Bring a picnic and lawn chairs to the Edenfield Amphitheater for an evening of prose, live music, and Earth Day celebration! This year’s Wild Words features Gordon Johnston (Seven Islands of the Ocmulgee), Kevin Cantwell (One Thousand Sheets of Rice Paper) and Musician, Matt McMillan. Additional guests are the Georgia Wilderness Society, Water Trails, Rails to Trails, and Ocmulgee Outdoor Expeditions.

About the featured guests:

Gordon Johnston is the author of the poetry collection Scaring the Bears, the short story collection Seven Islands of the Ocmulgee (both from Mercer University Press), and two poetry chapbooks, Durable Goods (2021) and Gravity’s Light Grip (2007) and is co-author of a guide to Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park. An avid kayaker and canoe camper, he has paddled all of the Ocmulgee, Oconee, Altamaha, and Flint Rivers. He also collaborates with potter Roger Jamison to fire his poems onto stoneware pages.

Kevin Cantwell has been writing poetry since the 1970s. He studied with the late David Bottoms and former poet laureate of Georgia at Georgia State University, where he received his B.A. in Philosophy. He has a Ph.D. in British and American literature from the University of Utah. There he edited Quarterly West and studies with Mark Strand, Richard Howard, and Larry Levis. His first book of poems was published by New Issues Press in 2002, Something Black in the Green Part of Your Eye, and his second by What Books Press in 2009, One of Those Russian Novels. He has also edited a book entitled Writing on Napkins at the Sunshine Club: An Anthology of Poets Writing in Macon (2011). His newest book is One Thousand Sheets of Rice Paper, published by Mercer University Press. His poems have been published in The Paris Review, The New Republic, Western Humanities Review, Irish Pages, The Irish Times, Commonweal, America, Shenandoah, Poetry, Salmagundi, Barrow Street, and Five Points, for which he was awarded the James Dickey Prize for Poetry. He has won the Academy of American Poets Prize and has been nominated for numerous Pushcart Prizes. Currently, he is editing a selection of letters by the American poet William Dickey.

Matt McMillan is a singer-songwriter and poet from the small town Rochelle, GA. His songs provide a young man’s view of the ,at times strange, landscape of growing up in the rural south. McMillan’s music takes heavy influences from the twang and humorous truth telling of Texas country and folk, while maintaining a heavy dose of old-time flavor courtesy of the clawhammer banjo. McMillan has played on stages all through out the South East. He  currently resides in Macon,GA where he continues writing music and poetry.