Accolades, poetry readings and a used book sale kicked off the sixth annual Wisconsin Book Festival Wednesday. The five-day festival, which ends Sunday, is about "coming together to talk about issues and exchange information about reading," according to the festival director Alison Jones Chaim. According to Chaim, readings and workshops on politics, poetry, publishing skills and writing techniques will take place at about 30 venues, 20 of which are clustered around State Street and Library Mall. "The book festival has something for everyone," Chaim said. "It depends on all sprawling points of view." According to Chaim, the festival's theme, "Domestic Tranquility," celebrates the wide interpretation of the festival. Chaim said she and her colleagues at the Wisconsin Humanities Council chose the theme "Domestic Tranquility" because it is a phrase "open to wide interpretation." "We didn't want to be limiting," Chaim said. Themes, taken from phrases from the preamble of the U.S. Constitution, have in the past focused on justice and common history, but this year the festival expands its preamble focus to the entire event of domestic tranquility, she said. Jane Hirshfield, the first poet to share her work for this year's festival, has written six collections of poetry, including "After,"which was among the London Financial Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Washington Post's best books of 2006. Hirshfield shared her poems and alluded to the idea of domestic tranquility, adding she appreciates the spirit of the festival. "Domestic tranquility is so much the work of literature — why we turn to books and poems," Hirshfield said. Her poems rest on complicated tranquility rather than simple tranquility, Hirshfield said. The intention of the festival is the opposite of sleeping and not seeing the word. "The most difficult part of being a poet is being sufficiently awake because that's what poetry asks of us," Hirshfield said. "It is difficult to find the next poem." Hirshfield said she does not know when she will write again because she does not work with a series in mind. "I write when something needs saying," Hirshfield said. "When life is broken and fractured, I have to write in order to reweave the torn fabric of existence and make sense of what I can't otherwise make sense of." During her reading, Hirshfield recalled the first book she bought when she was 8 years old. The book of haikus sparked her love and interest of Japanese poetry. "I have always loved poetry beyond the English language tradition," she said. Hirshfield was born in New York and has lived in North California for the last 30 years. She taught at the University of California-Berkley, University of Cincinnati and University of San Francisco. Memoirist Michael Perry of Western Wisconsin, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Susan Faludi and Michael Cunningham, author of "The Hours," are among the speakers of this year's festival, according to Chaim. There is a staffed information table to assist people located in the rotunda lobby of the Overture Center for the Arts. The festival is free and open to the public.