Larry Robertson comes back to Earth ahead of the second annual Poetry Festival

Larry Robertson credits poetry with saving his life.

“When I started writing poetry, I was not in a joyful place,” Robertson said in a mid-September call. “I was very depressed, specifically when I was doing the work that went into my first book, Words Saved Lives, around 2016 or ’17. Tamir [Rice] and Tyre [King] were murdered in Cleveland and here [in Columbus]. I’m originally from Cleveland, and it really hit home with me, where I was spiraling into depression. And writing poetry really helped me to process my emotions through that time, to understand what was going on in the world, and to do something creative with it.”

Growing up on the East Side of Cleveland, Robertson said he understood the fragility of life from a young age, recalling the time in high school when police pulled him over on his own street, detaining and frisking him before letting him go free. “And I’m really a kid, terrified,” he said. “I’ve known for a long time that at any moment, in any circumstance, because of my skin color, because of my race, I could be gone in an instant. … And that can make it hard to move through the world in a joyful manner.”

Within poetry, however, Robertson discovered a form that served as a needed pressure release valve, giving him a space in which these knottier emotions could live outside of his body. It also led him to more exhaustively research the many subjects on which his writing touched, expanding his base of knowledge in a way that he said helped to provide comfort and enabled him to hold to more firmly to joy. “So much of my writing process is researching, whether it’s reading up on social justice or stop and frisk [laws],” Robertson said. “And the more I understand and learn, the better I’m able to navigate it all. I’m able to be at peace in a way where it’s not this big looming thing that I don’t have any power over.”

In the years that followed these early, college-age explorations, Robertson’s poetry continued to grow in scope, expanding outward from community centered themes to verses in which he began to wrangle with humankind’s larger place in the universe. More recently, however, urgent global realities have combined to create a gravitational pull that has returned the poet’s focus earthward, with Robertson citing the ongoing genocide in Gaza as one force motivating a number of the poems he has written in the last couple of years.

“[The poems] had become very cerebral and conceptual, and I was having all of these theoretical conversations. And as things really kicked off in Palestine, I found I almost couldn’t have those kinds of conversations,” Robertson said. “We can talk all day about how there have always been positive and negative energies in the universe, how our entire existence is a blip, and this, that, and the other. No. Right now, children are dying. Full stop. What are we going to do about that? What is my poetry going to do about that?”

All of these dimensions and more will be on display this weekend at the second annual Poetry Festival, where Robertson will be joined by a small army of readers that include Ohio poet laureate Kari Gunter-Seymour, Tyiesha Radford Shorts, Dalal Shalash, among many others. The free event takes place at a trio of locations over two days on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 27 and 28. On Saturday, the action will center on Franklinton, with poets reading at Wild Goose Collective and a series of workshops running at nearby art gallery Roy G Biv. On Sunday, the readings and workshops shift to the Grange Insurance Audubon Center, 505 W. Whittier St. (The Poetry Festival runs from 1-5 p.m. on both days, with an afterparty set for 6 p.m. on Sunday at Cobra in the Brewery District.) 

Robertson said he founded the festival in response to his travels within the local poetry scene, where his experiences reading alongside the likes of Amy Turn Sharp at Secret Studio and Mike Wright at Skylab Gallery led him to want to connect everyone under the same roof. “I just thought there was an opportunity to bring together all of these talented poets that I got to experience individually,” said Robertson, who took further inspiration from recurring events such as “Rhapsody & Refrain.” “I would hear about this crew over here or hear about what people were doing with the Poetry Cauldron, and I was like, man, if we could just bring everyone together it could be insane.”

It helped that Robertson had previous event experience, having worked behind the scenes for touring bands such as Ghost and All Them Witches in a many-hatted role that required him to pitch in on everything from social media and merchandise management to helping break down equipment during the set changeovers. “And I think that gave me the initial foolish confidence I could do this,” Robertson said, and laughed. “The Poetry Festival isn’t to the scale of some of those shows, but it gave me a sense of all the moving parts that go into organizing and planning.”

The festival returns at what continues to be a transitional time in Columbus’ vibrant poetry scene, with events such as the Poetry Cauldron at Kafe Kerouac taking over the mantle from retired long-running features such as Writers’ Block and the Poetry Forum. Robertson said he views the festival working in harmony with these newly established events, expanding available opportunities for everyone involved in the scene. “Even with all the cool things that are going on in the poetry community, it still felt like there was space for this,” he said. “This thing makes sense.”