Poets Invade S.F.

Our most recent favorite poet has been Torben Ulrich. Never heard of the great Dane? Guess you weren't at the Litquake blowout at the Regency Center last year, when his son, Metallica's Lars Ulrich, read some of his father's work. It involved meditations on music and tennis, and it was beautiful. It was also not available for love or money, especially not in English. So we're ready for a new favorite poet. (It's not you, Torben. It's us.) Here's the place to find one: The San Francisco International Poetry Festival.

The three day event is well-organized: Saturday is Branch Library Day, with live versifying at several libraries. Sunday is the North Beach Poetry Crawl, involving five venues including City Lights and Caffé Trieste. Poets visiting from far away include Maram al Masri from Syria, Bei Dao from China, and Agneta Falk from England and Sweden, while local contributions come from all San Francisco Poets Laureate past and present, for starters. Today's reading with Lawrence Ferlinghetti starts at 6:30 p.m. at Jack Kerouac Alley, between Columbus and Grant, S.F.