Loose Leaf Notes

– The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on June 18, 2020. The below includes and expanded selection of photos. 

To the background sounds of crickets, cicadas and kayaks splashing into the river, poets from Norfolk, Williamsburg and Richmond exchanged their original work with Floyd poets at the 5th Annual Little River Poetry Festival, Friday through Sunday. Under a big tent in the field at On the Water Outfitters, poetry was read from published books, notebooks, smartphones and IPads. Some poems were inspired and written on the spot. Others were read to the accompaniment of live music.

Joanna Lee from Richmond was one of the featured out-of-town readers. Lee, who is the founder of River City Poets and the Central Region Vice President of the Poetry Society of Virginia, read from her book Dissections, and also presented a workshop on writing haibun, a poetic form, popularized in Japan, that combines a prose poem and haiku.

Local featured-poet Katherine Chantal read from her new book Poetic Memoir of a Nascent Senescent: Musings from My Sixties.

Floyd poet Katherine Sowers, joked, “I write on demand but I don’t get much demand,” before she read Ode to Morning, a poem she wrote that morning. The youngest reader was 19-years old and two sets of mothers and daughters attended.

Festival co-founder Jack Callan and Colleen Redman performed a back-and-forth poet duet, sharing Floyd-based poetry in a set titled Mountain Magic.  Redman read poems and essay excerpts from a 30-year retrospective on Floyd living. “…Where else but in Floyd can you learn from an old-timer how to forage ginseng one day and then meet Wavy Gravy – the Woodstock clown with an ice-cream flavor named after him – in town for FloydFest the next?” she read.  Callan read from his 18-part poem “Fields of Daniel” in honor of his friend Daniel Sowers, whose family owns the land the festival is held on. Later, he shared from his new collection of pandemic poems.

Due to the pandemic, chairs were spaced for social distancing and hugs were resisted. Applause and laughter erupted regularly. Swallows flew in and out of the tent as poets participated in twice-daily Open Mics, a popular part of the annual literary festivities.

Poet Ken Waldman shared a poem titled Old-Time Fiddle Lesson that included fiddle playing.  Waldman, who had nearly a dozen published books for sale at the festival, said he was visiting Floyd when the pandemic hit and has been sheltering in the county since then. – Colleen Redman / More on this year’s festival HERE and HERE.  

_____Our World Tuesday