell. Want to know more about Marty? Check here.. or get a taste of what you”ll hear tomorrow night here...

If you”re in and around Austin this week, you”ve probably been hearing a lot of poetry. The National Poetry Slam Finals started on Wedensday and they”re really rocking down the house – or houses, as the case may be. With over 300 poets on 81 teams competing, this is the largest Nationals in the history of the National Poetry Slam. For those who don”t know, a poetry slam is a head to head poetry competition with poets each having 3 minutes in which to perform one of their own poems. That poem is then scored Olympic style by judges selected from the audience, and the high scorers take home bragging rights and other prizes, depending on the venue. In the nationals, those bragging rights include the claim to be the best poetry slam team in the whole country – and the best individual slam poet in the nation.

The scores were up at 1 AM Thursday for the team standings at the end of the first day of competition, and they were an interesting mix. Perennial favorites are in there – the New York Nuyorican team, Providence, NYC Urbana, Boston Cantab, Seattle – and two separate Austin teams are in the top 10, as well as Fort Worth, Houston and Dallas. The Indies give another layer to the competition. The high scoring poets from each day, regardless of team, have a shot at competing in the Individual finals, and there are several poets in that list whose teams didn”t make the first day top 25 cut, including Worcester”s Erin Jackson, and Boston Lizard Lounge”s Iyeoka Okoawo. Also in that list is Jared Paul of Providence, who co-hosted the North Beast Regionals that I attended last week.

But it”s not all about duking it out at the Slams. Among the events planned for the day between and around bouts are a Women”s Voices reading, a workshop on using Slam in the classroom for poets who want to work in the schools, another on Youth Poetry for poets under 18. There are workshops and classes for poets on recording their art in a digital world, publishing beyond the slam scene and surviving in a Small Press World. Tony Brown, one of our featured poets from last month, will cohost a Grief and Remembrance reading honoring grief and loss, and Taylor Mali cohosting a panel on the gray areas and loopholes in the Slam rules. That”s just a sampling of one day”s worth of Slam activities.

Stay tuned for the follow-up results after the Thursday results are posted, and the final scores on Friday. It”s Slam time, y”all!

Remember Minnesota, the state that doesn”t have an official poet laureate because the governor vetoed it? The story first made the news in May of last year when Governor Tim Pawlenty decided that establishing an official poet laureate for the state might open the floodgates and next thing you know every distaff art and its cousin would be demanding equal time. He envisioned requests for a state interpretive dancer, potter or – heaven forbid – a state mime. Never mind that there is an official U.S. poet laureate, and that 4/5ths of the states appoint an official poetic position, and to the best of my knowledge, few of them have succumbed in a slide down the slippery slope of appointing official state bell-ringers and yodelers. The bill was vetoed, and allowed to die.

But the idea was not. Governor Pawlenty”s veto seems to have opened a different kind of floodgate. In April of this year, the Lake Superior Writers named Barton Sutter to be Duluth”s official Poet Laureate, the first in the city. The movement to appoint an official poet for Duluth was an obvious response to the governor”s veto. Appointed on April 22, Sutter will serve two years in his term before being succeeded by another. The appointment was the result of grass roots activisim on the part of businessmen and citizen”s of the city.

Following in Duluth”s footsteps, St. Paul, Minnesota appointed its own poet laureate last month. Carol Connolly, an activist and poet, will serve as the city”s official poet, commissioned to write poems for special city occasions and helping to encourage and spread the love of poetry throughout the city. Connolly officially took up her duties and appeared as poet laureate in public for the first time at Mayor Chris Coleman”s budget address.