By Logan Monteleone
Business and Distribution Manager
For the sixteenth year in a row, Chestertown welcomed April with a weekend full of poetry and community-centered events. The purple lights and live music onstage at The Garfield Center of the Arts as part of the first-ever poetry jam got the festival off to a vibrant start.
Director of the Kent Cultural Alliance John Schratwieser said the poetry jam is an exciting addition with a new power to bring different community members together.
“I just think it’s this broad-spectrum kind of event, and it’s hopefully going to be a new staple. It’s going to help raise the Kent County Poetry Festival to a whole new level,” Schratwieser said.
Poet Laureate of Maryland Lady Brion opened and ended the poetry jam, reciting each of her poems with captivating hand gestures and inflections. She began by performing two poems, the first about her mother’s struggle with diabetes and the second comparing her personal poet’s journey with a motivational theme about trusting one’s talents and pursuing one’s passions.
“To be able to be in community with other poets in this area, it really has been an amazing experience,” Lady Brion said. “When I’m traveling, often I’m doing solo shows, and so I’m not always able to be immersed in the poetry scene, so it’s really awesome to be part of a festival and hearing other performers.”
Lady Brion’s final two poems engaged topics including the systemic oppression of Black women and the cultural significance of speaking African-American English, anchored in her personal experience growing up in Baltimore. She was inspired by poet and activist Amber Green, or AmSaidit, who performed two powerful political poems earlier in the evening.
Freshman Sarabeth Metzger said the event exceeded her expectations and that she was delighted by the high turnout. She recited an original poem that centers on the effects of polycystic ovarian syndrome, exploring the deeply personal alongside a larger sentiment about the beauty and uniqueness of a woman’s body.
“That was so much fun,” Metzger said. “The Kent County Poetry Festival is one of the reasons I came to Washington [College]…So I feel like I’m doing what I came here for.”
The next day, former artist-in-residence at the Kent Cultural Alliance Austen Camille led an immersive eco-poetry workshop among the pines and tall reeds surrounding the Lawrence Wetlands Preserve.
The keynote event on Saturday night featured a reading from Guggenheim and NEA Poetry Fellow Denise Duhamel, followed by a conversation led by NPR book critic Maureen Corrigan. Duhamel read various selections of her work, mostly from her 1997 collection “Kinky” that imagines the feminist life of Barbie and her newly-published collection of elegies for her mother titled “Pink Lady.”
An intimate way to end a weekend spent mostly in The Garfield, poets from across the community sat in rows of mis-matched folding chairs in Robert Ortiz Studios to listen to one another and to take turns reading.
Robert Ortiz and Tess Jones moderated the reading and Sophie Kerr Poet in Residence Meredith Davies Hadaway started off the afternoon with a poem by the keynote guest from last year’s festival, poet Naiomi Shihab Nye.
A variety of local poets read their original works, some of whom have published chapbooks and small collections. Mary McCoy read her work that invokes themes of nature, peace, and life’s mysteries, and Sasha Bank read a series of haikus about embracing neurological diversity despite invalidation and urges for conformity from the medical establishment.
“It makes you realize we live in a very special place where there’s so much talent and so much support for each other,” Chestertown poet Ellie Altman said.
Washington College was represented at the reading as well. Director of the Literary House Linda Hamrick read poems based in an arctic setting that rely heavily on imagery including the cold climate and animals like caribou.
Senior Maeve Diemer, whose poems focused on anxiety and identity, and freshman Leonardo DeLuca, whose place-based poems meditate on nature in Kent County, both read their work.
The Kent County Poetry Festival was made possible by the dedication and support of the Rose O’Neill Literary House, the Kent Cultural Alliance, the Bookplate, Robert Ortiz Studios, and the Maryland State Arts Council.
Photo by Logan Monteleone.
Photo Caption: Freshman Sarahbeth Metzger performs a piece at the Kent County Poetry Festival.