Western poetry, music highlight festival set for April 8

Poets, storytellers and musicians from Montana and beyond will be flocking to Chinook on the weekend of April 8 for the 22nd annual gathering of the Montana Country Poets and Pickers.

The festivities are hosted by the Montana Country Poets & Pickers.

Dale Mailand of Harlem said the activities seek to celebrate western culture in a more personable, old-fashioned way.

“What we’re trying to do, I think, is bring back home entertainment from back before they had television and stuff,” Mailand said. “When people had to entertain themselves and each other.”

Mailand said the annual celebration first took place in 1994 under the leadership of Bonnie Williamson, then-director of the Havre-Hill County Library.

Participants would get together and read original as well as classic works of poetry with a western theme.

Eventually, the festivities expanded to include music and storytelling.

The venue also changed, Mailand said, moving from the library to Havre High School and then Montana State University-Northern.

He said organizers later decided to move the event to Chinook because Havre was “too cosmopolitan.”

Each year, one of the student clubs at Chinook High School sponsors the gathering. This year it will be the FFA.

Mailand said about 20 musicians and poets from throughout Montana and Canada will be performing.

The festivities will be in the Chinook High School auditorium at 6:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday with musical acts leading up to a series of performances by poets, storytellers and musicians.

Open microphone sessions will take place Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the basement of Chinook Motor Inn, where additional poetry readings will take place,

The weekend’s activities will conclude at 10 a.m. Sunday in the Motor Inn’s basement with Cowboy Church, where inspirational songs, readings and words will be shared.

Tickets will be available at the auditorium each night of the event. Admission is $10 and is free for attendees age 12 and under.