Verbatim in Maplecrest

By Michael Ryan

MAPLECREST - The viability of their programming was again revealed with the recent hosting of “Verbatim” by the Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts in the hamlet of Maplecrest, town of Windham.

Verbatim is a “gathering of poets, sound-makers, fabulists, singers and sprechstimmers, moving between & across domains of text and noise,” organizer Miriam Atkin says.

“Verbatim Text Sound Expo was conceived during the first year of the pandemic with the intention of bringing together Hudson Valley small presses and record labels in an outdoor space to learn about each other's work and trade books and tapes,” Atkin says.

“Since then, it has grown into an annual day-long market accompanied by a schedule of performance across disciplines: poetry, avant-garde music, sound art and hybrid text-sound experiments,” Atkin says.

“The idea is to focus on vendors that are local,” says Atkin, a poet and critic based in valley town of Cairo. “Every other book fair I know of is pretty costly for vendors to participate. Verbatim is free for all vendors.”

Contentedly confessing to being a tad Old School in the Digital Age, Atkin says, “I prefer literature you can leaf through and hold in your hand.”

She was clearly not alone, joined on the grounds of the Sugar Maples by multiple independent publishers and record labels and curious visitors.

There were, to be sure, some unusual sights and sounds, such as the band Ball of Fire making its public debut, featuring Brigid Slattery and Sparrow.

“We play inspirational songs,” said Sparrow, a noted area poet and writer, playing the ocarina or “singing into toilet paper tubes,” accompanied by Slattery who “plays a lot of things,” Sparrow said, like a Morse Code transmitter or a clarinet rescued from a refuse pile.

There were nine hours of musical performances, challenging the norm but not wreaking havoc on the quiet, rural neighborhood.

“We are deliberately low key, but very vibrant,” Atkin says, noting the event was supported through a grant from CREATE, moving to the mountains from venues in Round Top and elsewhere.

“This is just something I enjoy doing,” Atkin says, emphasizing Verbatim is a team effort and isn’t about making money, focusing instead on meeting kindred artistic spirits and networking.

“We were very fortunate to meet [Sugar Maples director] Kulvinder [Kaur Dhew] and [Sugar Maples head of ceramics] Bruce [Dehnert]. They are wonderful hosts. We definitely hope to be back next year,” Atkin says.

Atkin is also a co-founder of Pinsapo, “a web of tightly or loosely connected people living around the world who configure themselves in different ways at different times to make work together,” their website states.

“Our basic commitment is to helping with the creation and publicization of homeless poetry and art works,” the website states. “We want to be as messy, contradictory and inconsistent as a city is…”

Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts recently hosted “Verbatim,” a market and performance festival featuring local and regional small presses and record labels. Among those on hand were (left to right) Bruce Dehnert (Sugar Maples head of ceramics), Miriam Atkin (Verbatim coordinator), Patrick Brennan and Eliza Martin (vendors) and Kulvinder Kaur Dhew, (Sugar Maples director).

Rip Van Winkle stopped by for a bit of sustenance - not really. It is Sparrow, a local legend and poet, readying to debut his band, Ball of Fire, joined by Brigid Slattery.

“Oh, but my hair is such a mess” young Wilder Greenwood seemed to be saying (which it wasn’t), pausing with her mom, noted artist Skye Gilkerson, during their exploration of Verbatim (with 2-year old Wilder hauling a shopping bag almost as big as herself).

“Death Rattled,” based in Connecticut, “started out as a noise project (making art out of noise) and turned into an inter-disciplinary collage of visual and aural poetry and prints,” says founder Manuel Perez.