This Year's Poetry Festival Isn't the First
To the Editor: The Town Crier has published several articles about a "First" poetry festival that took place recently on Mackinac. In the interest of accuracy, the First Poetry Festival on Mackinac occurred July 20 to 26, 1991. It was a glorious, week long festival

held in Great Turtle Park. It was an egalitarian, inclusive affair, a well organized event that celebrated the wide open space of Great Turtle Park. It was an honor when Rosemary Schmidt, one of the organizers of that event, asked me to participate. I read from my publications in literary magazines to an audience spread out on blankets in the peaceful surroundings of the park.

The Town Crier covered that first festival and the headline was telling: Poetry Festival Provides Audience, Sharing for Writers. The emphasis was on sharing, which speaks to a great virtue of poetry, that its concentrated form and long oral tradition lends itself to a democratic sharing of voices. Come to think of it, given these features it is more than likely that Native Americans, fur traders, and women on the bluffs and in town have hosted poetry gatherings of one kind or another on Mackinac.

That, of course, is pure speculation, whereas the facts of the first recorded festival are in the archives of the Town Crier. It is important to get the history right, and lovely to see the tradition of big celebrations of poetry on Mackinac renewed.

Melissa Croghan West Simsbury, Connecticut