Governor General's Award?winners and unpublished poets hobnobbed at the Weyburn Writers' Conference. They danced and killed beer together, and George Bowering's shoes mysteriously got filled with popcorn.

EVERYWHERE you look in Saskatchewan, there are writers ? more per square mile than anywhere else in the country, the local intelligence goes. Indeed, the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild (which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year and is the granddaddy of the provincial guilds) now claims 640 members, about the same as the guild in Alberta, which has twice the population. The Saskatchewan group also supports a couple of dozen affiliated writers' groups scattered across the province, mostly in rural areas.

It was to one of those rural areas, Weybum, that the sound (and otherwise) poet Steve Smith came as writer?animateur two years ago. The writer?animateur program, run by the guild with provincial government money specifically earmarked for it and going to a different community each year, is different from the residencies at libraries and universities, as the name implies. Kicking up dust, and kicking ass, is part of the mandate.

Smith, after years in Toronto, had only recently become part of the burgeoning Saskatchewan writing community when he found himself in Weyburn, a small agricultural trading centre of 10,000, surrounded by drought?ravaged prairie, an hour and a half's drive southeast of Regina. He quickly became the darling of the community there. A worker at the library, where he had his office, recalls there were always people hanging around particularly women, from subteens and teen?agers with big, bright eyes (who'd hang on the good?looking mustachioed Smith's every word) to grandmothers. But there were cowboy?booted men, too, including some who'd never been in the library before.

As his year wound down, Smith devoted much of his energies to organizing something the town ? and province would never forget: the Weyburn Writers'

Conference. Three intense days of writerto?writer kaffee?klatsching, shoptalk, and literary discussion featuring bp Nichol (in one of his last public appearances), Loma Crozier, Carol Shields, and others. The conference was so unforgettable, in fact, that the community, led by Marlene Yurkowski, the Weyburn librarian, decided to put it on again. Ibis year's edition, held from April 21 to 23 as the cap to Saskatchewan's celebration of National Book Festival, was billed as the "second annual." Yurkowski and Smith, who'd been drafted back into service as guest host and literary coordinator, are already thinking about next year.

The invited writers this year were Sharon Butala and Byrna Barclay, both fictionalists, Anne Szumigalski, representing poetry, and me ? all from Saskatchewan; the poet/critic Dennis Cooley and, as headliners, Phyllis Webb and George Bowering. The latter played court jester and devil's advocate through much of the conference. At his Saturday night reading, for example, Bowering first trotted out a couple of short older pieces on Saskatchewan, jibing at the audience for politely ignoring a cheap shot; then he read a new short story, top?heavy with creaky metafictional webbing, about a carload of people on a collision course with a chicken, interrupting himself to ask how many people were worried about the chicken.

Smith had arranged for local writers, who were also reading, to introduce the special guests. Cooley kept up a running line of banter with his pal Bowering throughout the conference; he was introduced by a young woman from Estevan, his home town 50 kilometres down the road. She remembered him as the perfect "Prince Charming" she had a schoolgirl crush on.

Webb's performance of sound poetry mesmerized the audience, then Webb, Szumigalski, Cooley, and Bowering had a feisty panel sparring session on Fred Wah's definition of the poet as "technician of the potent" ? the four poets split along gender lines, with Webb suggesting that "ferfile" should replace "potent," and Szumigalski shifting emphasis from the poet to the poem. Cooley and Bowering liked the notion because of the way it demystified the poet, while at the same time underlining his skill ? poets must know language with the same precision as an electrician knows circuitry, Bowering said. Cooley retold a joke popularized by Margaret Atwood about a brain surgeon and a poet at a cocktail party: the surgeon says he admires poets and intends to write some poetry himself when he retires; the poet counters he plans on doing some brain surgery when he puts down the pen.

The intellectual acrobatics of the poetry and fiction panels got a lukewarm response from some of the 65 conference registrants, who would have preferred more blue?pencil and workshop sessions, but Smith and Yurkowski were happy with the mix. And everybody was happy with the easygoing atmosphere of the conference, which saw Governor General's Award?winners and unpublished poets hobnobbing, breaking bread, even dancing and killing beer together ? the latter late into the night, appropriately enough at the King George Hotel, where Bowering's shoes mysteriously got filled with popcorn.

Weybum is not entirely hostile literary territory ? W. 0. Mitchell grew up there and based the fictional town of Crocus on it; many residents can point out the old Mitchell house. And the library board had long been a buyer of Canadian books and sponsor of readings. Still, Smith and Yurkowski say the conference has had a real impact on the community. "Me community is reading writers it never did before ? it used to be a rare person who would come in and ask for a book by Loma Crozier," noted Yurkowski.

This adds tremendously to the cultural life of a small community like Weybum, much more than it would in larger centres like Regina or Saskatoon (or Vancouver or Toronto, for that matter), Smith says. But he also believes his baby is "larger than the community" of Weybum. "T'here's a real interchange of ideas, of delight and joy, working on all sorts of different levels. All of if fosters a passion for writing that's good for everybody."