“And it was at that age…poetry arrived in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where it came from, from winter or a river I don’t know how or when, no, they weren’t voices, they were not words, nor silence, but from a street it called me, from the branches of the night, abruptly from the others, among raging fires, or returning alone, there it was, without a face, and it touched me.” – Pablo Neruda, from the English translation of La Poesia/Poetry

As you walk through the grassy areas and past the tiny huts, you will spot the large white tents where vendors sell books from featured poets and other prominent authors. Everyone is walking around and flipping through programs, figuring out which seminars to attend and which poets to see. There is a large cafeteria where you can grab a snack and find poetry lovers from all over the US, getting to know each other and comparing notes.

This is the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, which has been running bi-annually in NJ since 1986 and has featured prominent poets like Billy Collins, Lucille Clifton, Gerald Stern, and Joyce Carol Oates. The event gives fans a chance to not only hear their favorite poets read and discuss their writing, but also to meet and speak with them after the readings are over. The festival also features open forums, where various attendees of the festival can read their own poetry or sit back and listen to the works others have written.

Though 2008’s festival had 19,000 attendees, the Dodge Foundation has announced that, as of 2010, they can no longer afford to fund another poetry event. Just recently, David Grant, CEO of the Dodge Foundation, has cited that the festival cannot be produced “on the scale of past festivals”.

Martin Farawell, Poetry Director of Dodge, is concerned that the announcement has been misconstrued. “We are hoping to be able to do poetry events if not on such a large scale. We don’t know when but we’re exploring our options.” Farawell explains what an “extraordinary initiative” it was that a grant making foundation like Dodge was able to produce such a highly-publicized event in the first place.

The foundation typically donates to five causes: education, the arts, environment, Morris County, and animal welfare. Geraldine R. Dodge, a Madison, NJ native, was an altruistic woman who set up these stipulations before her death in 1973.

Certainly if this event, which is the largest Poetry Festival in North America, cannot be reproduced, this will be a huge loss for the poetry-loving world at large. Previously, seminars hosted by some of the festival’s top poets have covered a broad range of topics regarding poetry in the evolving world.

These seminars sometimes involved controversy, such as the reading by former New Jersey Poet Laureate Amiri Baraka at 2002’s Festival. In his poem “Somebody Blew Up America,” he implied that Israelis and Jews were involved in the 9/11 attacks on the US, and his comments were viewed as anti-Semitic. Governor McGreevey tried to remove his title of Poet Laureate but was not able to under law.

Farawell lists two reasons for the festival’s decline. The first is the large amount of production costs incurred. Waterloo Village, the festival’s venue for every year but one, was shut down as of January 1, 2007 due to financial difficulties, by the Waterloo Arts Foundation. Although it was re-opened for the Dodge Festival in 2008, the poetry foundation was forced to cover all costs associated with the event that were previously covered by Waterloo.

“It was too much of a cost for a four-day event. Only a small amount of money was going to the actual poets and performers,” said Farawell. The foundation had to cover costs for parking attendants to portable toilets. The other reason for the festival’s cancellation was Dodge’s shrinking endowment. “Funding in all areas was getting cut except for poetry.”

Various towns and venues in NJ have made bids to hold the poetry festival, such as Montclair, NJ. Joseph M. Hartnett, Township Manager, has taken the reins on this project. He stated in NJ’s Star Ledger that Montclair is a good fit to host the festival since they have similar event experience with First Night, an annual New Year’s celebration that showcases artists and performers in various venues around the town. Hartnett was unavailable for comment on further plans to pursue hosting the festival.

Besides the loss fans of poetry will experience, educators will be noticing the disappearance of Dodge as well. Dodge always offers a “teacher day” on the Friday of the festival where educators can purchase a discounted ticket and attend seminars to discuss getting students involved in poetry.

Susan Dineen, high school English teacher at the Pingry School in Martinsville, NJ, has attended this event before. “Teacher’s day is great because speakers talk directly to us and many of them are teachers themselves,” said Dineen. She finds that teachers of students for all ages attend the festival to figure out “how do we keep young people interested in poetry.”

Dineen has taught at Pingry since 1990 and has been bringing students to the event since then. Two of her students were finalists at last year’s Dodge and got to read their prize-winning poems. “It’s just sad because most kids who go to the festival haven’t been before- it opens up a whole new world for them,” she said, calling this a “tremendous loss” for the students, one that they won’t even understand because they will never attend the event.

Besides being a huge detriment to her students, “For me personally, it is a horrible loss. I hope that there’s some philanthropist out there who can provide some mystery funding for the event.” Dineen will continue to hold her own small-scale poetry events at the school annually, one of which she is preparing for the week of March 13th, 2009.

In order to preserve the integrity of past events, the Dodge Foundation has begun to archive their festivals on YouTube. On this site, there is an option to donate to the foundation. With a loss such as this one, there still seems to be some efforts made by people who are willing to keep the spirit alive. With enough hope and drive, there may be a chance that poetry can survive even the economic downturn that has affected so many areas of every day life this past year.