Poetry at Round Top: A Literary Festival

08/16/2026

Please save the date! April 16-18, 2027, for the 25th Poetry at Round Top! We are excited to announce our features: Marie Howe, Naomi Shihab Nye, Cornelius Eady, Rajiv Mohabir, Ed Madden, Chera Hammons, Lucy Griffith, R. Scott Yarbrough, and musician Dr. John Mills!

Readings, panel conversations, workshops, portfolio consultations, a music and poetry program, shared meals, communion with poets and poetry on the beautiful natural grounds and jaw-dropping concert hall of Festival Hill--hope to see you there!

04/24/2026

04/24/2026

It's impossible to capture all the magical moments of Poetry at Round Top 2026. There were moments of quiet contemplation, thoughtful panel (and interpersonal) conversations, an exuberant young poets' reading, stunning new books presentations, powerful readings, inspiring workshops and portfolio consultations, revelatory open-mic sharing, mesmerizing music and poetry performances, joyous dancing, a creative's brilliant silent auction, poignant remembrances, a choral reading of the anthology over the closing lunch. . .

Is P@RT a retreat or a festival?

Were you here this year? We hope it was a memorable, renewing experience for you, and you will join us next year, April 16-18, 2027, for the 25th! Poetry at Round Top.

Poetry at Round Top and the Round Top Festival Institute gratefully acknowledge the special assistance of the Festival Hill staff, Festival Hill founder James Dick, and the generous support of The Shanti Foundation for Intercultural Understanding, BookWoman bookstore in Austin, friends of Dom Zuccone, and many individual donors.

04/16/2026

Umbrella, so it won't rain. . . ? Oh, but we do need the rain.

04/16/2026

So you're packing, right? Or, thinking what to pack as the weekend draws near. . .

Something to write with and on would probably be a good idea.

Something to read. . . or, wait--maybe an empty bag or two for all the creative silent auction treasures and poetry books you could want?

Bookwoman, Austin's extraordinary feminist bookstore for 50 years (!) is an integral part of P@RT weekend. Books by the poets featured at P@RT and so many more will be available for sale on site, right by the signing table. Come browse! What poet and poetry lover doesn't love a cozy corner bookstore?

April 17-19, 2026 on Festival Hill in Round Top, TX
(Registration is now closed online but you can still show up and register onsite, Friday, April 17th, 1:30 pm, when checkin begins.)
poetryatroundtop.org

04/14/2026

The creative, eclectic, spectacular, and sometimes funny, sometimes tender Richard Royall (that lovely man in the photo with the umbrella and light sword) Memorial Silent Auction at Poetry at Round Top is like no other silent auction anywhere.

Lean in now and let me whisper.

{Chief silent (well, she does speak and write a bit) auctioneer Naomi Shihab Nye shared some hints about some items we will ooh and ahh at (and maybe take home) this year:

Rare William Stafford and Kim Stafford books!
Magnificent Art by Paula Owen, Meredith Dean, Terry Ybanez - prominent and beloved San Antonio artists!
Exquisite Palestinian tatreez embroidered dresses!
Poetic jackets!
Stunning book bags and broadsides!
Irish tea cups!}

Oh, and we've heard one of our featured poets might be offering a tarot card reading. . . There will be more, more than we could imagine, from fine art to frivolous fun.

Come prepared to be fascinated.

Bring a (environmentally friendly) bag to take home your treasures! It only happens once a year, here.

Poetry at Round Top, April 17-19, 2026
poetryatroundtop.org

04/12/2026

Part of the enchantment of Poetry at Round Top must be its beautiful natural setting, accented with interesting and somewhat eccentric art and architecture. There is no place like it. The grounds and gardens inspire, calm, and nurture our poets and poetry lovers, especially those sensitive to the ecosystem of which we are one.

It's a rural setting, without city services many of us may take for granted like curbside recycling or compost pickup. We need to be mindful of the waste we create and the way we move through this charming place.

It's much harder to plan a gathering of humans with the impact on the environment in mind than one might imagine. So, please do imagine how we can do this together.

Please bring a refillable water bottle with you and be mindful of what you do with inevitable trash. We're planning to do the same. Let us, as Wendell Berry whispers, come into the peace of wild things where we gather.
https://poetryatroundtop.org/

04/08/2026

Perhaps you have read, perhaps you have heard Ilya Kaminsky's poem, "We Lived Happily During the War." Click on the link below to hear him read the poem and talk about it with Victoria Chang, in a 2022 interview in the New York Times.

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union, in 1977, and arrived to the US in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the government. He is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press, 2019) and Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004) and co-editor and co-translator of many other books. His work was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, and Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize, and was also shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize, and T.S. Eliot Prize (UK). He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Fellowship, an Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship, and an NEA Fellowship. He currently teaches in Princeton and lives in New Jersey.

Join us at Poetry at Round Top, April 17-19, 2026, to hear and be with the remarkable, gifted Ilya Kaminsky.
https://www.festivalhill.org/ #/events/4384

This poem subverts a more conventional political poem by leaning into the speaker’s pleasurable life amid the suffering of others.