Tuesday, April 23 ~ C. E. Smith (A Pocket Wild: Notes from a Carolina Marsh) at Hot Fish Club
C.E. (Chip) Smith is the voice for the natural world in Murrells Inlet. Known and loved for his brilliant black-
and-white photography and his piercing, evocative essays on what he calls this “pocket wild” – essays that grew from articles published in his weekly newspapers the Inlet Image and Barefoot Messenger, and in the much-missed Lowcountry Companion – and respected by area scientists for his rational analysis of “the data” and its implications for our future,
Chip doesn’t just talk the talk. In post-Hugo 1992, he started the now-regionally recognized “Spring
Tide” clean-up of the creek, when more than 600 Inlet enthusiasts brought in 75-150 tons of trash and hurricane debris. For the first decade, the yearly haul ranged from 12-15 tons and, in recent years (under the auspices of Murrells Inlet 2020), between 300-400 volunteers annually harvest about 3-5 tons of
flotsam and jetsam out of the marsh and from along the roadways – an improvement but a job without end.
His lyrical, informative essays celebrate the natural workings of the Inlet marsh while soberly examining the effects of economic development. Reading Chip will send you marshside to explore for yourself … or get you googling to learn more. Whether you’re a “been-yere” or a “come-yere,” you will find new knowledge, new understanding, and new feelings of protectiveness for this “pocket wild” from a prose poet who loves the place, learns all he can, and shares it with you.
Saturday, April 27 ~ Billy Baldwin, Macon Rutledge & Hannah Marley (Archibald Rutledge’s How Wild
Was My Village) at McClellanville Town Hall
The second CLASS Publishing reprint of Archibald Rutledge’s work How Wild Was My Village (first
published for brief circulation in 1969) has an interesting literary origin and history, which William (Billy) Baldwin (who should be the current SC poet laureate) recounts in his new foreword to the book. The question posed to the village residents (all renamed to protect the guilty) is “what was the defining moment of your life,” which some recount from beyond the grave while others from living
memory.
With bold illustrations by D.P. McGuire and set in free verse poetry, the tales told are filled with violence,
longing, regret, fear, betrayal, redemption and love – all of the burdens of humanity, whether the stage is a metropolis or a tiny community like McClellanville.