The Hot Springs Poetry Festival begins Sunday and runs through Sunday, Nov. 8, with events both online and in person. The festival wants to make poetry accessible to all people in Arkansas and to celebrate Arkansas poets. Grace Penry spoke with co-founder and organizer Samm Binns about the festival and about the importance of highlighting Arkansas poetry.
Binns: So we started the festival really inspired by Hot Springs’ own poetry history and our community. We are home to Wednesday Night Poetry, which has had a consecutive weekly open mic since 1989, which is the longest-running in the nation. Growing up in Hot Springs, being surrounded by that legacy, that community, was just super inspiring. And something that’s different this year is we’ll actually be having a book fair, which we weren’t able to do last year.
Penry: What is the book fair? What does that entail?
Binns: So we love supporting Arkansas local organizations and writers and everything. So we invited all kinds of literary organizations across the state. We even have University of Arkansas’ own Arkansas International literary magazine. We also have University of Arkansas Special Collections that will be at the book fair. So really just all kinds of authors and literary organizations throughout the state.
Penry: I was curious because I saw Sibling Rivalry Press is also one of your sponsors. Will they be at the festival as well?
Binns: Yeah. So they are a huge press here in Arkansas, you know, really celebrating, you know, our marginalized community and everything like that. And so Sibling Rivalry Press is actually going to be helping out with one of our events celebrating LGBTQ+ poets, specifically ones in Arkansas. And so that day, to conclude the festival, we’ll be having a Big Gay Poetry event. And Bryan Borland, the publisher at Sibling Rivalry, will help us kick that event off.
Penry: Really neat to hear how you’re pulling together so many different pieces of presses and publishers and poets from around Arkansas. Which brings me to a question that I had. C.D. Wright made “A Reader’s Map of Arkansas,” right, from her Lost Roads project. And I saw that the Hot Springs Poetry Festival attempted to recreate maybe an updated version of that map. And there are so many poets that the map was overflowing beyond the boundaries. I was wondering if you could speak about the story behind that map and what the importance of this map is.
Binns: Yeah. I’m so grateful that you brought up C.D. Wright, one of my personal poetry heroes. So C.D. Wright created “A Reader’s Map of Arkansas,” which was all the writers and books that focused on Arkansas. And so, inspired by that, we thought, wouldn’t it be a great idea to celebrate the poets specifically all across Arkansas?
Like you said, it is really kind of an impossible feat to include every single Arkansas poet on one map. But that’s part of our mission, is supporting local Arkansas writers and helping people connect and support one another. And so this is going to be a living map, I think, where each year new names will be added, and it will continue to grow for years to come, I think.
Penry: Can you speak more on your relationship to poetry, please?
Binns: I loved writing whenever I was younger, especially as a teenager. Having that outlet for feelings and thoughts.
Penry: And is there any way that you see Arkansas surfacing in your poetry?
Binns: Oh, yes. Absolutely. I was a bit of a nature poet myself. And the thing about Arkansas landscape is it’s not only beautiful, but there is a grotesqueness of it. It’s covered in bramble and thorns and mud. And so trying to portray a singular image of Arkansas is impossible. And that’s another reason why we like to elevate all kinds of voices to, you know, hear what they have to say about this Natural State.
Penry: What would you say to people who are interested in the festival but are maybe intimidated by poetry?
Binns: Well, one of our big missions is to make poetry accessible for all, not just students of poetry, but people who are intimidated by it. That’s why our very first event at the Garland County Library is a Poetry Playground, where people are just playing with words, experimenting with language. And even with our online workshops, all you have to do is have internet access, a computer, log on and then just pay attention. And that’s kind of the beginning of poetry, is just paying attention. And the poet Mary Oliver, she says, “Attention is the first part of devotion.”
Penry: Are there any events in particular that you are excited for or that you would like to highlight?
Binns: Sure. I’m really excited for all of them. I’m excited for the online workshops, and we also have, like, various featured readers, like professors in Conway. We have Sandy Longhorn, Acie Clark, as well as Ellie Black. But if people can make it out to the Poetry Slam or even the Spa City Book Fair to conclude the festival, I think that would be a wonderful time. And the very last event is a film screening, a documentary of the late poet Andrea Gibson.
Penry: I saw that there will be a zine based on people reading in the festival. Could you explain a little bit more what the zine is?
Binns: Yeah. So another way to try to elevate Arkansas writers is, a lot of writers here have never been published. And so we send out a call for submissions asking Arkansas artists, Arkansas poets, to just submit a few poems, submit a few pieces of art, and we have an editorial team that goes through pretty much every single submission, and then we compile it and publish it into this little booklet.
And our festival kickoff is not only a kickoff, but it’s actually a zine release party. So everybody included in this little magazine of poetry can read a poem that they submitted or even talk about their art that they submitted as well, just trying to give people their first time of being published.
Penry: Do you have any hopes for anything after the festival?
Binns: Yeah, I would say right now we are still using a fiscal sponsor as our nonprofit. And so I’m really hoping within the next year we can become our own independent nonprofit with a whole board of directors. And so that’s another reason to spread the word and see if anybody is interested in really directly helping out and volunteering their time and effort to help make poetry more accessible to everybody.
Penry: That would be incredible. Can people still volunteer for the festival?
Binns: Oh, yeah. Please. We’re always looking for volunteers, and we’re really hoping to not just make this a weeklong festival, but have pop-up events throughout the year. So there’s always a good chance that we’ll need some more help.
Penry: Thank you. Hope it goes well next week.
Binns: Thank you so much, Grace. I really appreciate it.
Penry: That was Samm Binns, co-founder and organizer of the Hot Springs Poetry Festival. The Hot Springs Poetry Festival runs from Sunday, Nov. 1, through Sunday, Nov. 8. For the full lineup of events, readers and how to get involved, go to HSPF.org. For Ozarks at Large, I’m Grace Penry.
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