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By Anna Ferdinand When Rena Priest stood before a crowd at the Lincoln theater Sept. 3, she asked attendees to answer this question: “Where do poems come from?” A theater took pen to paper, writing to the prompt for five minutes, each person free to travel the pathways down which their brains chose to meander, tracking thoughts on the page. The Skagit River Poetry Foundation, a co-sponsor of the poetry reading with Priest, Washington state’s poet laureate, helps us answer the question: For students in and around the Skagit Valley who benef...
“When you are poeting, you are making the world, creating the universe out of nothing,” Washington State Poet Laureate Rena Priest said last Saturday at the Lincoln Theatre. That’s because the word poet comes from the Greek word poesis or “maker,” she explained. During the 90-minute reading and workshop, Priest introduced herself and her work to an audience of about 50. Several La Conner-area residents were among those listening as she shared stories from her own life, wisdom from other poets and her own work. Dr. Seuss’s “Red Fish Blue Fish” w...
Could there be a more beautiful spot for poets and poetry than the sylvan glade of Pioneer Park? Georgia Johnson doesn’t think so. “For 37 years I’ve driven across the bridge and past the park thinking, ‘we’ve got to get poetry happening here,’” she told listeners from the bandstand at the free “Make Me Wanna Holler” celebration sponsored by the Skagit River Poetry Foundation. “And now it’s happening!” About 100 people of all ages enjoyed live music, live poetry and lunch in the park on Su...
Most of the poems 4-year-old Lenore Micka-Foos dictates to her dad find homes with her admiring relatives. The first-place poem she wrote for the Great Hunt for Magic Skagit Stories will find a home in print. Lenore’s “The Great Skagit List” was one of 61 entries in the Skagit Historical Museum’s debut writing contest. Youth, teen and adult winners in the poetry and essay categories were announced last Friday during a Facebook Live broadcast from the Museum. “A big part of this contest w...
Every April, organizations across America celebrate National Poetry Month. It is a great opportunity to focus on this genre of literature. One of poetry’s great contributions is that it works to expand everyday words to hold more nuance, emotion and meaning. It helps us to share our deepest feelings and connect with others in our sadness and joy. Poetry contributes to shared understanding and helps us communicate with those around us in ways that can be difficult, especially in a time of social distancing, remote learning and canceled c...
If you’re looking for poets next weekend, don’t come to Maple Hall. Or the Methodist Church. Or the Seafood and Prime Rib House. Or the Tavern. Or the La Conner Country Inn. Or any of the usual haunts that would ordinarily be teeming with poets and poetry lovers. With the Skagit River Poetry Festival postponed for at least a year, the only place you will find poets is in school. Online, of course. When schools closed unexpectedly last March, the Skagit River Poetry Foundation’s Poets in the S...
The Rotary Club was originally founded in Chicago in 1905 by Paul Harris “so professionals with diverse backgrounds could exchange ideas and form meaningful, lifelong friendships.” The club grew quickly, spread over six continents in the first 16 years, and later adopted humanitarian service as part of its mission. The motto of Rotary International is “Service Above Self,” a spirit that guides Rotarians in facing down hard challenges such as the eradication of polio and alleviation of poverty...
La Conner, flooded with poets and students from eight area school districts, hosted the 10th Biennial Skagit Valley Poetry Festival last weekend. The Poets Table Soiree kicked off the event Thursday night at Maple Hall with appetizers, wine and dinner. Random Acts of Food catered it. Hot Damn Scandal broke into song at the elementary school gym – musical poetry – singing their “outlaw ballads, dirty jazz, circus freak outs, shanty-rags, string band funk, lonesome heart-breakers a...
Tim Bruce was back on the La Conner School District campus last Wednesday. Some 50 friends, colleagues and past school board members came to cheer and applaud as School Board President Kate Szurek announced, “it is with great appreciation that we chose to name this building the Bruce Performing Arts Center – in honor of you, your work, and all you have left to us.” Bruce had been superintendent of the school district for 26 years, from 1990 to 2015. He supported and led efforts for a great expansion of drama and theatre. Szurek rec...
The Skagit River Poetry Festival was nigh, and so the volunteers came, fluttering in, silently, unsung, no trumpets, just a steady trudging from one venue to another. They planted signs of poetry, literally, and an occasional feather left in a room, randomly. It was a different spring migration, this one biennially, with a flock of odd ducks, not in any birder’s book, attracting a different breed of tourists. Poems started popping up, opening like mid-spring flowers, around town last Wednesday, as volunteers started digging into their tasks. T...
Irish poet Tony Curtis has a sort of magic. When he walks into a classroom, he enthralls the most skeptical English students with a world where words, music and humor make the most ardent of non-book lovers forget the bell. “I find students the most fascinating audience,” said Curtis, who will travel to ten schools in his two-week visit, punctuated by the Skagit River Poetry Festival which begins Thursday and will be held in venues throughout La Conner over the weekend. “If they can understand it, there’s hope for the adults.” One of his many...
The second annual La Conner guitar festival starts Friday. Producers Shirley Makela and husband Brent McElroy over 1,300 guitar and music enthusiasts to fill the Town’s halls for workshops and concerts and restaurant spaces for cabarets. Lodging spaces will be full. They are up from 1,000 last year. Congratulations guitar enthusiasts. Way to go, Shirley and Brent. We are two weeks out from the 10th biennial Skagit River Poetry Festival. Like the guitar festival, it brings enthusiasts from around the country to La Conner. Similarly, it has a h...
Mayor Ramon Hayes is hoping for more festivals in La Conner. This month his dream is fulfilled: we end this week with a second annual guitar festival and the next week with the 10th biennial Skagit River Poetry Festival. Maybe Mayor Hayes wishes for two festivals every off-season month. That is one good, solid view of the future. Tim Bruce’s vision of poetry in the schools and a festival for all of us has been realized. Nothing is more primal to humans than music. Our first songs came from poetry. More art in all of our lives more of the t...
Poets see the world with “new eyes”. They make the ordinary extraordinary by paying attention to the particulars, noting the specifics of a feeling or experience and building images that connect and communicate by expressing our common humanity. Jade Carter and Adrianna Garner are poets, and students, at Anacortes High School. They interviewed one another, reflecting on poetry in their lives. What does poetry mean to you? Addi: Poetry is a way to express what the world is to you right now. It’s a way of distilling all this input that you come...
Meet Skagit River Poetry Festival artists Alfred Currie and Anne Schreivogl, who created the Festival poster and cover for this year’s student anthology, respectively. Lifelong artist Alfred Currier spent his formative years in southern Ohio. He received his formal education at Columbus College of Art and Design and the American Academy of Art in Chicago, where he earned his degree in fine art. He is an artist member of the prestigious Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Art in Chicago. C...
Poets have been frequent faces in the LaConner schools during the 2017-2018 school year thanks to the school district’s partnership with the Skagit River Poetry Foundation. Poets are in classrooms during one-week residencies in all three district schools, providing students with professional mentoring and important opportunities for self-expression and exposure to diverse voices. Terri Bakke-Schultz, coordinator for the Skagit River Poetry Foundation, says that she has “seen firsthand how empowering poetry can be for students. What an imp...
National Poetry month ends Monday. In La Conner, lucky us: consider it spring training, the warm up for the Skagit River Poetry Festival arriving in three weeks, starting May 17. Full disclosure and transparency: I am on this Poetry Foundation’s board of directors. A poetry festival in La Conner. Actually, the 10th biennial Skagit River Poetry Festival. Starting in 2000, hardworking English teachers (primarily, with many other dedicated volunteers) have insisted upon bringing the nation’s and the region’s best poets to La Conner to read, discu...
Poetry is a vital part of many communities in our state, and the art draws diverse audiences to the power of words, the power of expression and the power of introspection. I am confident in this claim because I attended or participated in over hundreds of gatherings involving poetry – open mics, magazine launches, school celebrations of spoken word (to name only a few). The Skagit River Poetry Festival is, of course, a glorious example of this enthusiasm for the art in Washington – probably our highest profile gathering of poets fro...
A child huddles over a paper, pencil in mouth, brow furrowed in concentration. Another child, half a world away, glides his pen rapidly, eager to jot down the thoughts, feelings and images that comprise his life. A youth quietly cries as she records a painful memory held deep inside. Another shouts with joy, excited to let the world know just who he is. This is the Self-Portrait Project, made possible through a collaboration of the Museum of Northwest Art, the Skagit River Poetry Project and...
It is time to buy your tickets for the 10th Biennial Skagit River Poetry Festival, May 17-20, in La Conner. The celebrated four-day event, with performances, readings, workshops and discussions, features some of the most renowned and diverse names in poetry, including Robert Pinsky, three-time U.S. Poet Laureate, and award-winning poet Ellen Bass. Her most recent book is “Like a Beggar.” The festival opens Thursday with the Poets Table Soiree, a mixer that includes wine, delicious locally sourced hors d’oeuvres and a chance for attendees to me...
Having the WA 129 poetry reading on your schedule is a good idea. It is not every day that a town of 900 and a zip code consisting of all of 4,000 people gets a group of noteworthy poets to visit, much less gather for a reading. Go. We just celebrated Art’s Alive. Come May, we need to go all out for the Skagit River Poetry Festival. No exaggeration: it is a world class event (full disclosure: I am on the board of the Foundation). For Saturday, brace yourselves. Be brave. I make attempts at writing poetry and I find listening to poetry d...
Maureen Harlan, who was a counselor at La Conner High School, instituted the first organized student exchange between La Conner and Denmark 30 years ago. We scooted our students to Denmark while a dozen kids from Denmark invaded our somewhat prudish, to them, town of La Conner, bringing with them European values and spunky kidishness to open our horizons. While he was in Denmark, La Conner 10th-grader Abe McDonald’s mother, Joreen, died. Abe returned to La Conner for her funeral and then went r...
It's 8:30 a.m. on Saturday at the Monroe Correctional Complex, one of Washington state’s largest prisons. Men in khaki pants and white t-shirts at the front of a large visiting space with white walls and a painted mural wait to begin a performance of their own written work. More men wearing khaki and white with green name badges take seats on folding chairs for the first of two showings for the day at the Twin River Unit. A handful of visitors, who have passed through tight security, also take t...
An author, a poet, an actor, and a director walk into a fundraiser. No, it’s not the setup to a joke, but rather the beginning of a sold-out event by the La Conner Library Foundation. After selling more than 100 tickets for the “Why Books Matter” fundraiser Thursday, November 13, the Foundation collected more than $23,000 through sponsorships, in-kind donations, and $150 tickets. The list of characters mentioned were none other than local author Tom Robbins, the first Poet Laureate of Washi...
Two of literature’s wittiest voices took the stage in La Conner last Thursday for the opening of the Skagit River Poetry Festival. When asked what inspired him to write, author Tom Robbins launched into what he’d have you believe is his personal story. Voice as deadpan as Garrison Keillor on the “Prairie Home Companion,” the author of “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues” claimed it all started when he opened the door of a cheap hotel room at midnight to a dwarf, who handed him a box of manuscripts...
