Poetry has its pros

EVERYONE is talking about the creative economy, but the first-ever Massachusetts Poetry Festival is doing something about it.

Today through Sunday, Lowell will host a three-day party, an experiment in how to increase the power of poetry's punch. The festival is a celebration of poetry for its own sake, but could also be a tool to expand and capitalize on a precious cultural asset.

"Can we use poetry to drive economic events?" asks Michael Ansara, a festival organizer, activist, and poet. It's one of the questions being asked in an effort to pull poetry out of classrooms and coffeehouses; to move it beyond the confines of weddings and funerals.

The festival sets a fine example. It features emerging as well as award-winning poets, such as former US poet laureate Robert Pinsky; Martín Espada, a University of Massachusetts-Amherst English professor; and Marjorie Agosín, a professor of Spanish at Wellesley College. The festival's readings, films, and other events will be held in many spaces, including art galleries, museums, the Lowell High School auditorium, the library, and the Lowell National Historical Park Visitor Center Theater.

For the city of Lowell, the festival is a chance to show off the web of partners ready to promote the local creative economy. The successful Lowell Folk Festival shows just what a tonic the arts can be for an aging mill city.

The organizational brain behind the festival belongs to the Massachusetts Poetry Outreach Project. Supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, MassPop has a list of promising projects. One idea is to produce poetry products such as CD recordings. Another is to hire poets to visit assisted-living facilities, schools, workplaces, and other settings. This would expand poetry's footprint and help poets establish themselves as professionals who should be paid.

That kind of professional development is crucial, argues Charles Coe, also a poet and festival organizer. He'd like to see more ways to help poets focus on business basics such as marketing and self-publishing.

Ultimately, though, "There's something about poetry that humanizes people," Coe notes. Poetry illuminates the personal: the dreams deferred, the roads not taken, the need, as Dylan Thomas wrote, to "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

The festival can claim success if it introduces people to today's Dylan Thomases and Robert Frosts - the vibrant community of contemporary poets who hammer words into profound insights.