In the beginning, there were the poets—the woman with a far-off look at a café table, the man on the bank of a river, listening, fishing for poems. There are always poets in Berks County, and always have been.
Wallace Stevens was born and raised in Reading, in the house on Fifth St., where our own Bard and former Poet Laureate of Berks County, Heather Thomas, was born. The late John Updike, novelist and poet, was born in Shillington; his house is a museum now. Stevens and Updike were world-famous, but there have been so many others, writing and reading wherever they could find a quiet spot or a rapt audience.
In 1999, the poets came together as Berks Bards. To the Celts, a bard is a poet-minstrel, a teller of tales, a keeper of history. For more than a quarter-century, Berks Bards have thrived and survived, bringing opportunities for local poets and those from other parts of the country to share their work with each other and with the community at large.
Here’s our creation story: The local poet, Steven A. May (a.k.a. stevenallenmay)—along with fellow poets Craig Czury, Erika Stanley, and others—decided to celebrate Poetry Month (established in April of 1996) by holding poetry readings, in places all over the county, every day of that month.
This would have been a one-time event, but when Steve approached the Berks Arts Council (now Berks Arts) for funding, he was told they needed the poets to create a nonprofit organization to receive the check. Thanks to Steve and a pair of sympathetic lawyers, Berks Bards became an official nonprofit shortly before April 1999.
And on April Fool’s Day that year, the first Bard Fest held its inaugural reading at—where else?—the Deitsch Eck in the great metropolis of … Lenhartsville.
Poets read every day, at libraries, colleges, cafes, restaurants, all over Berks County, including the far reaches of Morgantown, Bethel, Hamburg, Fleetwood. Poems were even read at the annual sunrise Easter service at the Fire Tower on Mt. Penn.
And Steve remembers that on April 3, a reading held at an improvised stone pyramid at Blue Marsh became hit the news when Park Rangers appeared to escort the trespassing poets off the premises for lack of a permit. Undeterred, they finished the aborted reading in a nearby restaurant.
In April 2000, there were about 60 events held across the county, including an appearance at Albright College by Maya Angelou, who had read at Pres. Bill Clinton’s first inauguration seven years earlier. Elizabeth Stanley, who served as president of Berks Bards from 2001 to 2018 (followed by Jennifer Hetrick from 2018 to 2021), was instrumental in bringing Angelou and other celebrated poets to Berks, including Billy Collins in 2001 at Penn State Berks Campus. (Six weeks later he became the 11th U.S. Poet Laureate). Others were Donald Hall (the 14th U.S. Poet Laureate), Ann Waldman, Lamont Steptoe, Coleman Barkes and Herbert Woodward Martin.
Steve and Dianne Miller, who founded Plan B Press around the same time, published anthologies of the poems read during Bard Fest in 2000, 2001 and 2002. The press still publishes in the Washington, D.C. area, where Steve now resides.
Over the years, Berks Bards, thanks to their dedicated boards and volunteers, have continued to hold regular open mics and readings by guest poets, both local and regional, to their First Thursday events. They also continue to host workshops and other events, such as workshops. Members of Berks Bards have been hosting the BCTV show “Poets Pause,” featuring interviews with published poets, for many years; they are archived on the BCTV website and YouTube channel. Hosted currently by Marilyn Klimcho, the show is aired live each Wednesday at 8 p.m.
The Bards have partnered with local libraries, colleges and other institutions for various events. In 2003 the Bards and the Berks Peace Community co-sponsored the Peace Poetry Celebration at the Reading Friends Meeting, with a poetry contest for teens. For a couple of years Bards and the Reading Phillies collaborated on a Baseball Poetry Contest for kids.
Bards poets have experimented with kinetic poetry, along with dancers, and have collaborated with musicians. They have participated in the Bruce H. Stanley Memorial Poetry Reading Series at Reading Area Community College, established by Bruce’s wife, Liz Stanley, and her two daughters, Erika and Brie, in 1998.
Meanwhile, Bard Fest has become an annual celebration, with many events during the month of April.
And Berks Bards has survived. When Covid struck, our immediate past president, Sandra Fees (2021 to 2024), and the board kept Berks Bards alive with monthly online readings hosted by poet Brenardo Taylor, and one-minute poems each day of April to celebrate Bard Fest. And when it was over, they did the hard work of transitioning back to live events.
And now, here we are, still carrying on this timeless art form.
We have a lot to celebrate. What we have learned in the past few years is that we are strong, and—like flowers in cracks in the pavement—we poets can always bloom. All we really need is a pen, a piece of paper and our imaginations, and enough love of language to write down the words that come to us from who-knows-where.
And while bringing famous poets to our county is exciting, and we’re planning to try to do more of that, we are enough. Poets from other places who have found their way to us have discovered a supportive and encouraging community. Here, in our space in the GoggleWorks in downtown Reading, everyone has a voice. We listen, and we are heard. And together we grow. And that is precious and beautiful.