Kim Stafford : What Was It Like Being Poet Laureate of Oregon

A final report

 

 

 

 

During my two years as Oregon’s poet laureate, May 2018-May 2020, it’s been my pleasure to present 137 events at 106 locations around the state, from the Alvord Desert to schools in Astoria, from the Ashland Public Library to Tamastslikt Museum at the Umatilla Reservation. I’ve shared the reading and writing of poetry with teachers and students, parents, veterans, prison inmates, homeless youth, immigrants, refugees, legislators, business leaders, youth poets, and at senior centers, churches, libraries, writing groups, and other gatherings across the state.

As part of my work, I published and distributed hundreds of copies of three small books of poetry created specifically for our encounters:

Reunion of the Rare: Poems of the Oregon Territory.

          Peace Warrior: Poems in English & Spanish.

          We Begin a Better Nation: Poems to Keep On.

I also regularly posted poems on Instagram and Facebook, in particular during the pandemic.

In Oregon communities I gave poetry readings, shared poems as part of musical events, offered workshops in schools, libraries, and community centers, sang songs at events to benefit homeless families, read a poem to open a legislative session, and shared poems to inaugurate an art center, honor new citizens, keynote conferences, support nonprofits, and to interact with many individual writers and teachers. Events ranged from an intimate reading to an audience of seven, to conference crowds of hundreds. In general, I responded to event requests that came through the Oregon Cultural Trust website, but on some occasions I found myself creating events that just seemed like they had to happen: setting up a poetry reading with former Oregon poet laureate Elizabeth Woody at Timberline Lodge … organizing a writing workshop for Veterans at Tabor Space in SE Portland … launching a community encyclopedia project in Bend.

When lock-down came, I had to cancel my last 30 events, but began posting daily “pandemic poems” online, carried out a series of interviews and live events, and created two 30-minute films to share poetry and writing prompts with these and other communities:

          A Farewell Poetry Reading, with Writing Prompts

          A Reading of Pandemic Poems

In addition, in fulfillment of my original proposal, I’ve developed a webpage with poems, poetry films, resources for teachers and writers, and links to interviews, readings, and other poetry lore:

www.kimstaffordpoet.com

Recent media about my work as Poet Laureate can be found here:

Oregonian feature         

          Oregonian interview

          Oregonian podcast story

Artslandia poetry reading

          Fishtrap video reading and conversation

One thing I carried with me: I was inspired by something a student at Linn-Benton Community College told me: “I don’t write poems to become a better poet. I write poems to become a better person.”

All in all, I’ve had a great run with a creative practice I love for a state I revere. Throughout, I was guided by something my predecessor, Elizabeth Woody, said at her last reading as Oregon’s eighth Poet Laureate: “The more I do this, the less it’s about what the poem is, and more about who the poem serves.”

In all my wanderings and encounters, I sought to live by that: How can a poem serve a person, a community, and place, a cause, an resonant idea, a resource for the future. In keeping with this theme, I found myself writing poems not about subject, but for communities: “Two Rivers” (a poem for inmates at Two Rivers CI), “Klamath Marsh” (a poem for the Klamath Falls community), “In a Landscape” (a poem for Hunter Noack’s Inalandscape piano tour), “Bold Birth of a New Oregon” (a poem for the Oregon House of Representatives), “Forage” (a poem for the nonprofit p:ear), “In the Children” (a poem for 17 immigrants becoming U.S. Citizens), and many others.

Because of this approach to poetry, I found my own writing practice evolving from what might be called “art writing”—the world of literary publishing—toward “community writing”: finding ways to write in devotion to people and places in order to seed the future with strength, understanding, and hope.

My final act as Oregon’s ninth Poet Laureate has been to send a poem to my successor, welcoming his voice to the work and the calling. We have had several conversations about the soul of the work and the logistics of the process. Anis will bring amazing resonance to audiences and communities of all kinds, and I’m eager to see his work carry poetry to places I could not reach:

    Passing the Torch
    —to Anis Mojgani

How can I pass fire to you?
Your tongue is a flame already
kindling love for forgotten kin,
the crumpled griefs and old affections
bottled in hearts that must be
given wings to burst forth singing
so we won’t starve for lack of
hidden spells and psalms and charms
ringing bells in the minds of all. 

Is it any wonder you are chosen
to travel with your bag of stories,
your percussive smoke wisping
into our ears so our eyes see the world
renewed? Is it any wonder you
will speak for mothers missing
imprisoned children, speak
for lost children in the halls
of power, speak for the power
of the word in schools out
under the trees, schools where
teachers gather disguised
as homeless refugees, to be
revealed as you begin to sing?

To you I pass the honor, the struggle,
the miles and nights and hours
of witness, testimony, rant
and blessing, manifesto deftly
told in words and rhythmic
silences. You I ask to hold back
nothing, keep nothing in reserve,
squander your incantations
in forgotten places where the people
have been waiting for your voice,
your tongue a flame kindling love.

                               

 

 

 

Kim Stafford writes, teaches, and travels to raise the human spirit through poetry.  He founded the Northwest Writing Institute in 1986, and has published a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft and 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared. His most recent book is the poetry collection Singer Come from Afar (Red Hen Press, 2021). He has taught writing in dozens of schools and community centers, and in Scotland, Italy, and Bhutan. In 2018 he was named Oregon’s 9^th Poet Laureate by Governor Kate Brown for a two-year term.