2012 Cascadia Poetry Festival 1 – SEATTLE POETS
Sam Hamill
Sam Hamill is the author of more than forty books, including fifteen volumes of original poetry (most recentlyMeasured by Stone and Almost Paradise: New & Selected Poems & Translations); four collections of literary essays, including A Poet’s Work and Avocations: On Poetry & Poets; and some of the most distinguished translations of ancient Chinese and Japanese classics of the last half-century. He co-founded, and for thirty-two years was editor at, Copper Canyon Press. He taught in prisons for fourteen years and has worked extensively with battered women and children. An outspoken political pacifist, in 2003, declining an invitation to the White House, he founded Poets Against War, compiling the largest single-theme poetry anthology in history, 30,000 poems by 26,000 poets. His work has been translated into a dozen languages. He lives in Anacortes, Washington.
Kathleen Flenniken
Washington Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken
Flenniken was raised in Richland, Wash., and currently lives in Seattle. She holds engineering degrees from Washington State University and the University of Washington, as well as a Masters in Fine Arts degree from Pacific Lutheran University. She is president of Floating Bridge Press, a nonprofit organization dedicated to publishing Washington poets, and teaches poetry writing to students of all ages with the support of arts organizations including WSAC, Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools program and Jack Straw Productions.
Flenniken’s first book, Famous (University of Nebraska Press, 2006), won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, and was a finalist for a Washington State Book Award. Her second collection, Plume (University of Washington Press, 2012), about the Hanford nuclear site, was recently chosen for the Pacific Northwest Poetry Series.
Trevor Carolan
Trevor Carolan began writing at 17, filing dispatches from San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury scene for The Columbian. Widely traveled, he has published books of poetry, fiction, memoir, translation, anthologies, and a broad range of nonfiction articles and interviews. He served as literary coordinator for the XV Olympic Winter Games in Calgary; and has been Coordinator of writing programs at the Banff Arts Centre. Active in Pacific coast watershed issues, he earned an interdisciplinary Ph.D. at Bond in Australia and lives in North Vancouver where he served as an elected municipal councilor. He teaches English and Creative Writing at University of the Fraser Valley near Vancouver, and is International Editor of the Pacific Rim Review of Books.
His current work The Lotus Singers: Short Stories from Contemporary South Asia and a companion volume Another Kind of Paradise: Short Stories from the New Asia-Pacificare published by Cheng & Tsui, Boston. Other works include Against The Shore: The Best of Pacific Rim Review of Books, co-edited with Richard Olafson; an autobiographical novel The Pillow Book of Dr. Jazz (Ekstasis); Giving Up Poetry: With Allen Ginsberg At Hollyhock (Banff Centre Press); and Celtic Highway: Poems & Texts (Ekstasis). HisReturn to Stillness: Twenty Years With a Tai Chi Master (Marlowe), is a frequently cited work in Taoist studies.
Judith Roche
Judith Roche is the author of three poetry collections, most recently, Wisdom of the Body. Black Heron Press. andeditor of First Fish, First People: Salmon Tales of the North Pacific Rim, both have been American Book Award recipients. She was Distinguished Northwest Writer at Seattle University 2007, Literary Director Emeritus for One Reel, and a Fellow in the Black Earth Institute. She has taught extensively in adult and juvenile prisons, and taught poetry workshops throughout the country.
Tim McNulty
Tim McNulty is a poet, essayist, and nature writer. He is the author of two collections of poetry, In Blue Mountain Dusk(Pleasure Boat Studio) and Pawtracks (Copper Canyon Press), and ten chapbooks, including Some Ducks andThrough High Still Air (both from Pleasure Boat Studio),Cloud Studies (Empty Bowl), Last Year’s Poverty (Brooding Heron Press), and Reflected Light (Tangram Press).
His award-winning books on nature include: The Art of Nature, Olympic National Park: A Natural History, Washington’s Wild Rivers, Washington’s Mount Rainier National Park, Grand Teton: Where Lightning Walks, and Grand Canyon: Window on the River of Time. Tim has received the Washington Governor’s Writers Award and the National Outdoor Book Award. He lives with his family in the foothills of Washington’s Olympic Mountains.
Maleea Acker
Maleea Acker is a poet and environmental journalist. Her first book of poems, The Reflecting Pool, appeared with Pedlar Press (Toronto) in Fall 2009. Her first non-fiction book, on the Oregon White oak ecosystem, will appear with New Star Press (Vancouver) in 2012. Maleea has attended arts residencies at Blue Mountain Center (New York), Valparaiso, Centre d’art i Natura (Spain), The Banff Centre (Canada and Mexico), The Spring Creek Project (Oregon) and St. Peter’s College. She holds an MFA in Writing from the University of Victoria and teaches at Camosun College, on Vancouver Island.
Richard Olafson
Richard Olafson is an editor, poet, book designer and publisher. A long-time Victoria resident, he is active in many community organizations. Richard has published a number of books and chapbooks, among them Blood of the Moon, Cloud on My Tongue,and There Are Some Men So Unlucky They Do Not Even Have Bodies. He attended the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in its second year of operation and was much influenced the following year by taking classes from Warren Tallman at UBC’s English Department. He lives in Victoria with his family and is publisher of Pacific Rim Review of Books.
dan raphael
dan raphael has been active on the Portland poetry scene for over 3 decades as poet, performer, editor and reading arranger (including a monthly series that ran 13 years downtown.) The State I’m In is his 18th & newest book, while last September’s Impulse & Warp: The Selected 20th Century Poems, includes work from his first 13 collections. Children of the Blue Supermarket, a CD of performances with jazz saxophonist Rich Halley and drummer Carson Halley, was released in February. Current poems appear in Rattapallax, Otoliths, Raft, Heavy Bear and Caliban. He has performed at places like Bumbershoot, Wordstock, Powell’s Books, Red Sky Poetry Theatre, Eastern Oregon U and the Portland Jazz Festival.
Kim Goldberg
Kim Goldberg is an award-winning poet, investigative journalist and author. Author of Ride Backwards on Dragon, she has studied T’ai Chi Chuan and the related martial art of Liuhebafa since 1997. Her Red Zonecollection of poems about urban homelessness has been taught at Vancouver Island University and elsewhere. As a journalist, Kim has reported extensively on environmental topics, winning the Goodwin’s Award for her coverage of the anti-environmental backlash in Canada. Born and raised in Oregon, with a biology degree from University of Oregon, Kim moved to Canada with her family during the Vietnam War years. She has remained on Vancouver Island ever since where she is active in anti-war efforts, homelessness issues and urban art. She offers a popular series of workshops called Pen & Dragon: Kung Fu for Writers combining martial arts movements with creative writing exercises to awaken the body and unleash the mind. Visit her online: www.pigsquashpress.com
Catherine Owen
Catherine Owen is a Vancouver writer, the author of nine collections of poetry and one of environmental and poetic essays and memoirs. Her book, Frenzy (Anvil Press 2009) won the Alberta Literary prize and her poems have been nominated for the CBC Award, the BC Book Prize, the Earle Birney award and the Fiddlehead contest. She has a Masters in English, works as an editor/tutor, plays bass in metal bands and will be narrator of the upcoming production Awakening the Green Man, an eco-musical.
HEIDI GRECO
Heidi Greco lives in South Surrey, about a mile from the invisible line that divides Canada from the U.S. She is a long-time environmentalist and has written about her beliefs and concerns in essays, blog posts, and poems. Her poetry collection, Rattlesnake Plantain (Anvil Press, Vancouver), takes its title from a forest orchid which is considered rare in some places, but that still exists in her bioregion. Other books are Siren Tattoo, Shrinking Violets, and several chapbooks. Greco is a regular visitor to Matsqui Penitentiary, where she is part of a writers’ group that does workshopping sessions with inmates. She keeps a sporadic blog at www.outonthebiglimb.blogspot.com.
Kate Braid
Kate Braid has muddled about in the intersection between loving trees and being responsible for cutting down whole forests full – as a carpenter and builder – for years. She has written poetry and non-fiction about subjects from Georgia O’Keeffe, Emily Carr and Glenn Gould, to mine workers and fishers. In addition to co-editing with Sandy Shreve, In Fine Form, she has published five books of poetry. Her memoir of fifteen years as a carpenter, Journey Woman, is forthcoming in 2012. Her work has won and been short-listed for a number of awards and is widely anthologized. See www.katebraid.com
Katharine Whitcomb
Katharine Whitcomb is the author of a collection of poems, Saints of South Dakota & Other Poems, which was chosen by Lucia Perillo as the winner of the 2000 Bluestem Award and published by Bluestem Press, and two poetry chapbooks. Hosannas (Parallel Press, 1999) and Lamp of Letters (Floating Bridge Press, 2009), winner of the 2009 Floating Bridge Chapbook Award. Her poetry awards include a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, a Loft-McKnight Award, a Writing Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and a Halls Fellowship at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She lives in Ellensburg, WA, where she is Coordinator of the Writing Specialization English Major at Central Washington University. Find out more on her website: www.katharinewhitcomb.com.
Introducing A Sense of Place: The Washington State Geospatial Poetry Anthology edited by Katharine Whitcomb, Robert Hickey, and Marco Thompson, The Center for Geospatial Poetry at Central Washington University! The project features, via Google Earth, poems by Washington poets ABOUT a particular location in the state. A visitor can call up a Google Earth map of Washington and see a map with pins indicating the locations of poems all over the state. Each pin can be zoomed in on and opened to a photograph and a full text, attributed poem with information about the poet.
Paul Falardeau
Paul Falardeau’s Current project, an honours thesis under the supervision of Dr. Trevor Carolan, is a multi-dimensional exploration of the still unclassified group of Pacific Northwest eco writers he has called the “Turtle Island Poets.” The paper considers the unique blending of ecological studies, poetics and spiritual practice into a new poetics of place that includes the work of Gary Snyder, Robert Bringhurst, Red Pine, Robert Sund, Bill Yake, Tim McNulty, Mike O’Connor, Andrew Schelling, John Schreiber, Jim Dodge and his mentor, Trevor Carolan amongst several others. He’s an emerging poet, essayist and journalist. A recent graduate of the University of the Fraser Valley, he holds a Baccalaureate in English Literature. While at UFV, Paul was the Arts editor of The Cascade, a CIVL radio DJ, and president of Students for Sustainability. He has also worked with the Reach Gallery Museum and Mission World Community Film Festival. A regular contributor to the Pacific Rim Review of Books, his latest work, “The Great Story of British Columbia: Robert Bringhurst and Haida Oral Literature,” appears in the Anvil Press release, Making Waves: Reading BC and Pacific Northwest Literature. He lives in Aldergrove, BC near Bertram Creek within the Lower Fraser River watershed.
David McCloskey
David McCloskey of the Cascadia Institute is a Consulting Faculty Member.
David McCloskey is a long-time bioregionalist. He taught Sociology, Ecology, and Geography at Seattle University for many years. Known as “the Father of Cascadia,” he has spoken, organized, and written widely on Cascadia & the Bioregional Vision. He made the first maps of “Cascadia” & “The Ecoregions of Cascadia,” and is currently working on “The Bioregions of Western North America.”
In search of the spirit of place, he has also compiled an anthology of Cascadian Poetry in 4 movements: “Mountains, Rivers, Sea, and Sky.” He retired in 2004, and moved back home to Eugene to remodel
the family homestead, and run the Cascadia Institute.
We’re grateful to David McCloskey of the Cascadia Institute for his vision, inspiration and for the donation of Cascadia Maps.