SECOND ANNUAL POETRY & POTLUCK Continued... The event is free. Participants are asked to bring a main dish to share, one or two poems to read (yours or someone else’s), a lawn chair, and a friend or family member. The FWS Board of Trustees will be on hand to answer questions and provide the coffee, sodas, paper plates, eating utensils, and welcome mat. There will also be a raffle and Stafford broadsides will be available for sale. Download a poster about this event. Featured readers in 2007 include NW poets John Daniel, Kirsten Rian, and Doug Stow. Mike and Joyce Gullickson, FWS members and poetry pilgrims from Burnet, Texas, will also read. John Daniel is the author of two poetry collections, Common Ground (Confluence Press, 1988) and All Things Touched by Wind (Salmon Run Press, 1994). Common Ground was an Oregon Book Award finalist in 1989. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, North American Review, Sierra, Poetry of the American West, The Pushcart Prize VIII, and other magazines and anthologies. He has been poetry editor of Wilderness magazine since 1988. In 1998 he compiled and edited Wild Song: Poems of the Natural World (University of Georgia Press). A third collection of poems, Spring Burning, is in progress. Rogue River Journal: A Winter Alone, published in May 2005, was awarded a 2006 PNBA Book Award by the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. His other books have twice won the Oregon Book Award for Literary Nonfiction. He is chair of PEN Northwest, a regional branch of the writers' organization PEN American Center and lives with his wife, Marilyn Daniel, in the Coast Range foothills west of Eugene, Oregon. Kirsten Rian’s poetry has appeared in Rhino, Upstreet, and other literary journals. She was a top-25 winner in Glimmer Train’s Poetry Open, and was awarded a Soapstone artist residency. San Francisco Center for the Book recently printed a limited edition letterpress broadside of her work. She leads workshops internationally using poetry as a tool for literacy, healing, and storytelling within the refugee, immigrant and homeless communities. She is a Poet-in-Residence through the Literary Arts Writers-in-the-Schools program, teaching poetry to at-risk high school students. She also leads poetry workshops through Multnomah County Library, most recently working with the Vietnamese community. She has been active in the national photography community for 20 years, currently as founding Executive Director of The Aftermath Project, a nonprofit providing grants to photographers to document the aftermath of conflict, and publisher of books and international exhibitions. Rian was Director of Blue Sky Gallery for 16 years. An independent curator and writer, she has coordinated more than 375 exhibitions, and 65 books and catalogues. Doug Stow, founder of Paper Crane Press, Half Moon Bay, California, was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. He is now the generous publisher and artist who creates the letterpress broadsides featuring Stafford poems for FWS. The broadsides, each a work of art gently illustrated and suitable for framing, include "A Ritual To Read To Reach To Each Other", "Why I Am Happy", "Earth Dweller", "A Story That Could Be True", "Note", "You Reading This Be Ready", "To Shuman Heink", and "Any Morning." Mike Gullickson, former poetry editor of Snap and The Enigmatist, is now the editor of Inks Lake Ink poetry competition. His poems have been published in, among other places, Affirming Flame, X-Magazine, and Barnwood Press. Joyce Gullickson’s poems have been published in, among other places, Divercity, Sunscripts, and The Texas Poetry Calendar. The two live in Burnet, Texas (pop. 5,562), 60 miles northwest of Austin. Foothills Park is a nine-acre park on the west bank of the Willamette River just south of Portland. The park features a ring of towering polished basalt pillars that sit prominently along the William Stafford Pathway. Called the Stafford Stones, they bear the poet’s written words in a public art project designed and sculpted by artist Frank Boyden and dedicated April 19, 2006. << Return to News Page