Closet poets of the Lowcountry, be free.

The new Bluffton Poets Society knows you're out there, secretly writing poems that no one has read but you. The society thinks it's time to open up a little.

"We're knocking on your door. We want you to come out of your closet, bring your poetry and share it with us," says Molly Carrington, who is helping form the society with Bluffton town councilman and published poet Oscar Frazier.

Frazier came up with the idea for a local poets guild at the International Society of Poets symposium he attended in Washington, D.C., last week. Frazier recently published his first book of poetry.

"This is something I've wanted to do for a long time," Frazier said Saturday morning. "Anybody who has some aspirations of being a poet should come."

The society is just in its formation phase; Frazier and Carrington are canvassing the area trying to gauge the depth of interest in the club before they decide where and how often it will meet. No meeting has been scheduled yet.

But Frazier, for one, expects to find enough interest to support such a club.

"There's quite a few young poets around here, plus you've got people like Mrs. (Annelore) Harrell and Mrs. (Carolyn) Bremer," Frazier said. "There's quite a few poets around here in Bluffton." The society will be open to all, no matter the poet's age, Frazier said. The more children who come, the happier he says he'll be.

POETICAL ADVANTAGES
Carrington says she loves poetry for the feeling it gives her, the feeling of letting everything flow from her into the paper, into the poem.

"It's a way of expressing your feelings and sharing them with other people," she said. "It's a cleansing process. That's one of the things that happens to adults -- we grow up and only do adult things. But (poetry) is like psychotherapy; if you're sad or mad or whatever, if you write your feelings down, it's a cleansing process."

And poetry, she says, is a far more common method of inner expression than one might think.

"I think there's a lot of people who have poetry in their hearts but who haven't had a chance to express it," she said. "Sometimes when you're a poet, you feel that only you hear the words."

Tonya Williams admits that she used to be one of those poets who thought that, really, only she could understand her poems. Then she met Carrington, with whom she has shared several poems since. "We want to bring more people out of the closet," Williams said. "We want to let more people know that there are more people like them."

Williams says she has written five books, all of which she carries around with her in a pillow case in car. None of the books have been published, but she really doesn't care.

"I started my sixth book last night," she said.

To join Williams, Frazier and Carrington in the club, call Frazier at 757-3229 in the evenings.

Reporter Rob Dewig can be reached at 837-5255, ext. 107.

No more hiding go seek

By Tonya Williams (Writing as Tony M. Townsend)