Russell Goings, a former Wall Street executive turned writer, wanted to immortalize his experiences at the 1995 Million Man March in verse.
Kim Bridgford wanted to turn a poetry dilemma into an opportunity.
These needs would be instrumental in bringing poets from around the country to a quaint, former shipbuilding town in Connecticut, its elegantly restored 19th century colonial houses the perfect backdrop for the retreat.
Each spring, many of the best-known American poets make their way to Madison on the Long Island Sound for Poetry by the Sea; A Global Conference, to contemplate all things related to this varied and demanding literary form. Academicians, artists and writers come to listen to, and learn from, some of the biggest names in the genre.
It is a diverse group by design, a panacea for contentious social and political times. "Conference seminars included "Writing Through Trauma," and "Poetry and Healing."
Terrance Hayes, a National Book Award and MacArthur Foundation grant winner (and New York University artist in residence) gave the keynote address this year; last year, it was former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove.
Alicia E. Stallings, a National Book Critics award finalist and director of the Poetry Center in Athens, Greece, delivered a gripping conference lecture in Madison documenting her work helping refugees in Greek resettlement camps.
The conference is held at Mercy by the Sea, a 33-acre former nunnery on the Connecticut shore that retains much of its devout character – there is no bar, and no phones or televisions in rooms. Guests are encouraged to use cellphones only for emergencies – and outside, if weather permits.
The conference is what its founder, Bridgford, envisioned when she created it in 2014 – a space where a diverse group of poets, women and, in particular, women of color could find support and respect.
Bridgford, an awarding-winning poet and professor at the West Chester University of Pennsylvania, stepped down as chairman of the West Chester Poetry Conference, created in 1995, to start Poetry by the Sea.
Bridgford said she did so because West Chester University wanted its conference to return to its local focus while she wanted to make it "national and global." Once Bridgford decided to form Poetry by the Sea, she turned to an unlikely source – one of her students.
But Russell Goings was no ordinary pupil.
Goings had already started a company, First Harlem Securities, that became the second African American company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the early 1970s. A native of Stamford, Connecticut, and a former professional football player in Canada, Goings was a friend and confidant of the Harlem Renaissance artist Romare Bearden and still holds one of the largest Bearden collections in existence. And Goings was a founder of the Studio Museum of Harlem and Essence Magazine.
Awed by his experience at the Million Man March in Washington in 1995, Goings, 62, decided he had to capture his emotions in verse. In 1996 he enrolled in a poetry writing class at Fairfield University – a Jesuit school, like Goings’ alma mater, Xavier University in Ohio. As treasurer of Alpha Sigma Nu, the Jesuit honor society, at Fairfield, Goings’ classes were free.
“I intended to take one year of classes, but I kept going,” Goings said. “I stayed because I liked what was happening in the classroom. It was a stimulating environment.”
Bridgford was his teacher. They have been friends and colleagues ever since.
Goings’ book, “The Children of Children Keep Coming, An Epic Griotsong,” was published in 2009.
Goings said he eagerly joined Bridgford in founding Poetry by the Sea five years ago.
“Within the poetry community, we need as much diversity as possible on various levels,” he said. “The notion with poetry, as with storytelling, is that we are always trying to get closer to the essence of our collective being.”
“While I am black 24/7, 365 days a year, my involvement with Poetry by the Sea deepens the color of my humanity,” he said.
Bridgford said that “as a founding member of the conference board, Russ understands the force of history.”
“He is always embracing the right platform, to highlight the highest arts, which today would be Poetry by the Sea,” she said. “Russ and I have created these glorious, diverse gatherings together."
Working poets and poetry lovers flock to the conference, which featured panels on the villanelle (“a 19-line poem with two rhymes throughout, consisting of five tercets and a quatrain, with the first and third lines of the opening tercet recurring alternately at the end of the other tercets and with both repeated at the close of the concluding quatrain.”)
“The setting, which is a religious retreat dedicated to learning and prayer, it rubs off,” said Eileen Kinch, a Quaker poet from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “It helps center us.”
The audience includes folks like poet and sculptor Meredith Bergmann, who designed the Boston Women’s Memorial and was selected to create the first statue of real-life women in New York’s Central Park, featuringSojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Bergmann also gave a faculty reading.
The Poetry by the Sea board is embarking on its biggest step yet: Bridgford is scouting foreign locations to host the event, intent on making it live up to its name as a global conference.
Details are expected to be posted on the conference website in early 2020.
