John Van Dreal featured poet at Englewood Forest Festival

John Van Dreal, featured poet at Englewood Forest Festival   Well known locally and nationally for his luminous landscape paintings, Salem artist John Van Dreal is also a fine poet, using words rather than his paint palette to express his creative side and portray the quirkier sides of human nature. John Van Dreal will be the featured poet during the poetry segment of the Englewood Forest Festival, an annual event which takes place Saturday, Aug. 8 under the canopy of trees at Englewood Park in Northeast Salem. Van Dreal will read at 3:15 p.m., offering poems for 20 minutes, followed by a short open microphone that will last until the festival closes promptly at 4 p.m. The Englewood Forest Festival offers a free and family-friendly day of art, poetry, music, dance and nature-based activities for the entire family. A big highlight is Englewood Park itself, an oasis of trees, birds and flowers at 1260 19th St. NE. Designed by the renown female landscape team of Lord & Schryver, the park is celebrating its 100th birthday this year. Van Dreal explores the complicated dimensions of human nature through free verse, prose and lyric narratives, resulting in poems that often tickle the funny bone. His work appeals to readers who love poetry, and those who may be less familiar with poetry, or even avoid it. His poems have appeared in the Willawaw Journal, Black Mountain Press, Oberon Poetry Magazine and The Bookends Review, among others, and was most recently chosen the 2022 runner-up for the Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry. His poetry book, Sand to Glass, was published and released by Cherry Grove Collection. Van Dreal is active in local arts and poetry organizations and is an internationally recognized leader in violence prevention and behavioral threat assessment. He is retired as the director of Security, Safety, and Risk Management Services for Salem Keizer School District.