It was his intention to set aside one day each year usually in June to celebrate the state's poetic prolificacy. Sam let loose the clarion call to every poet he knew, and that was a slew of folks, believe me. The great room at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities was often standing-room only.
From the beginning, the festival was a great success. Everyone who attended got to read a poem or two, and with great patience the open readings often stretched into late afternoon and the summer heat at Weymouth was frequently oppressive the poets endured until the last reader had read the last poem. Sam included everyone, novice to professional. Generosity was his greatest strength.
Preserving Sam's good intentions, the festival has long survived its creator and is now lovingly organized by the North Carolina Poetry Society. It's now called the Sam Ragan Poetry Festival, and the male attendees show up with big bowties and straw hats to honor Sam's memory. The lectern sports a photo of Sam, staring into the crowd of readers.
Saturday, June 17, was surely one of the great festival days for the 100 or so poets who gathered at Weymouth to enjoy a day of poetry and song.
The program opened with Michael Beadle, a performance poet, author, teacher, writer-in-residence who lives in Canton.
Margaret Baddour, a longtime member of the Poetry Society and a faithful attendee of the festival, emceed the morning sessions which featured poet Gibbons Ruark, whose most recent book is "Passing Through Customs: New and Selected Poems." "Sleeping Out with My Father" is one of my favorite Ruark poems:
Sweet smell of earth and easy rain on
Canvas, small breath fogging up the lantern
Glass, and sleep sifting my bones, drifting me
Far from hide-and-seek in tangled hedges,
The chicken dinner with its hills of rice
And gravy and its endless prayers for peace,
Old ladies high above me creaking in the choir loft,
And then the dream of bombs breaks up my sleep,
The long planes screaming down the midnight
Till the whistles peel my skin back, the bombs
Shake up the night in a sea of lightning
And stench and spitting shrapnel and children
Broken in the grass, and I am running
Running with my father through the hedges
Down the flaming streets to fields of darkness,
To sleep in sweat and wake to news of war.
Attendees could purchase a box lunch or bring their own, and the noon hour was given over to socializing. Many of the poets visited the NCPS Book Room where they had a chance to peruse and purchase books by NC poets, and a "journal swap" a time for poets to swap personal journals was held in the foyer. Bill Blackly and Donald Thompson provided guitar and harp and touch of the blues to open the afternoon session.
The quality of the poetry read at the open mike was outstanding. Among those sharing their work were Sally Buckner, editor of "Our Ways, Our Words," the definitive anthology of North Carolina poets, Sally Logan of Chapel Hill, and Maureen Sutton of Southern Pines.
The afternoon session concluded with Shelby and Linda Stephenson, formerly of Southern Pines. Shelby read a long lyric/narrative about a slave girl named July and closed the afternoon with original songs by Richard Hood and a few familiar hymns.
It was, as Sam Ragan was fond of saying, a splendid day.
The next meeting of the Poetry Society will be held at Weymouth on Sept. 16, and will feature poet James Applewhite.
If youre interested in joining the NCPS, go to sleepycreek.org/poetry. You'll be glad you did.
Stephen Smith can be reached at travisses@hotmail.com.
