Poetry On The Salish Sea
This summer Wilderbee is thrilled to host Poetry On The Salish Sea ~ monthly poetry readings in our meadery garden May-October by poets from around the Olympic Peninsula and beyond. Poetry On The Salish Sea celebrates the natural abundance and strong literary arts community in our region. See full schedule and poet bios below.
Seating is limited so feel free to bring your own lawn chair.
This FREE poetry series is hosted by Wilderbee Farm, sponsored by The Production Alliance, Imprint Bookstore, Port Townsend Arts Commission, and curated by writer and poet Kathryn Hunt. To directly support the poets and production of Poetry On The Salish Sea click here: GoFundMe
{Check this web page for schedule updates}
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"Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words"
~ Robert Frost
Many thanks to our amazing literary arts community and to all of the poets who inspire us with their thoughts and words in Poetry On The Salish Sea 2023...
Tess Gallagher is the author of eleven books of poetry, and was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Fondazione Roma in Rome, Italy, the first American ever to receive this award. The honor was bestowed to her in person at the annual Ritratti di Poesia or Portraits of Poetry festival in April 2023. Gallagher lives and writes in her hometown of Port Angeles, Washington—on traditional land of the S’Klallam and Coast Salish peoples—and in her cottage in County Sligo, Ireland. Her most recent collection, Is, Is Not, documents political and meditational crosscurrents in her Irish and American lives. Gallagher attends to the work of her late husband, Raymond Carver, and participated in “Birdman” and “Short Cuts,” films based on his short stories. Her collection, The Man from Kinvara: Selected Stories, published in 2009, is the basis for film episodes under development.
Alice Derry is the author of six volumes of poetry, along with three chapbooks, including translations of poems by Rainer Rilke. Her most recent book is Asking, a meditation on grief, from MoonPath Press. Derry taught for thirty years at Peninsula College where she curated the Foothills Poetry Series. She is active in working with local tribal members who are writing poetry and has taught a number of community-based poetry workshops, including at the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference. She is the author of a two-volume series of essays on native plants of the Pacific Northwest, in collaboration with scientist and artist Fred Sharpe. Raymond Carver chose her first poetry manuscript, Stages of Twilight, for the King County (Seattle) Arts Prize. Strangers to their Courage was a finalist for the Washington Book Award. She lives and works on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. alicederry.com.
Kathryn Hunt is a writer and teacher and makes her home on the coast of the Salish Sea, on the ancestral lands of the S’Klallam, Chemakum, and Suquamish peoples. Her first collection of poems, Long Way Through Ruin, was published by Blue Begonia Press in 2013; her second collection Seed Wheel was published by Lost Horse Press in 2021. She is also the author of two chapbooks, The Country I Come From (2022) and She Who Walks the Earth (2023). She’s recently completed a memoir, Unforgettable, a mother-daughter story. Kathryn Hunt has worked as a waitress, shipscaler, short-order cook, bookseller, food bank coordinator, filmmaker, and freelance writer. kathrynhunt.net
Kathleen Flenniken is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Post Romantic (University of Washington Press, 2020), a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Poems from Post Romantic have been included in the Pushcart Prize Anthology, Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World, and the Cascadia Field Guide. Plume, a meditation on the Hanford Nuclear Site, won a Washington State Book Award. Her first collection, Famous, was named a Notable Book by the American Library Association. Flenniken served as Washington State Poet Laureate from 2012-2014.
Peter Pereira works as a family physician in Seattle. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Virginia Quarterly Review and other magazines. They have also been featured on The Writer’s Almanac, BBC Radio, and in the Best American Poetry anthology. His books include Saying the World and What’s Written on the Body, both from Copper Canyon Press, and the limited edition chapbook, The Lost Twin, from Grey Spider Press.
T. Clear is the author of A House, Undone, from MoonPath Press. Her work has appeared in The Moth, Crannog, Sheila-na-Gig, The American Journal of Poetry and others. She's an associate editor for Bracken Magazine.
Arianne True is a queer poet and teaching artist from Seattle, and has spent most of her work time working with youth. She’s received fellowships and residencies from Jack Straw, the Hugo House, Artist Trust, and the Seattle Repertory Theater, and is a proud alum of Hedgebrook and of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She lives in Tacoma with her cat. Arianne is the 2023-2025 Washington State Poet Laureate.
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Lisbeth White is a writer and ritualist living on S’Klallam and Chimacum lands of Port Townsend, WA. As a cross-genre writer of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, her writing explores the sensual and sociopolitical intersections of healing, ancestry, mythopoetics, and connection to the natural world. She has received support from VONA, Artist’s Trust, Tin House, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, and Blue Mountain Center. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Kweli, Apogee Lit, Green Mountains Review, Willowherb Review, EcoTheo Review, Split this Rock, and elsewhere. She is the author of the poetry collection American Sycamore (Perugia Press) and co-editor of the anthology Poetry as Spellcasting: Poems, Essays, and Prompts for Manifesting Liberation and Reclaiming Power (North Atlantic Books).
Laura Da' is a poet and teacher. A lifetime resident of the Pacific Northwest, Da’ studied creative writing at the University of Washington and The Institute of American Indian Arts. Da’ is Eastern Shawnee. She is a recipient of the Native American Arts and Cultures Fellowship, an Artist Trust Fellowship, and fellowships from Hugo House and the Jack Straw Writers Program. Da’ is the current Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. Her first book, Tributaries, won the 2016 American Book Award. Her latest book, Instruments of the True Measure, won the Washington State Book Award.
Sati Mookherjee is the author of the poetry collections Ways of Being (Sally Albiso Award, MoonPath Press) and Eye (Ravenna Press). A third book, Deś, is forthcoming from Pulley Press in 2024. satimookherjee.com.
Shin Yu Pai is the Civic Poet of Seattle (2023-2024). She is the author of 11 books, including most recently Virga (Empty Bowl, 2021). She is the recipient of awards from the City of Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture, 4Culture, and The Awesome Foundation. She is a 2022 Artist Trust Fellow and was shortlisted in 2014 for a Stranger Genius Award in Literature. From 2015 to 2017, Shin Yu served as Poet Laureate for The City of Redmond. Her work has appeared in publications throughout the U.S., Japan, China, Taiwan, the UK, and Canada. Shin Yu is the writer, host, and producer of Ten Thousand Things – a podcast on Asian American stories for KUOW Public Radio, Seattle’s NPR affiliate station. New books are forthcoming from Empty Bowl Press, Blue Cactus Press, and Chronicle Books.
Caitlin Scarano is a writer based in Bellingham, Washington. She holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an MFA from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Her second full length collection of poems, The Necessity of Wildfire, was selected by Ada Limón as the winner of the Wren Poetry Prize and won a 2023 Pacific Northwest Book Award. Caitlin is a member of the Washington Wolf Advisory Group. She was selected as a participant in the NSF’s Antarctic Artists & Writers Program and spent November 2018 in McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Find her at caitlinscarano.com
Gary Copeland Lilley is the author of eight books of poetry, the most recent being The Bushman’s Medicine Show (Lost Horse Press, 2017), and a chapbook, The Hog Killing (Blue Horse Press, 2018). He is originally from North Carolina and now lives in the Pacific Northwest. He has received the DC Commission on the Arts Fellowship for Poetry and is published in numerous anthologies and journals, including The Best American Poetry 2014, Willow Springs, The Swamp, Waxwing, Taos Journal of Poetry and Art, and African American Review. He is a Cave Canem Fellow. Gary Lilley is the artistic curator of Centrum‘s Port Townsend Writers Conference.
Kate Miller is a poet, memoirist, birder, and dog lover residing in Bellingham, Washington. She taught at Western Washington University and Whatcom Community College for more than 25 years. Kate has been published in the Sue C. Boynton Poetry contest, Raven Chronicles, Sinister Wisdom, Whatcom Reads, Padilla Bay Poetry anthologies, and several Red Wheelbarrow collections. She especially enjoys taking part in local poetry readings.
Ruby Hansen Murray is a poet and a columnist for the Osage News. She lives in southwest Washington, along the Columbia River. A Hedgebrook and MacDowell fellow, she’s winner of prizes in creative nonfiction from the Iowa Review and the state of Montana. Her work has been published in Cascadia: A Field Guide and New Poets of Native Nations, Ecotone, and Pleiades. Her poetry is forthcoming from The Hopkins Review and has appeared in Peauxdunque Review, River Mouth Review, Broad River Review, and Worcester Review. She’s a citizen of the Osage and Cherokee Nations of Northeastern Oklahoma,with West Indian roots. A student of Wah Zha Zhe (the Osage language, meaning Children of the Middle Waters), she has published poems written in or including the Wah Zha Zhe; the poems have been published by Broadsided Press, Yellow Medicine Review, and South Florida Poetry Journal.
Sheila Bender is a poet and memoirist whose most recent collection, Since Then: Poems and Short Prose, was published in 2022 by Ex Ophidia Press in Seattle. Her books include a memoir, A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief, the poetry collection Behind Us the Way Grows Wider, and instructional books Creative Writing DeMystified, Writing in a Convertible with the Top Down, Writing Personal Essays: Shaping and Sharing Your Personal Experience and Sorrow's Words: Writing Exercises to Heal Grief. Her KPTZ FM radio program "In Conversation: Discussions on Writing and Writing Life" offered interviews with writers in the US and abroad and ran for more than five years. She teaches online through writingitreal.com, as well for Women on Writing, BARN, the International Association for Journal Writing, Il Chiostro, and locally for the Imprint Bookstore.
Sharon M. Carter is a poet and visual artist originally from Lancashire, England. She is retired from a career in healthcare. Her poetry book, Quiver, was recently published by Tebot Bach. She has been honored by Hedgebrook and the Jack Straw Writers program with, respectively, a writer’s residency and a fellowship. Her work has been published in Terra Nova, The Madrona Project, Pontoon, Ars Medica and the Take a Stand: Art Against Hate, anthology. sharonmcarter.com
Samantha Della-DeVoney is an indigenous poet. She writes and reads with passion and compassion centering deep connection, deep emotion, and Spirituality. She is a member of the Makah Tribe and works for Peninsula College co-developing Integrated Indigenous Curriculum. Samantha is creating her first book of poetry that will be presented with video and audio on her website. She has read her poetry in academic conferences, classrooms, and stadiums. Samantha is a proud Mother, Daughter, Partner, Cousin, and Friend.