Sue C. Boynton continues to shape poetry in the Northwest
Not many people can claim ancestry to a regional poetry contest that has captured the hearts of local poets for 20 years.
But Janet Crook Pierson is the granddaughter of Sue C. Boynton, for whom the Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest is named.
Sue’s husband, physician Solon Richard Boynton, delivered Pierson at St. Luke’s Hospital in 1937.
When she was a young bride in 1906, Sue Crocker Boynton came to Bellingham, where she taught classes at the YWCA and even climbed Mount Baker in 1917. A self-described amateur poet, she “poured her emotions and thoughts into verse and inspired others to write,” according to the contest website.
“Grandma Sue meant everything to me,” said Pierson, “and after her passing … the proposal to establish a poetry foundation in her name grabbed my heart.”
Pierson said that her grandmother had “grabbed a few other heartstrings along the way,” including young Western Washington University — then State College — professor George Drake.
Before long, Pierson said, her grandmother began lecturing in Drake’s sociology class, often with standing ovations.
More than ‘just a poet’
Pierson said that Sue “wasn’t just a poet, she was a vital woman with down-to-earth ideas, a deep faith and swift humor that captured young and old. George understood that her poetry expressed all of this and more. He wasn’t going to let her go into the archives of time and fading memory.”
After Sue died, Drake approached her daughter, Ethel Crook, to propose the Sue C. Boynton Poetry Foundation.
Now in its 20th year, the Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest is a free annual event held each spring and open to Whatcom County residents of all ages and all levels of experience. The contest receives hundreds of entries each year.
Leslie Wharton said that she won her first Sue C. Boynton Contest award in 2016, the first poem she’s submitted to a contest, journal or anthology.
“At the time,” she said, “I was still reeling from the trauma of losing my home in a wildfire. Winning that award gave me the confidence to share my poetry. Poetry gave me a community in Whatcom County after moving from Colorado.”
Wharton said that Whatcom County has a strong poetry community, with numerous open mics, a newly formed poetry pub crawl, speakeasies, writing groups and, of course, this contest.
Wharton believes that “Good poetry expresses our shared humanity.” She writes poetry to make sense of her deepest thoughts; it’s her form of protest or call for change.
“A poem in a private journal can heal the poet, but sharing it can heal others. In Ukraine, poetry readings are filling stadiums,” she said.
Bellingham poet Judy Kleinberg, who was a Walk Award winner in 2008 and a committee member from 2009 to 2012, said that “It’s a thrill to see the way a poem can break through barriers. It doesn’t matter how old we are, how much education we have, or even whether we like poetry or believe we can write it; a few words stitched into a few lines can touch us profoundly.”
For a ‘churning, burning world’
“The churning, burning world needs poets,” Wharton said. “Poets express the human experience in lyrical words. Metaphor in poetry translates an idea in a way others can understand.”
Pierson said that she hopes others might enjoy the magic of words and talent that is now giving voice in Whatcom County.
“Adults and children of all ages are writing and winning and discovering a community who honors them,” she said. “This May it will be 20 years watching, for example, a 6-year-old hold her poem close as she walks proudly up to the podium and steps up on a stool so that her words — her very own winning poem — can be heard over the microphone. Or a frail elder gentleman with his life-worn words of great beauty and wisdom in one hand, and a cane in the other, stepping more carefully toward his moment of giving his deepest self.”
Poems will be accepted through March.
Writers may enter one previously unpublished poem on any topic. Poems must be 27 lines or fewer, with 55 or fewer characters per line. All contest submission guidelines must be met.
Twenty winners will be notified in April.
To encourage local poets, the Sue C. Boynton Contest will offer writing classes in the schools this spring and at Allied Arts during the month of June. Allied Arts will feature poetry in its June exhibit, and a chapbook, “Words of a Feather,” containing the winning selections of the past decade, will be released.
The contest culminates in a public recognition ceremony at 7 p.m. on May 29 at the Bellingham Cruise Terminal, 355 Harris Avenue. Award recipients will read their poems and artistic placards accompanying their work will be on display.
Following the event, placards will be posted inside Whatcom Transportation Authority buses, in schools, libraries and online, and 10 selected poems will be displayed for a year on the Poetry Walk in front of Bellingham Public Library which Leslie Wharton, chair of this year’s committee, said it is one of the longest-established poetry walks in the country.
The Boynton Bouncers Open Mic gives non-winners an opportunity to share their entry. Details will be posted to Facebook.
Washington poets Rena Priest and Tom Moore will select the winning poems. Priest served as Washington state’s sixth Poet Laureate and was a judge for the 2024 National Book Award. She is an enrolled Lummi Tribe member. A professor of English and liberal studies at Western, Moore also teaches in the Honors College.
Sue’s last public reading was in July 1976 at age 95 when she read a message from President Gerald Ford as well as one of her poems for the Bicentennial program in Whatcom Museum’s City Hall. She died in 1981.
The story of her life is told in “The Sue Boynton Story” by Dorothy Koert, published in 1982 by the Whatcom County Historical Society.
Read, hear via podcast or watch authors’ reading on video their past contest winning entries on the contest website, The Poetry Department … aka The Boynton Blog.
— By Margaret Bikman
Also read in Salish Current:
• “Bioregionalism, poetry and the democracy of the mind,” Dec. 3, 2024
• “Review: ‘Red Paint’ looks into the healing journey, ancestry of a Coast Salish poet,” March 8, 2024
• “State book award finalists include four Whatcom authors,” Sept. 5, 2023
• “‘Seeing the Forest’ salon to benefit forest conservation,” July 28, 2023