Contemporary bards carry tradition

	TRR photo by Charlie Buterbaugh Suzanne Vega performed at the Hosting of the Bards Catskill Song and Poetry Festival in Callicoon Creek Park in front of a backdrop created by Cynthia Lee Quinn. (Click for larger image)

By CHARLIE BUTERBAUGH

CALLICOON, NY — A Peacemaker Players’ festival served up a feast of language and music as poets and songwriters performed in Callicoon Creek Park on Saturday, July 19.

The Hosting of the Bards Catskill Song and Poetry Festival, in its inaugural year, lent a stage and microphone to the winning poets of a competition overseen by Callicoon residents Laura Moran, a poet herself, and Jack Hardy, a folk musician and storyteller.

Moran and Hardy also invited nationally acclaimed poets, including Patricia Smith, Daniel Solis, Ray McNiece and Jack McCarthy, and musicians, Suzanne Vega, Annie Gallup, Louise Taylor, Brian Rose, Wendy Beckerman, Tim Robinson and Pat and Rosie Maloney to perform.

They wanted to gather fellow bards who, for most of the year, are “ships passing in the night, seeing each other only for brief moments,” Hardy said. The Friday night Symposium at the Delaware Arts Center, followed by a pasta dinner at Hardy and Moran’s Callicoon farmhouse, gave the artists time to share their experiences and thoughts concerning the mutable roles of poetry and music in a society marked by persistent technological advancement.

They hoped to attract a diverse audience to the song and poetry festival on Saturday. Hardy said his friend brought his 76-year-old mother and his 15-year-old daughter, both of whom said they didn’t know they liked poetry. His neighbor, a retired farmer, came, and Hardy said he is still hearing from people he didn’t see during the day.

“I believe we had a good mix of people. I think at least 400 people came to the park throughout the day,” he said.

Hardy performed at about 6:00 p.m. His narrative songs ranged from stories about working class hardship in early modern England to post-Holocaust Dachau and American folk, connecting his audience to a seemingly inaccessible past with his style and tone.

Grammy nominated singer/songwriter Suzanne Vega followed Hardy’s performance, playing favorites and some new compositions, and the two finished the day with a duo performance of “St. Clare,” written by Hardy and recorded by Vega on her album, “Songs in Red and Gray.”

Moran and Hardy plan to hold the festival again next year with another competition, open to newcomers and undiscovered artists, and more preliminary events, including another symposium and some children’s workshops, Hardy said.

Local poet Mary Greene won the Best Invocation Poem award for “Trust,” a poem that proclaims, “Go into the garden. Take off your shoes. /Tomorrow the sky will fall. What of it? /Today the earth looks at you, and rain gathers. /Today the earth is a plump black cake and the wild/geese are calling.”