The fifth annual Burning Word: Festival of Poetic Fire had its day in the sun Saturday as healthy crowds came out for a day that was met with perfect, sunny skies.

“This added to everyone’s pleasure in walking between the bookstore, Cascade Stage and open mic, the Workshop tent and the Main Stage barn,” said Victory Schouten, Burning Word’s recently-appointed official director.

“Lots of poets enjoyed the sun breaks, too,” Schouten added.

Although attendance figures are not yet tallied, Schouten said all the venues seemed well-attended and folks seemed to really enjoy themselves.

The last lineup of the day was stellar, Schouten said, with Canadian poet Lionel Kearns howling his wry and witty poems to the crowd and then quieting it down when he turned serious.

Cuba’s premier poet, José Kozer, shared the stage with Mark Weiss, with Kozer reading the poems in an elegantly musical Spanish tongue followed by Weiss reading each poem in English.

Weiss is a respected editor and translator of poetry, who has worked extensively with Kozer, Schouten said.

“They were a pleasure and Kozer’s poetry was elegant, complex and heartfelt,” she added.

Washington Poet Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award was given to Walla Walla legend Charlie Potts, who read his powerful and movingly honest poems.

“I hadn’t heard him much before and really was impressed,” she said.

“He is the real thing. The crowd really responded to him.”

Schouten said the closing performer, the charismatic Anne Waldman, read to a standing-room-only crowd and rocked the house. Waldman is co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Colorado’s Naropa University.

“Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg would have been proud — her poetry was profound, funny and heartbreaking by turns; her performance was absolutely riveting.”