sardine songs, herring hymns

Smelt Festival in Bowdoinham

2012-01-18T15:56:00.000-08:00

Bowdoinham (Maine) will be the home of the first Ice and Smelt Festival, February 3 & 4 at Mailly Waterfront Park.
The festival will include a reception and opening on Feb 3, 530 - 8 PM at the Merrymeeting Arts Center to open the show "Ice Cutting and Smelt Fishing on Merrymeeting Bay" with work by local artists and a reading of "Smelt Makes Ice" by local artist Bryce Muir, from his book "Local Myths."
There will be a dance following the reception, at the Bowdoinham Town Hall.
On Feb 4 events run from 10 AM to 4 PM and include a Carnivale of Smelt, a costumed parade staged by the Ziggarut Theater Ensemble, games and contests, including a Best Beard Contest, with multiple categories.
The events will kick off the 250th Bowdoinham Anniversary Celebration.
Come on out and celebrate the Smelt.
for more information, go to:
http://www.bowdoinham250.org

sardines at the american folk festival

2011-08-14T12:15:00.000-07:00

Karin Spitfire and Gary Lawless will be reading sardine poems at the American Folk Festival, Bangor, Maine on Sunday, August 28. There will be two readings, at 1230 and 330, on the stage in the Children's Village area. The whole list of events at the festival that day sounds great. Come on out and say hello to our sardine sages!

Kendall Merriam poem

2011-02-06T12:58:00.000-08:00

Kendall Merriam, native of Rockland Maine where he is currently the official poet laureate, sends this poem:

Ode to Polish Sardine Packers

There is a hell of an easterly
rubbing the point across from me
with dedicated whitecaps
last night I snuck downstairs
and ate a can of King Oscar's finest
two layers, smoked, packed in Poland
my darling country
I had the privilege of working
in Holmes Packing just before college
a minor lesson in hell
hot steaming work, the smell of mustard
and fish steamed into my clothing
the herring much larger than the brisling
you deal with all the time
how do you do such fine hand work?
with the olive oil bath
in each can
my friend Woody Post swears by them
and he has known sardines all his life
used thousands over a lifetime
of baiting up lobster traps
within the past year
the last packing plant in Maine closed
where there used to be dozens
I know the Baltic is dead
do yours come from the North Sea
a place of storms and danger
to hold up some former King of Norway
they have a lovely secret, smokey taste
eaten straight from the can
last summer Gary and Karin
hosted a celebration
of this essence of ocean
in Belfast (Maine)
giving the fish its due
considering the millions
that have gone to human bellies
after the invention of weirs
and purse seiners
some of the slave islands
depended on them to
get the sugarcane harvest out
now those passing through Poland
sell for almost $3.00
for 3.75 ounces
and are devoured in three minutes
are truffles more than this?
Poland's economy has recovered
now, in part, due to brislings
isn't that such a lovely word
from the Polish language?

Kendall Merriam
January 10, 2011

Belfast Sardine Extravaganza Video

2011-01-11T10:28:00.000-08:00

to view a video of the Belfast Sardine Extravaganza, please click here

new sardine poem

2010-09-15T06:52:00.000-07:00

"I think my age will be against me"

Lubec closed within a few years
followed by Bath in 2005

the reasons are irrelevant now

Anderson said she originally used a pair of scissors
to cut the heads
and tails
off herring in one fluid motion

When the technology changed,
she adapted

One of the problems with sardines, Oliver said,
is that it's an
already oily fish
packed in oil

It also has a strong flavor that doesn't appeal to the
widest audience

the reasons are irrelevant now

It used to be a luxury item
in the mid-to-late- 1800s,
much the same way
lobster is today

Interestingly,
lobster was pauper's food then

They did overfish,
but not to the point
where all those factories had to close

I think it will always be something that people feel bad about

the reasons are irrelevant now.

Clinton Spaulding

Belfast Sardine Extravaganza

2010-08-25T05:13:00.001-07:00

Karin and Gary, Belfast Sardine Extravaganza
Alan Casline Photo

two sardine sites to visit

2010-08-21T06:16:00.000-07:00

Two wonderful sardine related websites/postings have come our way, and we encourage you to visit them:
The Society for the Appreciation of the Lowly Tinned Sardine this!

and also, an article with great visuals on Booktryst
this!

more poems

2010-08-13T05:54:00.000-07:00

Deep Blue Fields

This is about nothing besides
the fish we can't see.
How they swim beneath aqua stars,

glide through deep blue fields
in the webbed, coral rooted density.
The total eclipse of fins

and eyes, a common membrane tugging.
The rocking of beached, silent
creatures. Skeletal sound

left to pulsate in resonance.
Without water, stillness.
Without movement, nothing.

Barbaria Maria

...into a small dark place:

I'm thinking of sardines again
How the world changes
How things get lost from our lexicon

Like Herring in a Barrel
Becomes
Like Sardines in a Can

They stopped using Barrels
Now
They no longer Can Sardines

In my hometown
At the local Methodist Church
Every Sunday night

We've been playing a version
of Hide and Seek called "Sardines"
for as long as they've packed Fish in a Can

This year we had to explain what a Sardine is
Why when you pile into a small darl place
In some dusty hideaway where no one goes

It is like Fish packed tightly in a Can

When the thought occurred to me
What would we call this game
Without a reference point?

Can we find something new
That recovers our loss?

I'm thinking of Sardines again
How the world changes
How things get lost from our lexicon.

obeeduid

and this poem, read this week on NPR by Garrison Keillor:

New Religion

This morning no sound but the loud
breathing of the sea. Suppose that under
all that salt water lived the god
that humans have spent ten thousand years
trawling the heavens for.
We caught the wrong metaphor.
Real space is wet and underneath,
the church of shark and whale and cod.
The noise of those vast lungs
exhaling: the plain chanting of monkfish choirs.
Heaven's not up but down, and hell
is to evaporate in air. Salvation,
to drown and breathe
forever with the sea.

Bill Holm
from: The Chain Letter of the Soul: New & Selected Poems

last sardines canned

2010-07-25T19:40:00.001-07:00

The last sardines canned at Stinson's. This photo courtesy of the Maine State Museum, where the last three cans will be a part of a new display opening Saturday, July 31.

new books!

2010-07-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

We have available two new poetry chapbooks!
First: Sardine Songs/ Herring Hymns = a 24 page collection of the poems published on this blog, from a wide range of poets, all with a sardine/herring theme.
And: Sardine Shards - 12 pages of sardine related poems By Gary Lawless, published by Benevolent Bird Press
Each book is $5, plus $1 mailing from Blackberry Books, 617 East Neck Road, Nobleboro, Maine 04555

sardine limerick

2010-07-11T16:38:00.000-07:00

Belfast native Douglas Brown has sent this sardine requiem, and more...

Requiem for the Maine Sardine

Maine's herring once swam by the trillion,
But the meek of our race are six billion.
So many, we've eaten,
they're pretty well beaten.
Now it's hard to find half a million.

The herring got little respect.
It was scorned by the social elect.
The Hollywood star
just adored caviar,
but a can of sardines, she'd reject.

Those born to imperial bearing
were seldom consumers of herring.
It seemed kings and queens
rarely noshed on sardines
(at least, when their crowns, they were wearing).

The homely lobster is able
to grace the millionaire's table
but sardines were favored,
(with mustard well savored)
by the man who cleaned his stable.

On his yacht, the great Wall Street banker,
for filet of sole, sure did hanker;
but his cook and skipper
would divvy up kippers
with the sailor who heaved the anchor.

The Beverly Hills plastic surgeon
devoured platters of sturgeon;
while low-ranked clinicians
and health care technicians
downed kippers, without any urgin'.

The lawyer who drove a new Caddy
and dined on poached finnan haddie,
was also unerring
at shunning the herring,
but they were enjoyed by his caddie.

While the Texas oilman grew fat
eating barbecued "channel cat"
the roughnecks were sharing
Blue Ribbon and herring
and feeding sardines to the cat.

Maine sardines, it has come to pass,
though spurned by the very top brass;
were loved without question,
and doomed to digestion,
by humankind's lowlier class.

A Famous Mount Desert Summer Resident's View On Sardines

They say Martha Stewart's unsparing
in her disdain of the herring;
though she ate, in her cell,
canned sardines for that spell,
when prison clothes, she was wearing.

Douglas Brown

Belfast Sardine Extravaganza

2010-06-30T11:58:00.000-07:00

August 21 Belfast Sardine Extravaganza at the Belfast Harbor Fest
Raise a Ruckus for Herring!

1100 Speaker: Joe Upton, herring bait boatman and author of Amaretto, and Alaska Blues - at the Boathouse

and at the Sardine Stage - Belfast Commons:
12 Noon - Invocation... for the love of Herring: Poets and Divas
100 The Gawler Family
200 Anna Dembska & the Schoodic Chorus
300 Morty Hanson
3:30 Gordon Bok with The January Men and Then Some
430 Grand March with Chrissy Fowler, the Flashing Fish Dancers & the Belfast Bay Fiddlers
Anna Dembska, the Sardine Singers, & the Belfast Drum and RabbleParade and Flotilla to the Old Sardine Factory and Walking Bridge for the Grand Finale!!!

To volunteer, add your fishy ideas, or for more information please contact:
kspitfire@gwi.net
For the ongoing, continually upgraded schedule of summer sardine events:
http://sardinesong.blogspot.com
and for the Harbor Fest:
belfastharborfest.com

summer sardine events

2010-06-02T07:34:00.000-07:00

We want to spend the summer celebrating the herring, yes the sardines, the little silver darlings, but we also want to celebrate the human cultures which grew up around the sardine fisheries. We want to spawn and promote a number of events around the state centering on the sardine, and the disappearance of the sardine related industry and culture, another kind of extinction.Please join us, and keep watching here as we will have more events to post.

June 29 - The Fish Belong to the People - film showing at the Belfast Free Library with speaker Glen Libby - sponsored by the library and the co-op- more info click
this!

July 3, Saturday, 130 PM Eastport Arts Center - Herring Hymnal, Herring Dance, Herring Song - A reading by poet Karin Spitfire with local poets and archival film footage of the Eastport sardine industry, Old Eastport, and maritime life, from the Northern Lights Film Society

July 20 - Herring Night at the Bass Harbor Library - as a part of their annual Ruth Moore Days - with readings from Ruth Moore and historic photos of the local sardine cannery by Eleanor Mayo

July 22 - Karin Spitfire reads poetry, Stockton Library, 7 PM

July 25 - 6 PM Poetry and Sax = 9 local women poets read, with jazz sax, at a release party for: Talking Furniture - Selections from Maine Writers, at Bay Wrap, 102 Main Street, Belfast - $10 donation, proceeds go to sponsor the Belfast Sardine Extravaganza

July 26 Belfast Free Library - film maker Karen Saum's film "Working Women of Waldo County" which includes a section on the sardine industry - sponsored by the Belfast Historical Museum and the Belfast Free Library

July 30 - 730 PM - sardine poetry night at the Wayne (Maine) Public Library

July 31, 11-3, Maine State Museum, Augusta - special event for the Stinson Seafood- sardine industry exhibit - with:
1030 & 130 - music by Roll and Go
1100 - sardine poetry with Karin Spitfire and Gary Lawless
1130 - food historian Sandra Oliver on Seafood and Sardines in the New England Diet
and more!

August 1 - 30 images of the sardine industry - a photo/art exhibit at the Kramer Gallery, Belfast - focussing on the Belfast sardine cannery, with images from the Belfast Historical Society, Penobscot Marine Museum, and local artists

August 4, 630-800 PM Herring Gut Learning Center, Port Clyde - sardine taqlk, poetry, and film (including footage of the Port Clyde cannery fire and explosion), with a display of historic photos, aprons, scissors, timecards, trays and other historic artifacts - for more info click
this

August 10, 630 PM, Belfast Free Library - Fish Forever-speaker Aaron Dority of the Penobscot East Resource Center, with a herring/sardine slide show compiled by Kevin Johnson of the Penobscot Marine Museum.

August 21 - Belfast Harbor Fest and Sardine Extravaganza - sponsored by the Belfast Rotary and many local groups and businesses - with boat races and displays, speakers, singers, poets, dancers, art displays, and a choral piece culminating in a parade to the Belfast cannery site for an event there

and yes a published collection of sardine poems called "Sardine Songs/Herring Hymns"

We hope to see you at these events.
Please contact us for more information
chimfarm@gwi.net
kspit@gwi.net

sing the sardines in Belfast

2010-06-02T07:29:00.000-07:00

We are looking for singers (and listeners) to join in the sardine celebration in Belfast August 21. Please go to this
and come join us in Belfast!

more poems/stinson's doors

2010-05-14T13:42:00.001-07:00

David Estey - Stinson's Doors

Stinson's Doors

"The city has given the owners of the former Stinson Seafoods sardine
packing plant three months to tear it down"
- Walter Griffin, Bangor Daily News, Sept. 15, 2009

Checking on the building the morning
after the announcement in the BDN,
the facade looks suspicious,
yellows of the eyes in the sliding door

looking sideways as if
on guard for the demolition crew
covering its ears as if it doesn't want
to hear the order to tear it down.

Place of small fish sorting and canning
lingering on the Belfast waterfront
haunted by generations of cut hands,
reeking aprons, foundation now crumbling,

yet refreshed with a coat of paint
by an artist with a love for the overlooked,
windows newly glowing, doors
bright green again with the promise

of men and women arriving for the morning shift.

for David Estey

Carl Little

Eighty-Five

"Shoo," she says and waves me away
like a big fly, though she's been happy to talk,
her lip sticked mouth taking me word by word
through her life: born in this town, never left,
widowed once, divorced twice, one daughter --
now dead -- and forty years in the fish factory.

She and the girls loved every minute of it,
racing -- piece work, you know. Gossip swooping
through the long room like a flock of starlings
while their hands, separate animals, filled
hundreds of tins day after day. Some days
they'd lift a big icy fish from the crate,

lay it on the boiler to steam, then eat it
with their fingers. There was never anything
so fresh. She fiddles with a button on her robe,
her nails roughly painted to match her mouth,
and, no, she doesn't need help with her shampoo,
washing her creases, soaking her swollen feet.

She looks as though she never could get out
of that chair, but somehow it's easy
to see how she would have stood on a corner
in the South End, her feet in pumps, one hip
cocked, talking to a girlfriend and seeming
not to notice the men from the shipyard loose
on a Saturday night in their clean white shirts.

Elizabeth Tibbetts

Herring Run

Push upstream, water clear brown
blue-green river grass waves them on
through tight walled fish weirs
we crowd in excitement spill
out of round fendered cars
chrome winking fathers and uncles drive
like grizzlies after salmon, grandmothers
with long skirts wrapped around their thighs
babies on rolled legs splash
wade in a swarm of moonlight bodies
tickling legs, slippery stones underfoot
scramble, flip fins escape, fall back
get lost. Caught Nemasket, released
Neponset, some find home; spawn.
Nets and bare hands, catch catch catch
shovel fish; creel abundance.
Hot oil, dredge sizzle fry; feast.
Scrape silver scales fcrom your fingers
peel back the growth rings of each shiny plate
gobbled up in the parking lot
gypsy festival of Coleman stoves
every year when the herring run.

Valerie Lawson

MULLIGAN

Up in Damariscotta Mills
is a fisherman
eyes blue and wet as gurry
from the Thunderbird
that helps him trap rundowns
and passing tourists
alewives for a quarter
five for a dollar
if you're local
if you're not
but willing to linger
he'll talk, knit tales
of the leather board mill torn down
his smokehouse put up quick
by the fish runs
dips them black from the Sheepscot
smokes them to copper, I say
smokes them til done, he says
strung on fish sticks symmetrical
gills lined up like buttons, I say
mouths made for the sticks, he says
laughs and hands the wine around
packed down in brine
dried 800 to the barrel
shipped to the Caribbeans
love 'em! he says
why do you think there's so many?
alewives or Caribbeans, I say
eat one you'll conceive, he says
laughs and hands the wine around
smoked alewives half his life
the other half in Boston
M.I.T. at the Old Howard
fell in love with Ann Corio
"You think you see more
than you actually do" he says
laughs and hands the wine around

Phyllis Merriam
Dec., 1976

poems for the plant closing

2010-04-27T11:46:00.000-07:00

Ellen Sander photo

The Last Sardine Plant Is Closing

It is afternoon.
Classical trumpets yellow
out of a German radio.
There is a football game,
or about to be,
and I can't remember
if it's on the color set downstairs
that sometimes smokes,
or on the tiny black-and-white
with a screwdriver for the volume.

I am four
and for the first and last time
that I can recall, my father
unkeys the tin,
cranes out to me
something tarnished siver,
dripping oil and so tasty.

I don't know now
if I'd like them anymore.
I've never tried.

Carter Ruff

Poor Prospects in Prospect Harbor

Outside the Stinson plant mute
and motionless stands the giant
seafarer clad in a slicker
holding a tin of Beach Cliff sardines
just like dad used to peel open
after coming home late from
peddling fruits and vegetables
in the streets of Manhattan.

Inside it's all noise and clatter
the women's flashing hands dart
attack schools of silvery cans
conveyed by in a ceaseless stream
paced by buzzers and bells
packing the herring to bed
like too many siblings in cramped
quarters to their final sleep.

Nancy's not ready to retire
just yet at seventy
after forty four fast years
"I could work another ten
I don't know anything else
don't want nothing with computers
don't have one, don't want to learn"
Three daughters and a sister
have been on the same line
paid by the number of cans
you could make 19 bucks an hour

good work found on the Maine coast
not much else to speak of
in Hancock County which once
boasted its own Cannery Row-
my dog eared Bantam paperback
that cost my old man a quarter
Steinbeck's picaresque story
clanked out on his Remington
twice a historical oddity.

The corporate buzz at Bumble Bee
is shuttering this last one
while Ernie fixes everything
takes his cat home a free can
"I'm saving lives here."

Lela's fifty four years had
started when scissors cut fish
before machines offed their heads.
She was looking forward to
celebrating her eightieth
birthday there in two more years.
"I thought this would be here for
generations to come."

The final break is over.
In three hours fifteen minutes
Lulu and Alma packed
five thousand two hundred
and twenty eight sharp cans
some kind of record
for the end of the line.

Michael Bell

bernadette mayer poem

2010-04-02T07:49:00.000-07:00

SARDINES

is a yellow, red, orange, black & green
word. I got sardines at the dollar store
where everything except sardines is more
than a dollar, for sixty cents, as they should be
my father used to take sardine sandwiches to work
perhaps therefore, I love sardines. when people
used to talk about the subway, they'd say:
we were packed like sardines which sends a message:
small, cheap, tightly packed, anchovies for the poor
or you too can be both colorful & inexpensive as
a really snappy, tiny bright blue convertible
in which you can enjoy the good things about
feeling like a sardine but maybe you'd rather
be a striped bass or be a manatee with me
or a grand whale, forgetful of nothing even
being so big, the ocean's CEO, you'll take home
a giant amount of cash when the ocean goes bust
so you can share it even with the downtrodden
sardines who get packed in cans in Thailand
& shipped to the family dollar store for Bernadette

Bernadette Mayer

two sardine poems

2010-03-18T08:16:00.000-07:00

Where Are the Stockton Sardines?
(for all who worked at the Stockton sardine factory, 1917)

Folks remember. Wives, mothers, grannies even,
used to sit around the woodstove after supper,
telling about the days of sardines,
how they earned almost a decent day's pay
for "crammin' those silver slipperies
into those damned little tins."
Long hours of lopping off heads, then tails, while
laughing at somebody's bawdy joke or juicy gossip.
But oh those stinging cuts, then chopped off
digits, blood pouring down conveyor belts.
"Not complainin', mind ya," said Maude Brown
or Flora Ellis. "Long as sardines were runnin',
there was money for food at the company store."
But all the lotion, salves, and fancy perfumes,
even bath salts, couldn't drown the stench.

Carolyn Page

Song of Sardines

Returning
We spawn silver
Weaving Whales
We sing dark shadows
Back to the light of day

Joshua O"Donnell

herring riddle

2010-02-23T07:02:00.000-08:00

Kate Barnes has sent us this herring riddle, from Popular Rhymes of Scotland 1858, also Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century - 1882, and used by Tolkein in The Lord of the Rings:

Although it's cold, no clothes I wear,
frost and snow I do not fear;
I have no use for hose or shoes
although I travel far and near.
All I eat comes free to me
I need no cider, ale, or sack;
I nothing buy, or sell, or lack.

sardines from Morocco

2010-02-13T11:06:00.000-08:00

Sardines

Swimming against
Atlantic currents
free and disoriented,
eyes freshly powdered
with tons of blocks of ice
to abate the stench
of broken hands
and dreams shoved
in every bay
with crooked masts
they made the catch
to enrich the reckless
brains of steel...

Downstream from
Maine,
wealth migrated
to Casablanca
and the lush
shores of Morocco
sardines and people
saw tides
rise above their necks
and subside
leaving them naked,
as they were
before the sardines
migrated to Maine...

Said Leghlid

Sardine drops in Eastport

2010-01-22T07:58:00.000-08:00

On New Year's Eve a giant sardine dropped at midnight in Eastport, opening the official Year of the Sardine!

Herring Croon

2010-01-19T05:36:00.000-08:00

Herring Croon

words and music c 1965 Gordon Bok on his cd Herrings in the Bay
last verse c 2009 Gordon Bok from the 2010 cd Other Eyes

Where do you go, little herring,
what do you see, tail and fin?
"Blue and green, cold and dark, seaweed growing high
hills a hundred fathom deep where the dead men lie
Dogfish eyes and mackerels' eyes and they hunger after me
net or weir, I don't care,
catch me if you can."

Where do you go, little boat,
tar and timber, plank and sail?
"I go to green bays, lift them under me
cold, gray, combing seas come to bury me
rocky jaws and stony claws and they hunger after me
harbors cold, deep and bold, wish that I could see."

What do you see, fisherman,
poor old sailor, blood and bone?
"Mackerel skies, mares' tails, reef and furl and steer
poor haul, and hungry days, rotten line and gear
snow-wind and winter gales and oh, they hunger after me
net or weir, I don't care, catch you if I can."

Where do you go, little herring,
what do you see, tail and fin?
"Blue and green, cold and dark, seaweed growing high
hills a hundred fathom deep where the fishermen lie
dogfish eyes and mackerels' eyes and oh, they hunger after me
net or weir, I don't care,
catch me if you can."

Where have you gone, little herring;
what have you seen, tail and fin?
"Cold and black, dead and dark, bottom torn away,
draggers staving everywhere, drug this garden dry,
pair-trawl, midwater-trawl- God, they hungered after me!
Tore my home to hell and gone
there's no more place for me."

RED HERRING CAPER

2009-10-29T13:22:00.001-07:00

Karin Spitfire Gary Lawless Sardine Video

sardine events

2009-08-28T06:12:00.000-07:00

Herring Fishing in Castine, Maine
Orrin Dickey Collection
Belfast Historical Society
(see first comment for photo text)

We are hoping to put together a series of events for the summer of 2010. These events would celebrate the sardine, the sardine fishery, and the people and communities whose lives were so interconnected with the sardine fishery. We hope to have events taking place at the sites of sardine canneries, but would like to see the events branch out to libraries, historical societies, galleries, schools...We hope to include poets, musicians, dancers, painters, sculptors and other artists as well as oral history projects, showings of historical photographs, and first person accounts from those who were involved in the sardine industry. We are looking for people, ideas, locations...

Belfast is our epicenter, and the birthplace of our vision. We want to use the postmodern ruin of the sardine plant there, connected to the pedestrian bridge.We can see a sardine procession crossing the bridge, banners on the lightposts, poetry, song and dance all on site. We hope for artists collaborating with the sardine theme. Possibly bringing the sardine carrier Jacob Pike over from the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport to tie up in Belfast. There are many possibilities, and we would like to hear your ideas.

In Bass Harbor we hope to work with the Bass Harbor Library and the Tremont Historical Society to have a showing of Eleanor Mayo's photos of women workers at the sardine plant, connected to a reading of work by her cousin Ruth Moore (selections from The Weir and The Night Charlie Tended Weir) as well as readings, music, and art -

In Port Clyde we hope to work with the Herring Gut Learning Center and the Marshall Point Lighthouse and Museum to present a night of readings from our sardine literature and connected historical displays. The Marshall Point Museum has a display
featuring information on the night that the Port Clyde sardine plant burned down, the boiler exploding, sending sardine can shrapnel raining onto the town.

We hope to have other events in Lubec, Prospect Harbor, Rockland... but we want to involve people, and we want to hear your ideas. You can leave ideas, comments, suggestions here at this page, or you can email us:
Gary Lawless chimfarm@gwi.net
Karin Spitfire kspit@gwi.net
We really welcome input!

Current recommendations:
We are really excited about Joe Upton's beautiful book Amaretto, about his time in Penobscot Bay with his 60 year old sardine carrier Amaretto. Beautifully told, this book is now out of print. Get it from your library or buy a used copy.

Gordon Bok's CD Herrings in the Bay, especially the song Herring Croon.

Ruth Moore's novel The Weir. Her father was the last weir fisherman on Gott's Island, and this novel reflects that life.

Loretta Krupinski's show at the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport (only on view until early September) A Voyage through Time,Coastal Marine Fishing 1850-1940. She has painted from old historical photos of Maine Coast fishing village scenes, and each painting is displayed next to the photo from which she has painted (adding a few details - a cat, the Rockland breakwater) This work will be presented next summer as a new book from Down East Books: Looking Astern - An Artist's View of Maine's Historic Working Waterfront (from Belfast to Bath) and we hope to include a booksigning event at one of our sardine events.

new poems

2009-08-26T07:58:00.000-07:00

K L Robyn
sent this poem:

THE BIRTH OF HERRING

When the Sun
first saw Oceania
he was smitten.
And she shone
back to him
such gold and silvery
ripples of delight
that he knew
she felt the same.
He made love to her
that morning
and again at the end
of the day.

Later, he came again
as a woman
and spilled a moonshower
so soft and rich
it brought her
ecstasy and comfort
all at once.

It was not long before
Oceania opened her
wide legs and let loose
ten thousand herring.

This is how it is when
you make love to me.
All those fishes
stirring and turning
in my ocean
this way and that
just waiting to flood
the seas.

K L Robyn
09 August 09

and Alan Casline sent this one:

Sardine

sardine small swam with the net

Old Salty says "Nobody baits a hook that small"

We'll build a soul factory
nothing smaller than a soul
mesh so tiny
it'll squeeze
love out like tooth paste

sardine small swam with the waste

for the protection of all beings
the axletrees are taken from the wagon
poets gather on the swale
there was a rainbow
out over the emerald sea

sardine small swam with the directions

only wishful thinking
a taste for fish
How they come back
How they come back
a few lifetimes left alone

sardine small swam with the beauty

Alan Casline
August 4, 2009

sardine songs, herring hymns

2009-07-31T07:37:00.000-07:00

(sardines by Kimberly Callas)

This blog will feature a group of poems and visuals collected for a "Herring Hymnal", celebrating sardines and herring and the human cultures of Maine with which they have interacted. These poems will be a part of a series of events in Maine coastal communities, at the sites of former sardine factories/canneries, organized by Karin Spitfire and Gary Lawless.

Sardine Manifesto

I Herring
Atlantic, Alewife, Blueback, Shad
Feed everybody
Striper, Seal, Shorebird, Cornfields, Croatians
I Herring
swim
cross-Atlantic
ubiquitous Cod crashed

Spawn
uncountable volumes
Pacific Herring Fell
School
shimmering speedy millions
Atlantic Salmon collapsed
shift
turn en masse
Red Herring, questioned, endangered
So Too You
I Herring
quicksilver
am the change left in your pocket

Karin Spitfire

(sardine factory, Belfast)

May we be blessed by
the spirits of these fish
swimming through our world
from the world above
from the world below
rising from the depths of the future
blessing the depths of our past

Gary Lawless

waited all night

in the dark they
gather in the cove
nets, in the water,
nets, in the morning,
torn and
gone, all gone.

were there ever any fish?
was there ever any sunrise?
did we dream water full of silver our
pockets full of gold?

Gary Lawless

falling into the soft
sea of darkness
slowly, slowly to bed
wrap me in a blanket of fish
shining in the water like stars
like light from a million years
below some vast ocean of sky
where there is nothing
nothing to hold on to
flashes, and then
gone

Gary Lawless

Song of the Sardines

Returning
We spawn silver
Weaving whales
We sing dark shadows
Back to the light of day.

Joshua O'Donnell

In the sardine factory

There can be no other labor
like the slitting of dead fish into fillets,
no scissors so sharp
they miss and cut off chunks
of fingers and sometimes
missing altogether
you gash your partner at the bloody table,
missing pieces of flesh
with scales and fins.

You smile sardines.
The crease these scissors have worn
moves into your palm like a lifeline.
And more, your apron full of the stench
of fish, the torsos
packed into oil and canned,
bears your body home, smothered
in scales of pearls.

What you cannot see is your mother
and hers, and all the other women in town,
waiting like fishwives
for the tide to turn into weirs
turning into hogsheads of silver herring.
In my dream I see you bending at your sink,
not knowing where or who you are,
becoming part of some awful whale,
cold-blooded, you grind
fish bones into fertilizer.

You do not see yourself
as someone you scarcely know,
working your shift, day after day,
among the hundreds of women
who rise each morning, automatic,
to the factory whistle.

Kathleen Lignell Ellis

from: Amelia, Mrs. Brooks of My Old Childhood

Part III
Great lady of Sardines and
earth and blood of
Blueberryin' years, Clam Factory
years who brought up
children without help, a hopeless
drunk husband beating you in
his futility when the country was smashed.
Amelia, lady of poverty and no hope,
saint of this earth if ever there
is a saint and if not then you
are what was always instilled in us
as what a saint is, woman in the
retinas of God's eyes for your simple courage
and great accomplishment with no money
and from work that kills young, yet
you still live, Amelia, and here we are.

I came to you the day I
went into the army
where sardines stuck
to your hands I came and said
goodbye in the fish smell.

You were beautiful, a
beautiful woman and
I yearned to say goodbye
to a mother.

You worked the Sardine Factories
to feed your children.

No fish contributes
more to the human
race as Herring.

We sneak death again,
kill...take
herring from the sea our
boat circling, the Cannery
boats lifting the sardines
aboard into their holds
through hoses.
A seine around
fish in moon black.

Draw string of net
pulled to close the
net bottom or the
fish sucked through the hose ...

To the Cannery as
soon as fish are
aboard, Herring
through a hose removing
their scales for imitation Pearl
essence on the Market Place
and Cosmetics.

part IV

Amelia, the fish have less
chance than you had
except your death would
be more subtle, you died
from it, Amelia, died from exhausting
survival, your life wearing
out your life.

... no machine can pack sardines
like human hands, Amelia...

Sitting in draughty cold
snipping off dead fish heads and tails
with scissors.

Yet death always a sneak, here
is food to eat but it will decompose
if we do not know that herring who have
just eaten must be allowed to swim it off until
they digest whatever was in them as you catch them...
or whatever they were eating avenges them as
bacteria planktonic form ...

And once caught out of the fresh salt
protecting ocean if the fish are taken
distance of more than four hours they spoil,
Amelia... life is death all spoiled.

Part V

Amelia, did you go north
in the few years of the Winter Fisheries
to Eastport, Lubec, Maine, freezing
nets of two and one half inch mesh
sunk to the bottom in twenty
fathoms of water, fish catch
frozen solid on the market as "boaters".

Amelia, sitting in frigid
cold icy sea water splashing
and wind finding you through
building cracks.

The cooked fish come down
conveyor belts for you to
pick up without breaking them
and put them into cans of
oil or mustard, fast!
You were fast all day
or out of work ...

to feed your children.

Leo Connellan

The Sardine Diaries : Day One

What do I know from sardines?

Smelly little fish cut up and crammed in cans.

I've lived without them for years.

Despite their magical Omega-3 who needs them?

You bring them to work and everyone's mad at you.

"What's that horrible smell? Don't put that can in the garbage!"

And the can itself - there's bound to be bleeding fingers.

But what am I talking? I've seen the exhibit in the Maine State Museum,
the mannequin of the woman with all her fingers bandaged.
Now she would know of bloody fingers - and sons drowned at sea.

Kate tells me she cut sardines growing up in Lubec
one summer in the '70s, although she was never
good at it and made only fifty dollars.

The whole town would hustle down when the whistle
blew to let them know the boats were in.

We talk of how the world has changed so fast
and I remember the nurses smoking in the hospital in 1979
when I had my appendix out.

Now we have cell phones and don't have to worry
spelling appendix because the computer
does it for you.

And we don't really know much about sardines although we do
know there aren't any factories left working in Eastport or Lubec,
yet the cans are still on the shelves at Shop 'N Save.

I wonder do the old women still listen for the whistle?

David Moreau

The Sardine Diaries: Day 2

My wife and I used to go camping a lot
before children. We'd buy hot dogs and beans,
Dinty Moore Beef Stew, Hershey Bars, red wine
and sardines.

We'd stay at Seawall on Mt. Desert Island
and go hiking on the St. Saveur trail along
Somes Sound or Champlain Mountain
or Pretty Marsh. Then we'd settle in for
a Scrabble game at the camp site.

We didn't mind sardines and crackers for supper.
It was cheap and filling and we were young.
Stinky breath never stopped us from hitting
the sleeping bag early.

The Sardine Diaries: Day Three

Why should we be the ones
Whose heads and tails are cut off?
Who are packed into cans?
Who are scorned and mocked?

Why should you say
Packed like Sardines
When we never wanted that?

What you don't know about us
Would fill an ocean.

The Sardine Diaries: Day 4

How much we don't know in this world. Yet,
it doesn't stop the letters in the paper complaining
"Why won't they let us drill for oil in Alaska?"
My wife points out no one ever thinks
about a gallon of gas and the earth's
enormous task in forming it.

It's the same for sardines.
I know from Wikipedia they're pilchard,
like herring, only four inches or less
and in Portugal there's a holiday, St. Anthony's,
where they grill sardines.
But that's not much of a treat for the sardines.
I don't know from Adam how they live
or spawn or what they feel.

There's a quick way to be thought weird -
start talking about what sardines feel.
Human beings turn up their noses at that.
We don't want to admit that anything can feel -
except us - then we'd be responsible
for how we treat the ants and crows and trees -
and sardines. Our brothers and sisters the sardines!

David Moreau

SARDINES

I suppose only a fishing village
would have a game called Sardines.
I never remember playing it on the mainland
Now, these years later
the object is unclear to me
someone was it, of course
and the others ran and hid
crowding in together
like a can of Sardines
in an old bait bin
long rubbed clean
by the storage of longwarps
or in a lobster car henhouse
scrubbed white by lobster claws and salt
of course I remember the object now
it was to get close to one of
the four Jackson girls
who though they did not admit it
sometimes watched us skinnydipping
at Two Pond Beach
and we had to pay them back somehow
it was a twilight game
played while the swallows
gathered the last insects
and the sea air smelt closer and heavier
this was long before frisbee
before modern inventions
took away dark places
it was a kindly game
not known on shore
one could imagine
children playing it
on the isles
in the Sea of Greece
we were only 2,000 years old then.

Kendall Merriam

Song of the Sardine
Robert Service

A fat man sat in an orchestra stall and his cheeks were wet with tears,
As he gazed on the primadonna tall, whom he hadn't seen in years.
"Oh don't you remember" he murmured low "that spring in Montparnasse,
When hand in hand we used to go to our nightly singing class.
Ah me those days so gay and glad, so full of hope and cheer.
And that little supper that we had of tinned sardines and beer.
When you looked so like a little queen with your proud and haughty air,
That I took from the box the last sardine and I twined it in your hair."

Alas I am only a stockbroker now while you are high and great,
The laurels of fame adorn your brow while on you Princes wait.
And as I sit so sadly here and list to your thrilling tones
You cannot remember I sadly fear if my name is Smith or Jones.
Yet oh those days of long ago, when I had scarce a sou
And as my bitter tears down flow I think again of you.
And once again I seem to see that mad of sweet sixteen
Within whose tresses tenderly I twined that bright sardine.

Oh that sardine in your hair, I can see it there,
As I took it from its box, and I twined it in your locks
Silver sardine in your hair, like a jewel rich and rare,
Oh that little silver sardine in your hair.

Robert Service