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Photo by Malinda O'Quinn
Eric Scott Sutherland
Eric Scott Sutherland reading at a recent Holler Poets Series
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Photo by Derek Feldman
Eric Scott Southerland
Since 2008, Eric Scott Sutherland has spent the last Wednesday of every month at Al’s Bar, herding a congregation of rabid poets and literary fans into a bourbon-soaked celebration of the written and spoken word. With approximately 400 occurrences under its belt, Sutherland’s Holler Poets Series has developed a reputation as the cornerstone of Lexington’s open mic community, helping launch the careers of countless writers in the region. But as every good thing must come to an end, Sutherland announced in April plans to retire the series in its current form, with the final monthly version of Holler scheduled to take place at the end of this month.
Ever since that announcement, Sutherland has been hounded by the same question over and over again: “What’s happening after Holler?”
It’s a complicated question for him to answer. To him, Holler is a continuum extending back well before the eight years that he has been hosting the monthly series, and he hopes fans will use that trajectory when framing their conception of Holler’s future as well.
“The Holler thing – it’s been living long before it started living here in ’08,” explained Sutherland, pulling out his phone to show me a photo of an old event poster he brought along just in case I asked him this very question. The poster listed several noteworthy poets under the heading “Holler 2000” and was designed by Sutherland for an event he organized eight years before the first Holler – at least in its most current iteration – took place.
“Holler’s at least 16 years old,” he added. “One could argue it’s as old as I am, in some ways.”
The groundwork for the event started in the late ’90s, when Sutherland would host occasional poetry readings at the Bluegrass Baking Company.
“Some nights you had a baker in there dumping huge bins of dough on the table in the dim of the oven light while we’re drinking wine and eating bread and reading poetry, trying to create a scene,” he recalled.
For those who have never been to a Holler Poets reading at Al’s Bar, it’s one of the rare occasions where you’ll see a drunk person shushing a crowd. Before I first went to my first Holler, I thought that poetry readings were solemn events, ones that people took far too seriously. But at Holler, readers often precede their poems with inside jokes directed to friends in the audience. Poems are followed with hoots and howls, not finger snaps. The vibe resembles a somewhat rowdy family reunion.
It’s that laid back, unpretentious vibe – coupled with the substantive steam that the series has provided for the careers of countless writers over the years – that has made Holler a treasured tradition among the local literary community, one that many are sad to see go.
“A lot of people – people I know and love, and trust and respect – have been pleading: ‘You can’t stop!’” Sutherland said. “I’m trying to reiterate that it’s just that this particular format of it – it feels like it’s run its course in some ways.”
That most current format of Holler – a monthly poetry reading featuring an open mic, featured “guest” poets and a guest musical act – goes back to Sutherland’s roots as an activist. A self-described organizer, he did some work with political campaigns after college, which he claims equipped him with the skills to coordinate his first reading at Al’s Bar in 2008. Called “Poets for Peace,” the event had a decidedly political slant, featuring poets and activists speaking against the Iraq War and the Bush administration.
“It was buzzing and electric,” Sutherland recalled of that event – in fact, it was so well received that Al’s Bar owner Lester Miller approached him to ask if he wanted to make it a regular thing.
Six months later, Sutherland hosted a second “Poets for Peace” event, this one featuring poet George Ella Lyon (who now serves as the state’s poet laureate); another event later that year called “Poets for Peace in the Mountains” featured several heavyweight Kentucky environmental authors, including Silas House, Erik Reece and Maurice Manning – and an absolutely packed house.
“You had to swim through the crowd,” Sutherland said.
While the Holler Poets format that Lexington has come to grow and love over the past eight years was born from those initial events, as the crowds grew, Sutherland opted to veer from the political nature of those first readings.
“I’m always being asked to perform at environmental, social justice issue events,” said Sutherland, who works as a conservationist and professional arborist. “I didn’t want [Holler] to be a venue to beat people over the head with a certain viewpoint, but [for] it to be a place to speak to people’s hearts in a way that was creative and passionate, that’s not divisive.”
Today, Sutherland, who has authored four books, is itching to focus on his own work and career. While the event is facing a big change, he wants to iterate that Holler isn’t going away – just that it will no longer be a monthly series.
“I’m a person who needs to be getting people together,” he said. “I see [Holler] more like a constantly composted thing – the squash seed growing out of your compost pile next year.”
Whether that means an annual or semi-annual event, Sutherland hasn’t decided. While he has tossed around ideas of coordinating some type of “Green Reading Series” or other event combining creative expression, sustainability and community, for the time being he is enjoying the openness of what the future holds for his life without the obligation of hosting a monthly event that has become bigger than he ever imagined it would.
“This has been what it has been for eight years,” he said. “Part of the motivation has been to maybe regain some of that – throw myself back into the unfamiliar, see what I’m prompted to do next.”
One thing is for certain – with Lexington’s literary scene perhaps as strong now as it has ever been, anyone deciding to fill the hole that Holler is leaving will have a much easier time doing it.
“The literary community is just full of fruit now,” he said. “[Back then] it was…it was a barren sapling.
“Obviously it could keep going,” he continued. “But I also believe everything has its moment in time.”