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Poet Robert Service wrote that “strange things are done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold,” but stranger things are done by those who seek out a day of good poetry.

On Saturday, poetry enthusiasts will traipse over historic gold mine tailings and hunker down for a few hours of poetry during the 10th annual Dredge Poetry Festival.  The Fairbanks Art Association event will be from 2-4 p.m. today at the Chatanika Dredge, 29 Mile Steese Highway.  “Each year, we commemorate a poet, and this year the theme is ‘Searching for Gold in the North,’ and it will be honoring Robert Service,” said Tatiana Piatanova, program director at Fairbanks Art Association.

Ten years ago, Jane Haigh and Marjorie Kowalski Cole traveled to the the Chatanika Dredge, which Haigh had recently purchased, tramped around in the snow and said to each other, “Wouldn’t this be a great place to declaim poetry?”

Cole said they came up with a theme, “Regeneration, Technology, and the Environment,” invited some poets, posted some flyers and headed out to what would be the first Dredge Poetry Festival.

It was hosted on the last Saturday of April, which is National Poetry Month, and they hoped it would be as warm and snow-free as possible. They spent the next three hours hearing poets read their own work and reading aloud from Alan Ginsberg’s “Howl.” Carolyn Peck and Mark Schubauer broke up the poetry with a robust original skit on the theme of depleted uranium.

“So year after year, we did it again,” Kowalski Cole said. “The first five years, in addition to local poets reading their work, we continued to honor a great American poet with a group reading.”

They honored the likes of Walt Whitman and T.S. Eliot over the years, even reading poems in different languages.

This year, a group of invited artists will read their poetry, and there will be a time for anyone willing to read their own work.

“At the dredge, I have heard many incredibly good local poets for the first time. I didn’t know who they were, just heard their words and poems and was delighted,” Kowalski Cole said.

This year’s featured artists include Joe Enzweiler, Joyce Clark, Sushelia Khera, Jean Anderson, Anne Hanley, Cindy Hardy, Linda Schandelmeier and Rachael Kvapil.

“It’s open to everyone who loves poetry, and you don’t necessarily have to be a poet or a writer,” Piatanova said.

Bring a sack lunch, thermos of tea or coffee, a cushion or rug for comfortable seating and warm clothes.

“We always like to give a special thank you to Jane Haigh and Patricia Piersol. It’s their property and they let us use it every year,” Piatanova said.

Michelle Peterson is a freelance writer for the News-Miner. Contact her at latitude@newsminer.com.