ORANGE — Robert P. Collén once imagined himself and legendary poet Walt Whitman side by side in downtown Orange, taking in the sights of the Millers River and surrounding buildings:
“How often have I wished that you could walk with me,/ That we would stroll together on South Main Street toward the river,/ That it would be July or August, that men in work clothes/ And women in summer dresses would wave to us, that we would come/ To the bridge at sunset and stand, looking west beyond the dam,/ Where water tumbles over rocks, turns white, and shimmers,/ That the brick factory buildings would flaunt their fantastic shades of red.”
Those are lines from Collén’s 1994 poem about Orange, “The Town and the River.” Collén — late poet, musician, manager at the Rodney Hunt manufacturing company, Air Force veteran and Orange Scholarship Foundation president — wrote the poem as an homage to his hometown.
Collén now has a poetry contest named after him, the Robert P. Collén Poetry Competition organized by the Friends of the Orange Libraries. The sixth annual competition will be held Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the upstairs reading room at Wheeler Memorial Library.
Over the last several weeks, 39 people have submitted poems to the Friends for the contest. On Tuesday, the top 10 poems will be read aloud, and the top three poems will be announced. Judges are anonymous, said organizer Todd Ladeau, but finalists will receive $100, $50 or $25 prizes for first, second and third place, respectively.
According to Ladeau, the competition is a way to honor the late Collén, who died in 2014 at age 86. Collén was active in the community, and was a trustee of the library for more than 40 years. His poem, “The Town and the River,” became well known among locals, and still is, Ladeau said.
The annual poetry competition has become a fun way for locals to express their feelings about their community, Ladeau said, and the top 10 poems are often read aloud by their respective authors. An 11th “honorable mention” will also be read. Snacks will be available.
Many who come in and submit poems in person, Ladeau said, are clear about where they got their inspiration.
“The people (who) come in and hand-submit their poems, they often talk about what the event means to them and what Bob’s poem means to them. They draw inspiration from that,” he said. “The poem, it does have to do with the town of Orange and I think people draw influence from it because they take pride in their town.”
According to a commentary written by Collén himself, available on the Orange libraries’ website, “The Town and the River” was born out of a photography slideshow of Orange and Athol he had presented in the early 1990s.
“The photographs and commentary focused primarily on the Millers River as the organizing feature of the landscape, and secondarily on the architecture and layout of the town,” Collén said. “A few years later, as I was reviewing the notes, I found myself writing a poem about the town and the river that flows through the center. After innumerable drafts, I read it to Marcia Gagliardi, who immediately suggested that Haley’s publish it as a booklet.”
The poem, still available online at bit.ly/2Jkyv1I and on site at the library on East Main Street, describes many Orange mainstays, including Memorial Park, the houses on West River Street, Wendell Depot and, of course, the Millers River.
Reach David McLellan at dmclellan@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 268.