Summertime...and the festivals are comin'...

Arts festivals, that is. There's Siteworks, Art on the Ave, Urban Art Festival, Showcase Tacoma--and the Glassroots Festival. Low-down and funky, Glassroots has been running every August for three years in the narrow streets near Embellish Salon for three years now. It's featured everything from glassblowing to graffiti. But now it needs help.

A week or so ago, co-organizer Angela Jossy put out this plea on the Tacoma arts listserv:

"As some of you may know...Tacoma Arts Community is no more. The officers of that group were tired and felt that the outpouring of support that they initially had had waned and many of the goals it set out to achieve had been done. But the festival they started called Glassroots may live on. Its kind of up to you."

Why should Glassroots survive? Well, says Jossy, it's the only festival she knows of that doesn't charge artists for vendor space. It also doesn't jury items (apart from making sure they're locally made). It's intended to be inclusive and supportive of artists.

It's hard work putting on something like this. Jossy and crew need more bodies to volunteer, organize and generally cheer the festival on. If you're interested, come along to the planning meeting on Wednesday, April 29th at 6:30 pm at the Tempest Lounge, 913 Martin Luther King Jr Way, Tacoma. The agenda will include picking a non-profit umbrella, setting a date, assigning responsibilities and setting more meeting dates.

Jossy puts it plainly: "If enough of you show up there will be a festival. If not, then we bid you adieu until next year."

I apologize: I got it wrong. I previously listed this reading last week, but of course it's this week: April 30.

What am I doing this Thursday evening? Listening to Bill Kupinse read for the last time as Tacoma's Poet Laureate, and find out who's going to fill his shoes next year.

Kupinse, a professor of English at the University of Puget Sound, has been in the laureate job for one year now--the inaugural Urban Grace Poet Laureate of Tacoma. It's a tough job, involving lots of reading (and, presumably, writing) poetry, leading workshops and raising the standard of poetry in T-town. But it's time for someone else to have all the fun. So after a month of mulling over the entrants for the competitive post, the judges will appoint the Laureate for 2009/2010 at an event at UPS this Thursday.

Beginning at 8 p.m. Kupinse and fellow professor/poet Hans Ostrom will read their work; then Mayor Bill Baarsma will announce the new Poet Laureate. A new book by Tacoma poets and co-edited by Kupinse, "In Tahoma's shadow," will be released as well. Be there or be prosaic.

Location: Rausch Auditorium, McIntyre Hall, UPS, 1500 N. Warner St., Tacoma. www.ups.edu