Poets echo life across generations

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 right back to Denmark because his mom “would have wanted him to.”

Ten years later, Kathy Shoop, a teacher at La Conner High School, along with Superintendent Tim Bruce, and other unsung heroes, created the Skagit River Poetry Foundation.

Fast forward to this past weekend. Abe McDonald’s daughter, La Conner High School student Joreen — named for his mother — took the stage to read one of her poems.

And so the legacy continues.

A full-moon, filtered by one single cloud, lit La Conner as poets, word lovers and music aficionados laughed, gasped, and were sometimes stunned into silence as they listened to Jeanann Verlee, 10-time winner of the New York poetry slam, speak out about the “back side of Mama’s hand” and mental illness.

Jamaal May, Detroit poet and film maker, danced around the stage like a colt in a corral, listening along with us to Tarfia Faizullah, recipient of many awards including a Poetry First Book Award for Seam. More can be read at her web page http://www.tfaizullah.com as can many of the other poets, too numerous to mention here.

They all amazed us with their ability to run a cable line of steel from their hearts to ours through the performed medium of poetry.

They told us their stories, bravely, succinctly and carefully. Stories of trauma, front lines, borders, love, sex. Of GMO corn, rape, football, Annie Oakley, growing up afraid, fear of dying. They performed empathy for us and freed our minds.

Sometimes they were naughty.

Interspersed between poetry readings, the foot stomping, banjo playing, a female singer with the talented Rabbit Wilde band, her mouth so wide heaven could have fallen into her heart, entertained us with music. Or was it shouted poetry?

As Molly McNulty, executive director of the Skagit River Poetry Foundation, said during opening ceremonies Thursday night, “Magic is being made in this room” — and so it did, as it has for the past 18 years.

Sponsored by eight local school districts, the foundation provides training for teachers, helping students prepare for the biennial festival. Poets are sent into classrooms from Bellingham to Concrete to Oak Harbor throughout the year, culminating in the May Festival, when our little town swarms with kids, poetry, words and music blanketing our town in a mist of sweet joy. All who attend say it seems it takes days to dissipate.

Jade Carter, a ninth-grader from Anacortes, said that, after reading her poem “What of the Light?” she was drawn to powerful stories told through poetry. She wants “poets to give a different point of view — to provide a different way to deal with grief. ” Jade credits her mom and Seattle teachers for inspiration.

Alex Hanesworth, also from Anacortes High School, was articulate, talented and modest. Her poem “Even 13 Could be Enough” was thoughtful and poignant and won her the Phyllis Ennes Poetry Contest along with Jade Carter.

Alex also organized a poetry slam. What’s that, you ask? Sounds like something grungy from Seattle — a poetry slam is a competition that eliminates poets in rounds through the reading and performing of their poetry.

She credits Matt Gano, poet and teaching artist sponsored by the foundation, as inspiring her. She challenged herself to write a hundred poems during April — Poetry Month.

More than 300 poems overall were submitted for the Ennis contest. Besides student winners Jade and Alex, Whatcom Community College English teacher Jeremy Voigt, Millie Renfrow and Margaret Chula, both accomplished Haiku writers, took the prize.

Many of us wore the names of famous dead poets on our lapels, but there was nothing dead about these poets or their poetry.

Millie Renfrow, recipient of the Phyllis Ennes award, read “On Turning 80” to a room that could identify with every last word and an aging body. She credited a childhood filled with Dickenson, Frost and Sandburg, her best friends. She wrote:

The stranger cannot sing, my heart enfold,

And oh, I miss my dearest lost love so.

It is embarrassing — this getting old —

The days swing low — and I am feeling cold.

Margaret Shuler lived in Japan, teaching English and creative writing. She wrote: Months after he’s gone, the bar of ivory soap in his bathroom still holding the shape of his hands.

Many poets, such as Lorna D. Cervantes, an “extinct Chumash Indian,” penned their first poem while in grade school. Motivated to write “From the Cables of Genocide: Poems of Love and Hunger” by the death of her mother, killed in 1982, Cervantes has been much anthologized, particularly in the “Norton Anthology.” She shushed the room with her poetry and quiet, observant presence, razor-sharp in her readings, using poetry as a weapon against poverty and violence.

So many poets, so much poetry and such a small newspaper. I cannot write of each one of these brilliant writers who shared so much and give so much to our children — Naomi Shihab Nye, a Guggenheim Fellow, warm, so approachable has written over 30 volumes of poetry.

Daemond Arrindell, teacher, mentor, workshop facilitator in schools, colleges and prisons and featured alongside Sherman Alexie. Our own Paul Hansen, translator of Chinese poetry. Natalie Diaz. Zen Buddhist Norman Fischer. Canadian writers, Martens and Zwicky got down and dirty.

An art show, “One Eye Blind” was a collection of 45 paintings created by students with a smattering of paintings donated by accomplished artists including Barbara Silverman-Summers and Maggie Wilder. And did I see a Joel Brock?

All works were 50 bucks apiece — the artists’ names were not identified, so you didn’t know if you were buying a Simon, Picasso, Wilder, Summers, Van Gogh or Tim, the third-grader next door, with proceeds going to the foundation.

And the kids. Our kids. All our kids. Students with Mohawks on skateboards skidding down the hill to hit the next workshop; listening to world-renown poets as they decide what poet they will see next. I sensed their fragility, their self-consciousness as they chatted, clogged our streets and cafes.

It was brought to us by the Skagit River Poetry Foundation, Molly McNulty, executive director, and her crew of volunteers.

So, you’re gonna go to the 2018 festival, right?