The theme of the 2025 festival is One River, One Boat: Celebrating South Carolina's Poets. This title gets its inspiration from Marjory Wentworth's poem "One River, One Boat." Wentworth is South Carolina's most recent poet laureate of South Carolina; she resigned in 2020, and the governor of our state has yet to appoint a new laureate although he was given a list of qualified finalists. 

 

This year's festival not only brings attention to the empty state poet laureate position, it also celebrates the rich heritage, vibrant present, and illustrious future of SC's poets. For the 2025 Festival, we will feature poets from across the state to include the four major regions of the state: the Pee Dee, The Midlands, the Lowcountry and the Upstate. The festival will include poetry writing workshops, readings, and poetic conversations. Programming will be available for all ages including children and teenagers.

The second annual Soda City Poetry Festival will be June 27th and June 28th, 2025 in Columbia, South Carolina. Most events will happen at Richland Library Main, where all workshops, readings and poetic conversations will happen. A poetry kickback session and an SC Poets Laureate Reading & Dinner will happen offsite. All events at the library are free, but the Laureate dinner will be a ticketed event. Stay tuned for details.

This festival is made possible by the generous support of the City of columbia, Richland Library, South Carolina Humanities, and SouthArts. Visit the Latest page for a video recap of the 2024 festival. The 2025 Festival will be June 27th-28th. Stay tuned for details.