To commemorate the hundredth birthday of modernist poet Charles Olson, The Switch is staging a weekend long event in which local poets will read the entirety of The Maximus Poems. What are The Maximus Poems? Let's check Wikipedia...

An exploration of American history in the broadest sense, Maximus is also an epic of place, Massachusetts and specifically the city of Gloucester where Olson had settled. Dogtown, the wild, rock-strewn centre of Cape Ann, next to Gloucester, is an important place in The Maximus Poems. (Olson used to write outside on a tree stump in Dogtown.) The whole work is also mediated through the voice of Maximus, based partly on Maximus of Tyre, an itinerant Greek philosopher, and partly on Olson himself. The final, unfinished volume imagines an ideal Gloucester in which communal values have replaced commercial ones.

Sounds awesome! Readers include Zachary Schomburg, Tim DuRoche, Donald Dunbar, and many more. The first series of readings starts today at 4:00 p.m. at The Switchyard Studios on 109 SE Salmon, followed tomorrow at galleryHOMELAND at 2505 SE 11th Ave., and concluding Sunday at YU on 800 SE 10th Ave. Saturday and Sunday's readings begin at 2:00.