See my entry on Willamette Mission State Park in Wild in the Willamette, Oregon State Press’s guide to exploring the Willamette Valley, published 2015. It’s obvious why the indigenous people and early missionaries found the fecund river bottom desirable. A shadow structure calls up the original mission building. Essays by Charles Goodrich and Kathleen Dean Moore. Edited by Lorraine Anderson with Abby Phillips Metzger. All proceeds from the publication will be directed to Greenbelt Land Trust, a conservation organization working on protecting the mid-Valley’s natural areas, rivers, wildlife, and trails. More info: www.greenbeltlandtrust.org.
Northern California Osage Fall Meeting November, 2013
Using stories from Osage writers and friends, we created maps that focused details of home for poetry, prose and personal story. Photo: Adeline Choi’s memories of Gray horse, 1930s.
Whether I was offering workshops, listening to craft talks or other participants reading at the Port Townsend Writers Conference this year, I celebrated the work writers do, tracking that truest word, the deepest feeling we can channel.
My workshop “Listening Deep: Writing Real Life” aimed to capture tenderness and connection in the midst of alienation. Participants wrote powerful words, then in the spirit of writing together, shared first drafts. Impressive groups.
Author and teacher Sam Ligon (Willow Springs editor) and Kate Lebo, Poet and Pie maker, hosted Pie and Whiskey, building community, sharing a physical manifestation of all of the creative energy around us.
Otter Family on Point Wilson
Point Wilson marks the transition between the Straits of Juan de Fuca and Admiralty Inlet. We, Wah Zha Zhi of the Osage Nation, love river otters. These animals have made the transition from living in freshwater to this seawater environment and bring their families onto the beach, offering entertainment and inspiration.
I came home refreshed, convinced that it is when we slow down to render details that we communicate moments of greatest vulnerability to our readers.
For National Poetry Month Seattle poet and playwright Ann Teplick invited friends to a daily poetry practice followed by a salon at her home. Ann Hursey, Esther Helfgott, Lyn Coffin, Carla Griswold, and I read poems–relating to Motown, Pendleton, Harborview and husbands–over poet Kate Lebo’s poetry-readycherry pie.
Poet Sharon Wood Wortman, AKA the Bridge Lady, led bridge walks for the 100-year birthday celebration for the Broadway Bridge in Portland, OR which included an appearance by Christopher Luna, the poet laureate of Clark County Washington, who read poetry on the bridge and in the bridge tender’s office.
The language of bridges. The Broadway Bridge is a Rall-type bascule bridge. Bascule meaning seesaw in French. There are three basic types of movable bridges in the Portland, OR area; the bascule, the vertical lift and the swing bridge. Poetic. Read more bridge engineering at Multnomah County.
I read with the 29th Street Writers at Tabor Space for the first time, in an intimate setting on a balmy Portland spring night. Poet Ila Suzanne Gray emceed and shared her ekphrasis.
Photo by Kendall
& I shared work in a daily practice with poet Lucia Leao, Brazilian writer and a translator living in Florida. Our inspirations spanned our respective trips to Rio and the Pillars of Rome in remote southeastern Oregon.
