CPL Featured Poets

To continue to extend our gratitude to the generosity of our community, Cascadia Poetics Lab is featuring the work of our supporters! If you’ve participated in an CPL program and want your work to be featured on our blog and Instagram, contact us HERE!

Martha Clarkson

Our next featured poet is Martha Clarkson, who has participated in the Poetry Postcard Fest since 2023. Martha Clarkson is a photographic artist and writer based in Kirkland, Washington. Trained in interior architecture, she spent over two decades designing commercial workplace environments. Writing has been a parallel practice throughout her life—her first poem was published in seventh grade—and she has continued to write and publish poetry, fiction, and personal essays. Her photography stems from a passion to capture the subtle and overlooked details of the world around us and has been exhibited in many locations around the Pacific Northwest. Martha’s images, which span a wide range of subjects, have been published around the world and received many awards. The thumbnail photo and photo below were both taken by Martha! You can read some of her poetry below! Thank you for being a part of the CPL community, Martha!

Flying into Burbank to Bury My Mother

I count swimming pools
like she taught me
each unblinking blue eye
hedged in the flocks
of mock mansions
the promise of turquoise
I’m counting, mother, I’m
counting, there are so many
before we sink
your dry box into earth.

Closing in on the airstrip
the only blues are royal tarps
hiding piles next to carports
and the small kidneys of cheap motels
stripped of their liable diving boards.

So long ago, a bathing cap
suctioned to my head
daisy bobbing, slippery body
down the curved slide
into her wet waiting arms.

Figures, by Martha Clarkson