Poetry and Peeps in Southern Village

CHAPEL HILL -- Audrey Gillen, 10, hadn't eaten a Peep since kindergarten because, she said, her parents are "all healthy, healthy."

Small wonder, the normally poised Audrey, who lives in Durham, got a rush while staring at the trays and bowls of Peeps on display Saturday at Market Street Books & Maps in Chapel Hill's Southern Village.

"I'm going to get over-sugared today," she said.

Audrey and her mother were among about 50 children and adults who showed up at the bookstore for PeepFest 2007. With enough Peeps to feed a small village, festival organizers held poetry and cooking contests and a concert inspired by the marshmallow candy shaped like baby chickens and rabbits.

Kathryn Henderson, the bookstore's executive director, started the event in 2003 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the candy's mass-marketing by Just Born, a candy company in Bethlehem, Pa.

The festival has grown over the years to include poetry, recipes and music in praise of all things Peep.

"It started out with just eating Peeps all day long," Henderson said.

For true aficionados of the gooey treat, Peeps are the true harbinger of Spring even before the tulips bloom.

Peep lovers waxed poetic Saturday with verse inspired by the likes of Chaucer, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg and an unnamed second-grade teacher whose students plastered a bookstore window with Peep poems.

Poem and Peep intersected beautifully when Garrison Somers -- stay-at-home dad, editor of Blotter magazine and poet laureate of the northern side of Southern Village -- favored festival guests with a verse while cooking contest judges sampled gooey, odd-looking dishes like "Peeps and Beans" and "Peepermint brownies."

"The first Peeps ever served

Were roasted with Sage

Stuffed Into Swans

In the Medieval Age"

Another haiku morsel was offered by Tim Dolan, a network engineer who writes screenplays and lives with his wife and two sons in Chapel Hill.

I weep for you, Peep.

Soft underbelly eaten,

And you Just Born, Inc.

There were no losers Saturday: the PeepFest cooking contest ended with nine award-winning entries. But Morgan Haynes won the grand prize -- "The Peeperific Peep: For Personifying the Principles of Peepitude" -- for her "Peeper Pie," a golden brown crust slathered with strawberry jam and covered with jelly beans and a Army of pastel bunny Peeps.

"My grandma told me to make a pizza," said Haynes, a 15-year-old Franklinton High School student.

Mary Ruth Helms, who works with the Lineberger Cancer Center, reminded everyone to reflect on other ways to have fun with Peeps, especially if there's a microwave oven around.

"If you put one in a microwave oven for like 20 to 30 seconds, it gets really, really big," Helms said. "What better fun than watching marshmallow chicks explode?"

Peep explosion times may vary with the microwave, she added. Helms didn't say a peep about the gooey mess left behind, however.

(Staff photographer Corey Lowenstein contributed to this report.)