Suzanne Lummis, the featured guest, flew in from Los Angeles. Author of In Danger (Heyday Books, 1999 - compare prices to buy the book), she is also an organizer of the Los Angeles Poetry Festival and edited a weighty, important anthology of LA poetry called Grand Passion: The Poetry of Los Angeles and Beyond (Red Wind, 1995). She brought a tough, savvy noir voice (tender despite the attitude) to her performance.
Charles Potts, as always, hosted and made the Party happen. He has received non-profit status for the Temple Bookstore and Poetry School, and is working to transform this old Masonic lodge into a church devoted to lifting the human spirit through poetry, art, and ecumenical religious inquiry. He has prepared a residence for visiting writers upstairs of the bookstore. (Charles is the subject of a profile here at About Poetry written by klipschutz.)
Charles was our polished MC for two nights during the Party. On Friday night, when he was a featured reader, yours truly served as MC. Charles read mainly from his work of poetic-historical geography: Across the North Pacific. A favorite of mine is “Pahsimeroi Eki.”
Edward Smith’s appearance proved that poetry preserves friendship across time and space. He and Charles Potts did not see each other for 25 years, but since re-establishing contact recently, they have exchanged a flood of letters. Edward’s reading spanned the phases of his life and expressed his renewal of passion for poetry, which life’s pressing concerns had forced him to put aside. (I am sorry to report that Edward Smith died suddenly a little more than a month after the Walla Walla Poetry Party, December 26, 2003 in O’Fallon, Illinois. He will be missed.)
Linda Andrews and Dan Lamberton were the bookends of our Poetry Party. This couple read some fine poems about their love for each other. Linda teaches at Walla Walla Community College, and many of her loyal students were in the audience. Her collection Escape of the Bird Women won a Washington Governor’s Award. Dan is head of the Humanities Program at Walla Walla College, and his poetry reflects his broad learning.
Yan Li made the scene from Shanghai, by way of a recently completed residency at Iowa’s International Writers’ Program. He read two short poems in Chinese and English, with longer pieces in translation read by local poet Jeff Bickle. Yan Li’s poetry demonstrated that modernism is not a universal leveler. His images are contemporary but not cut from the same mold as Western modernism. They incorporate Asian tradition and Western influences in a mix made his own.
Jeremy Gaulke, fully enrolled protégé at the Temple Bookstore, read from his collection The Ghost of Harrison Sheets, including the title piece. This modern-day Wordsworthian poem about parting with one’s childhood self shows Jeremy’s sure lyrical touch. And as open-mike host for our three-night relay of poetry, Jeremy handed off the microphone/baton with aplomb.
Brandon Follett is a performance poet from Boise, Idaho. With his charged up delivery and great self-deflating gestures, he drew us into his whirlwind feelings of being in and out of love.
The audience is what made this Party. There is no such thing as a poem unless it is heard or read. And we had cultured, thoughtful groups each night that spurred the poets on. They also bought books! All the connections we established with the audience (and each other) are unfinished conversations which will help us take our writing further.
~ Denis Mair
For an in-depth, uncut version of Denis’ account (four times this length), go to The Temple Bookstore site. For a previously unpublished poem which Denis has graciously consented to present here at About Poetry:
