James Gates Percival International Poetry Festival
- Galena City Beautiful
- Mar 20, 2019
- 2 min read
Updated: Dec 7, 2020
The Chicago Athenaeum in Galena Inaugurates the First James Gates Percival International Poetry Festival
A Festival to Honor the United States’ First Poet Who Came to Galena and Lived and Worked in Surrounding Areas in Illinois and Wisconsin during the 1850s this May 16-19, 2019
GALENA, ILLINOIS (MARCH 21, 2019) —On May 16, The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design in Galena, Illinois will inaugurate the first James Gates Percival International Poetry Festival inviting poets and literary lovers from around the world to Galena to celebrate and read contemporary poetry and literature.
The Poetry Festival is also timed with the re-opening of the Museum’s Galena Annex at 601 South Prospect Street for exhibitions, lectures, and cultural events.
The festival dates are May 16-19, 2019.
Born in Berlin, Connecticut in 1795 shortly after the Revolutionary War of 1776, James Gates Percival was launched into national and international fame as “America’s First Poet.”
He entered Yale University at age 16 and graduated from Yale University Medical School at the age of 20, starting an ambitious and brilliant literary career and publishing several books and writing for newspapers and literary magazines across the country, as well as in Great Britain.
During this time, he also worked with Dr. Noah Webster as the editor of Webster’s first American Dictionary of the English Language of 1828.
He came to Galena in the 1850s and worked for The American Mining Company to survey their vast mineral despots in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin.
He spoke about 20 different languages, including Native American Chippewa, which he learned traveling around Illinois and Wisconsin. He was a famed geologist, lexicographer, musician, linguist, botanist, medical surgeon, and, above all, poet.
During his time in the Galena area, he and Samuel Charles Mazzuchelli were the region’s most learned and leading intellectuals of their time.
At the early age of 14, the famed British composer Edward W. Elgar composed his first musical composition in 1872, “The Language of Flowers,” using Percival’s poem as the lyrics.
Percival’s lyrics "Oh! It is Great for Our Country to Die," from the poem, “Elegiac,” were also woven into the music for “The Dirge” by the American composer Alfred Delaney and sung and performed in 1863 before President Abraham Lincoln as Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address during the consecration of the Soldier’s Cemetery at Gettysburg.
Percival died and is buried in Hazel Green, Wisconsin.
“Celebrating Percival,” states Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, Museum President, The Chicago Athenaeum, “reaffirms the important history of Galena, not just as a 19th-Century center for mining and commerce, but also as a significant place in the cultural development of the entire Upper Mississippi Valley region.”
“After all,” Narkiewicz-Laine adds, “he is the first poet of Illinois and Wisconsin.”
In organizing the first Poetry Festival, the Museum is working with neighboring colleges and universities in Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin, as well as foreign consulates and poetry and literary organizations around the world.
The four-day Poetry Festival will be a celebration of music, art, and literature with internationally recognized poets and artists attending.
The program is open to the public and a full schedule of events will be posted on the festival’s website at www.galenapoetryfestival.org.
For more informatiion, contact Jennifer Nyholm, Director of Communications at The Chicago Athenaeum by calling +815/777-4444 or jennifer@chicagoathenaeum.org.
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