First annual Serpent Mound poetry event a success

Nancy Shanahan, Director of the AAPS welcomed guests.

The nearly thirty guests who attended the OPA poetry reading, “Voices from the Past,” at Serpent Mound State Memorial on Saturday, September 26, 2015, were treated to a delightful afternoon of poetry and drums.  The Great Serpent Mound is a 1,348-foot three-foot-high prehistoric effigy mound on a plateau of an ancient impact crater along Brush Creek in Adams County, Ohio. The mound is maintained by the Arc of Appalachia Preserve System (AAPS) on behalf of the Ohio History Connection. It is designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of Interior. 

Kimberlee Medicine Horn Jackson
was the featured reader.

Guests were welcomed by Nancy Shanahan, Director of the AAPS, and then treated to the poetry of  featured reader Kimberlee Medicine Horn Jackson. Kimberlee is a Yankton Sioux Native American. Her poetry examines the fading boundary between Native and non-native, and questions whether to re-enforce the lines between two worlds or to smudge the great divide where peaceful relationships can be restored. She is an adjunct English instructor at Kent State University, Geauga Campus. 

Kari Gunter-Seymour was among
those who read poems.

Additional readers included, Rikki Santer, Chuck Salmons, Steve Abbott, Jack Burgess, Kathleen Burgess, Kerry Trautman, and Kari Gunter-Seymour. Mark Hersman and Connie Willet Everett emceed the event.

David and Guilda LaClerc Altman
played the drums for the event.

Drumming was provided by David and Guilda LeClerc Altman. The Altmans have hosted and facilitated many drum circles in multiple venues, including nursing homes, senior centers, private parties, local fairs, poetry readings, and solstice/equinox events. 

According to Chuck Salmons, president of OPA and reader at the event, “Though the weather grew cool and a bit wet as the afternoon progressed, the setting was perfect. The poetry combined with the drumming made the day a nice tribute to this monument and state treasure.”

Visitor Carol Loyd, from State College, Pennsylvania, said, “It was an extraordinary event, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.”

Herb Wasserstrom, from Columbus, agreed saying, “This was a wonderful event in every respect. The people who were presenting their poetry were as fine a group of poets as I’ve ever seen in one place at one time. Thoroughly enjoyable! Do it again!”

Following is one of the poems Kimberlee shared with those who gathered at Serpent Mound:

Reach Across

In re-memory I was never

taken; never kidnapped. I do not

remember that unreal day.

I reach across time; decades are lumbering clouds

super-saturated with tears; I mean water.

Grief takes as long as it needs.

Never mind I was two, never mind—

I reach across the long sky, neon shifting

auroras like a young mother and toddler embracing.

Fleeting, so fleeting… so temporary, so fragile.

Call them the long arms, the strong arms of government.

Name them dissolute in the act of unbraiding

Native families; their plan superior to Creator.

Say they walk in the armor of arrogance, go on;

Say it. There are no hushed voices now.

We have been silenced too long.

Kimberlee Medicine Horn Jackson said of the event, “The setting at Serpent Mound for Voices of the Past: the Ancient Ones was perfect. To be among the other poets from Ohio and listen to our diverse voices honor the past was a beautiful way to share stories of the ones who have gone before us.”