Seldovia Summer Solstice Music Festival runs this weekend
Now into its 19th year, the Seldovia Summer Solstice Music Festival starts today and runs through Sunday. Headliners for this year’s festival are Reggie Garret and The SnakeOil Peddlers and The Resonant Rogues. Seldovia’s four-day event features performances on the main stage, as well as throughout the community, and festival attendees have many opportunities to interact and participate with the musicians throughout the weekend. Festival tickets are $49 for adults and $16 for teens, with children under 12 free. Single night performances are $25 adults and $8 teens.
The festival also features visual arts, including “Higgy’s En Plein Air,” an open air art experience. Visiting and local artists are invited to create works depicting their impressions of Seldovia. Homer artist Deland Anderson visits along with local artist Sandee Elsvaas. The festival begins with a musical jam on the Seldovia Bay Ferry leaving at 11 a.m. today. At 5 p.m. is a meet and greet at the Linwood Bar and Grill and then at 8 p.m. is an open mic of poetry, writing and music at Susan B. English School.
During the day on Friday, visitors and locals can enjoy busking by featured performers who provide a sample of upcoming concerts. The main stage concerts start at 6:15 p.m. at the school. On Saturday, workshops run from 1 to 4 p.m. with concerts starting at 6:15 p.m. The festival ends Sunday with a silent auction of artists’ works from 1:30-3:30 p.m. at the Seldovia Gateway Pavilion. For more information, visit seldoviaartscouncil.net/seldoviamusicfestival/indes/html.
Solstice Poetry Reading
Homer poet Erin Coughlin Hollowell reads with Fairbanks poets Peggy Shumaker and James Englehardt at 6:30 p.m. today at the Homer Public Library. Each author will read from their collections and answer questions.
Hollowell reads from her second poetry collection, “Every Atom,” which explores the ways her mother’s memory loss changes not only how mother and daughter relate to each other, but how they relate to the past. Of her work, Louis Alberto Ureaa wrote, “There comes a moment in every Erin Hollowell poem where the heart threatens to burst open and spill out light.” Hollowell’s recent literary publications include Prairie Schooner, Sugar House Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review, among others. She also is the executive director of Storyknife Writers Retreat, a writing residency for women in Homer founded by local author Dana Stabenow.
Shumaker, a well-known teacher and poet, presents her new collection, “Cairn: New and Selected.” Her eighth book of poetry, it spans 40 years of poetry informed by the Sonoran desert where she grew up and the subarctic desert of Interior Alaska where she now lives. The Rasmuson Foundation has recognized her as a Distinguished Artist, and she served as Alaska State Writer Laureate and received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Englehardt lived for five years in Fairbanks, and his collection “Bone Willow” depicts his experiences of life in the Far North and how living close to the Arctic Circle transformed his understanding of the world. His poetry has appeared in the literary journals Ice Floe, Natural Bridge and North American Review, among others. He is now an acquisitions editor at the University of Illinois Press in Chicago.
