Editor’s Note: Day 4 coverage of the Utah Arts Festival features a literary arts preview and a feature about poet headliner Seth Walker. Tomorrow, we turn to previews of the musical commissions, Mormon Tabernacle Choir organist Richard Elliott, and the first of numerous features on festival performers. Coverage during festival days will feature multiple posts.

DID YOU KNOW?

In 2009, the Utah Arts Festival was ranked 39 among the nation’s top 100 festivals. The Festival is a member of the International Festival and Events Association, an organization with a roster of 2,000 members representing events in 29 countries. Since the year it joined, the Festival has garnered numerous awards, competing against the likes of such prestigious events as the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade, the Coconut Grove Arts Festival, Denver’s Cherry Creek Arts Festival, the Kentucky Derby Festival, Houston International Festival, and the Portland Rose Festival.

LITERARY ARTS

The literary arts activities at this year’s Utah Arts Festival will be a slamming good time, according to Melissa Bond who is overseeing this increasingly prominent aspect of the four-day cultural gathering.

A new significant feature is the festival’s first-ever slam poetry team competition as a warmup for the national poetry slam competition which will be held August in St. Paul, Minnesota. Two teams from Salt Lake City – Salt City Slam and Team Salt Poetelyptic – will compete with Tiny Mesa Poetry Slam from Mesa, Arizona, Black Pearl Poetry Slam from Phoenix, and SlamNUBA of Denver. The competition will be held Saturday, June 26, from 8:30 to 10 p.m. on the Big Mouth Café Stage.

And, these performance poets will thrill. Jesse Parent is the current SlamMaster of Salt City Slam, the 2010 Individual World Poetry Slam representative for SLC, and an executive council member for Poetry Slam, Inc, the nonprofit running all national poetry slam events and competitions.

Ed Mabrey, a member of the Phoenix contingent, is the 2007 Individual World Poetry Slam champion and two-time Haiku national slam champion. SlamNUBA also has several heavy hitters including Amy Everhartm the 2009 Individual World Poetry Slam champion; Megan Rickman, 2010 Women of the World Poetry Slam finalist, and Jen Rinaldi, a member of the 2006 national poetry slam champion team from Denver.

The regular poetry slam event will have competitive rounds beginning at 8 p.m. on Thursday, June 24, and 7:30 p.m. on Friday, June 25, with the final slamoff on Sunday, June 27, at 8 p.m.

The slamming doesn’t stop there. Seth Walker, who electrified Utah Arts Festival audiences last year with some of the most naturally sounding neobeat poetry ever heard, returns this year as a festival headliner performing five times on various stages (Friday, June 25, 5 p.m., Big Mouth Café; Saturday, June 26, at 6 and 9:30 p.m., Earth Garden Café, and Sunday, June 27, at 4:45 and 10 p.m. on the Plaza Stage).

Walker, a Houston native, is a current team member of the Austin Poetry Slam, one of the longest running poetry venues in the nation and home at one point to virtually every nationally known performance poet. More about Walker in a separate feature article below.

Of course, Utah’s literary arts venue would not be complete without an appearance by Alex Caldiero, one of the state’s best known literary figures who is the subject of The Sonosopher, a feature-length documentary film directed by Torben Bernhard and Travis Low, that has appeared in several major film festivals.

Clearly more comfortable with the title of sonosopher as opposed to the more traditional tag of poet and author, Caldiero, 60, takes an idea and process (and not particularly a “literary” one) to the extreme. Sometimes, the words become progressively indistinct amid a palette of sounds – some musical, some natural, others synthesized – and then they’re reconstructed as the process reverses. Or, perhaps a simple phrase or sentence is deconstructed with emotionally charged rhythmic loops that build the tension and then release it.

True to his art, Caldiero has set up the Poetarium, which will operate similarly to the old-fashioned coin-operated fortune teller attractions one would see at a carnival or beach boardwalk. Patrons will select from a series of slips of papers with specific terms or phrases written, insert them into a slot, the curtains will open, and, voila, they will get a spontaneous rantcantation from the master himself.

The Poetarium will operate Thursday, June 24, at 7:30 p.m, and Saturday, June 26, at 3:30 and 8 p.m. at the Big Mouth Café.

Another prominent figure is Teresa Jordan, who will read Friday, June 25, at 6 p.m. at the Big Mouth Café. No stranger to the Intermountain West literary scene, she is a fourth-generation family member of cattle ranch owners in the Iron Mountain country of southeast Wyoming. Jordan has written or edited seven books about Western rural life, culture, and the environment, including the memoir ‘Riding the White Horse Home’ and ‘Cowgirls: Women of the American West,’ a widely cited study of women on ranches and in the rodeo.

The recipient of the Western Heritage Award from the Cowboy Hall of Fame for scriptwriting and a literary fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts as well as many other literary awards, a recent book is ‘Fieldnotes from Yosemite,’ the second volume in her series of Sketchbook Expeditions. A Yale alumna, she wrote a thesis on Wyoming ranchers during the Great Depression that won the McClintock Prize for History of the American West. She later returned to school earning a fine art degree in drawing and painting from the University of Utah in 2002.

There also will be readings with Bond, Sara Caldiero-Oertli, and Raw Xtract (hip hop poetry) and others. All told, there are more than 25 hours of readings and literary performances scheduled on the perennially popular Big Mouth Café stage.

There are two 24-hour writing competitions, coordinated and judged with the help of the Salt Lake Community College’s Community Writing Center staff.

And, budding writers of all ages can choose from among more than 10 hands-on writing workshops, also coordinated by SLCC staffers, covering everything from the shortest micro fiction to non-rhyming poetry and writing through parenting.

Other workshops – in which participants will write and get feedback during the hour-long sessions – include how to turn personal interviews into narratives, how to inflect writing with insights about contemporary culture and social issues, and how to overcome writer’s block. For kids, there will be DaDa poetry and word play.

Last year brought more than 40 writers to the first Wasatch IronPen Literary Marathon Competition, and Bond expects a similar if not larger showing this year. Participants can enter in one of three categories – fiction, nonfiction, and poetry – and they will get their writing cues Friday, June 25, at 6 p.m. and will need to submit their work 24 hours later in order to be eligible for judging.

For the truly adventurous, there is an Ultra IronPen challenge in which authors will submit works in all three genres within the 24-hour period.

Registration, which closes at 5:55 p.m. on June 25, is $10 for the IronPen competition and $30 for the Ultra IronPen portion. For more information, call (801) 957-4992 or visit here.

Judging is based on youth and adult categories and winners will read selections from their entries Sunday, June 27, at 2 p.m. at the Big Mouth Café.