{"id":263976,"date":"2026-04-12T13:31:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T13:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/263976\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T13:31:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T13:31:20","slug":"long-beach-public-library-hosts-making-waves-poetry-festival-herald-community-newspapers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/263976\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach Public Library hosts Making Waves Poetry Festival | Herald Community Newspapers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p3\">Words\u00a0moving\u00a0like sand\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Sharing poetry\u00a0out loud\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">At the festival.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">The<a href=\"https:\/\/www.liherald.com\/longbeach\/stories\/long-beach-public-library-receives-overdose-treatment-kits,221212\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Long Beach Public Library<\/a>\u00a0will\u00a0present\u00a0the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.liherald.com\/longbeach\/stories\/a-poetry-festival-is-coming-to-the-long-beach-public-library,206748\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Making Waves Poetry Festival<\/a> for the third consecutive year.\u00a0The creative celebration kicked off Wednesday\u00a0with an open mic hosted by the Shore Poets Peter Dugan and three-time Poet Laureate Emeritus Paula Curci. The festival continues into the weekend with four diverse poetry workshops on Saturday and another three poetry workshops Sunday.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">The poetry festival offers another open mic session on Saturday\u00a0evening, featuring Nassau County Poet Laureate Doreen Spungin. Winners of this year\u2019s poetry contest, which ran from Jan. 30 to March 27, have been invited to read their winning work aloud. The contest was divided into three age categories: children from 5 to 11, tweens and teens from 12 to 18, and adults 18 and older.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">The poetry festival is a passion project from Nicole Menzzasalma,\u00a0who wears many hats\u00a0at\u00a0the library: librarian,\u00a0curator\u00a0of the seed library, head of the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.liherald.com\/longbeach\/stories\/lb-public-library-hosts-second-annual-fun-fair,217016\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">LB\u00a0Garden Club<\/a>, and organizer of the poetry festival.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">\u201cI saw from our Shore Poets open mic night that they were so welcoming,\u201d\u00a0Menzzasalma\u00a0said. \u201cThey had such a huge presence. I went to the library\u2019s program coordinator, Sarah Siegel, and said, \u2018What if we did a poetry festival?\u2019 She said, \u2018I love it. What can we do?\u2019 And it went from there. It centered on letting the community\u2019s voice be heard.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Menzzasalma\u00a0wanted expert-led workshops to play a key part of the festival weekend. \u201cI find that, when you write in a community, there\u2019s a certain alchemy, \u201cshe explained. \u201cIt just is so beautiful to see everybody come together for their love of poetry and writing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">The workshops offer experienced poets guiding attendees through free verse poetry, haiku, finding your \u201cvoice\u201d through journaling and more.\u00a0Instructors include Poet Laureate Paula Curci; award-winner Gary Jansen; Dana Monti, a second-grade teacher at Lido Elementary; and\u00a0Menzzasalma\u00a0herself,\u00a0an experienced poet.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">\u201cWe really try to get a lot of people who are community members to host the workshops,\u201d\u00a0Menzzasalma\u00a0explained. \u201cThat was a big focus for this year. Community and creativity.\u00a0That\u2019s really something I stand for. Community and inclusivity and making everybody feel welcome. The library is a place for everyone.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Words\u00a0moving\u00a0like sand\u00a0 Sharing poetry\u00a0out loud\u00a0 At the festival.\u00a0 The Long Beach Public Library\u00a0will\u00a0present\u00a0the Making Waves Poetry Festival for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[115785,131,133,132,115782,115781,115784,115783],"class_list":["post-263976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-community-arts-events","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-long-beach-public-library","tag-making-waves-poetry-festival","tag-nassau-county-poets","tag-poetry-festival-long-island"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}