Public Library a cradle of democracy

The Carnegie  McMinnville Public Library is 100 years old.  Andrew Carnegie funded the library built in 1912.

 Carnegie  said  “There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.”

He believed in Libraries  “A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.”.  


The benefits a Public Library for Democracy and for Community are still very true today.

Jill Poyer, Director of McMinnville Public Library and Bernice Owen, author of “History of the McMinnville Public Library” talk with Arts Alive host Lynda Phillippi at McMinnville Community Media studio.   Ms Owen explains the fascinating history the McMinnville Library.    Ms Poyer talks about the extensive programs the Library offers, which would, I’m sure, make Mr Carnegie nod his head in agreement and smile.  McMinnville Public Library is doing for Democracy and for Community just as Andrew said it would.                   

To watch Arts Alive McMinnville Public Library Part Two                                          

House/studio: creative space matters

First draft of studio

I've been thinking about literature, websites, literary magazines and such.  But we have also working on glazing and firing tiles for the Cedarwood house.  We hired an Designer to work with us to build our new studio space.

He sent pdf file of his ideas and we have been working over them.   Changing and talking.  The creative process.  We think about what we want.  It is so much easier to do if there is a visual aide to work with.

Where we create matters.  At Awaken Creativity they talk about creative space that honors you and is dedicated to what you do.  We talked about entrances and realized we did not mind walking into our creating space.  We did no want to come in and stare at several doors.   The Awaken Creativity article is a simplistic.  A new space is a new place and just how it will interact with creative work is unknown.  We have to hope it will work out.

Find purpose and do what you love

Maria Popova at Brain Pickings curates a wonderful blog.  Today she put together an article on "How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love" by curating the thoughts of seven who have talked about it.  She gives pithy quotes and gives links to the source, essays, videos, whatever.  There is a reason Technorati gives Brain Pickings a score of 726 which is a very high ranking.  Quality and quantity. 

Literary Wolf

She starts with quotes of Paul Graham from his essay How to Do What You Love written in 2006.  Still makes sense.  He starts "Do do something well you have to like it."  Maria is taken by Paul's opinion about prestige. 

The quote I like is "Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That's the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn't suck, they wouldn't have had to make it prestigious."  


Paul says you should not worry about prestige and admits it is easy advice to give but hard to follow especially for the young and/or ambitious. 

Literature, poems and the reader

patient vagabond

Reading an online literary magazine Prime Number Magazine which has a nice combination of features.  Most literary magazines have the work and a writer's bio.  Interviews of writers are often a special thing.   What I like about Prime Number is they put the work, the bio and an interview with the writer all together.   Prime Number is a North Carolina magazine, online and an annual print. 

For example with the poetry of Kat Henry there follows her bio and then an interview with her.   As a reader I liked reading the poem and then listening to the interview answers that gave Kat's poem "Vagrants, after A.M. Parker" a context from the writer.  In Kat's bio she tells of reading the "vagrants" poem at an open mic in a bar and also reading it to a homeless man who told her he could relate to the poem. 

Another poet  Katherine E Young writes searing poems of physical and emotional abuse.  She teaches English at University level, published in journals and translated from Russian.  The interview helps to understand the perspective of the poems.

Reading the poem is good and the main thing.  Having detail and context also helps me see the poem.

Elizabeth Santone, a successful feature artist presentation

Timothy Field

Today at the Portland Art Museum Rental Sales Gallery Elizabeth Santone talked about her narrative watercolor paintings and her landscape painting.

As Elizabeth was concluding a gentleman in the back of the room told a story of two young skate boarders who were in an intense discussion just out side the Gallery.  They were in a passionate debate about Elizabeth Santone's painting of a tree that was in the window of the Gallery. 

We (Meadowlake Studios) filmed Elizabeth's presentation.  We also filmed OK Ji Radda and Janet Louvau Holt and they discussed their work.

Next comes the work of putting together a watchable video.

Looking for literary magazines

I've been looking at and looking for literary magazines.  Luna Park Review estimates there are 28,000 literary magazines and far from going extinct, they seem to be at least surviving.  Luna Park Review's Directory of literary magazines does not have 28,000 entries, but there seem to be hundreds.

Literary Bear

It is not surprising there is intense concern for who reads the literary magazines.  The print versions do struggle with the cost of production.  The on line magazines try to figure out how to make them pay for themselves and not have a "pay wall" too high so they are accessible.

In a The Millions article  On Getting Paid: Literary Magazines and Remuneration Nick Ripatrazone discusses the dilemma of literary magazines and writers.  For the most part the readers of the literary magazines are writers, students and whannabe writers.  Magazines can't pay much if anything.  Is publication enough?  But we're in America.  Getting paid is a statement of value.  Even a small amount is an honorarium which helps a writer feel valued.  And there is always the hope there is a way to pay for itself and maybe a little bit more.

Maybe publication (and a free copy) has to be considered similar to the unpaid internships so popular this days.  Put in the time, produce the work, have it be judged and keep on keeping on.

Creating a routine to create

attentive to what is there

There is a website Zen Habits that is dedicated to changing habits.  In the article "29 ways to successfully ingrain a behavior" they have the simple steps of habit change: 1. Write down your plan. 2. Identify your new routine.  3. Focus on doing the new behaviors every day for about 30 days.   And some great quotes.  "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." which is attributed to Aristotle.   Advice is keep it simple, one behavior at a time and do a 30 day challenge.

With the blog I gave myself a 30 day challenge that started 12/31/11 to do an entry a day.  I did 30 days and I'm into the second 30 days.  Okay so I feel strong.   Next comes a routine for creative writing.  There is a ton of advise on the web.  It comes down to building in the time, the motivation and doing it.  This is my write it down part, not a plan, but saying it out loud. 

Matt Love and teachers as social control troops

Matt and Ray

Ever since I read My great writing dog in the Oregonian last year, Matt Love is one of my favorite Oregon writers.  A quote from his essay, which is a heart felt eulogy to a companion, has stayed with me. 

   "For many writers, writing begins with conversations, ones you have with others, ones aloud with yourself, ones you overhear, and ones with documents and ancient texts."

I have the quote tacked to my wall.  For Matt, his conversations started with his dog Ray as they traveled around Oregon.

Recently Matt wrote an Opinion piece Oregon's overreach: Are teachers the troops in a war on individualism? in the Oregonian.  He tells a story of he and his high school students field trip to do a performance at another high school.  After 18 years of teaching he is feeling "complicit" in shaping students into the American consumer corporate mold.  To me he was expressing an existential angst in recognizing his discomfort as being part of the control machine. 

Matt and Ray

If Matt were sending the opinion piece as a letter to Dear Sugar at Rumpus , I could image Sugar responding, "There, there, sweet pea, you have been complicit, as a teacher you are absolutely part of the social control troops shaping our good children.  But it's okay.  You work within.  It is usually easier to open a window from inside a house than outside."  

The response to Matt opinion piece showed how differently we hear what is being written and what we choose to react to.  The article was shared on Facebook and among my "friends" the comments were the "Nice article" kind of typical pablum Facebook comments.  I read the Oregonian readers comments which were argumentative.  Some responded to the word "corporate", some focused on the "standardized testing".  For the most part they put Matt Love into a political caricature and argued against their own construct.  They were having fun, some quite eloquent. 

I wonder how we can get from dueling monologs to conversations.

Paintings to the Gallery

Maple in Fall

We deliver painting to Portland Art Museum Rental Sales Gallery tomorrow.  Liz has been working on her talk about her work coming up this Saturday.

The rural landscapes are quiet and peaceful.  Her city scapes and urban scenes are full of motion, intensity and humor.



The contrast of her two style is amazing.

Wiggle

The rural scapes are contemplative. They let you breath.  The urban scapes  are wild, complex and engaging. You wonder if you can find your way out.

Studio space to work to relax

Meadowlake Clay studio

Under glazing tiles for the Cedarwood bathroom is a calm repetitive task.  Okay, boring.  But there is a challenge.  The last batch of test tiles the glaze developed pin holes.  Nasty little creatures sometimes as difficult to get rid of as ants.

And for a bathroom pinholes are not acceptable.  They will eventual blister and pop.  Then it means pulling them and replacing.  Not fun.

small tea bowl

But when I look up from the work table the studio relaxes.  There is a calm that settles through me.  I wonder about moving to a new space, untried and unknown.  

Tea bowls and masks and sculptures and tiles gives me more projects than I can keep up with.  Luckily it is not a job.  Another reason to relax.

Elizabeth Santone featured artist

Featured Artists Poster

Elizabeth has been with the Portland Art Museum Rental Sales Gallery since the early 1990s.  Her unique watercolors depicting urban life are always popular.

When she moved to the country she began to work in oils and plants and natural landscapes developed.

This coming Saturday she will display watercolor urban scenes and natural subjects in oil.  

Garden Art

Garden Sculpture

Winter time in the garden lets the art stand naked and waiting for Spring.

I'm working on several garden sculpture projects.  There are many Garden Art Blogs to get ideas.   I am interested in sculpture which lives with and within a garden. 

A sculpture garden, which is all about sculpture that sprouts from the landscape and is the main feature of a place.  There are some very beautiful sculpture gardens or parks like the  Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

Firing Tiles and Masks

Lug Marl Tri

Cone 06 firing tonight masks and tiles.  The tiles are tests for our Cederwood house bathroom around the shower.  Green, blue and gold are almost the same colors as the bird masks. 

Glazing is one of my least favorite pottery chores.  I mixed glazes together in a random manner without keeping records.  My goal and I achieve it completely is to not be able to reproduce a glaze.  Each thing fired, even in the electric kiln is unique, not to be repeated.  Sometimes I wish I could recapture a look.  The price of "one of a kind".

I watched some of videos at Wordpress TV about setting up a blog in Wordpress.   One of the videos talked about SEO and mentioned blogs being "scraped" and content being re-purposed (used) by other bloggers or whomever.  There is a plug-in which attaches back link code to the content.  When someone copies it will bring the link code back to the scrapper, thus and easy back link. 

The free Wordpress dot com blog does not allow plug ins.  The technical "geeky" stuff to learn is daunting.  Well, there was a time 20 some years ago when I knew nothing about clay.  And still learning about it, too.

Reading and Watching: Gorky Park, book and movie

We just finished reading the 1981 crime novel Gorky Park written by     Martin Cruz Smith.  It was a 1981 best seller and won the Golden Dagger Award from the British Crime Writer's Association.  Set in Russia the story follows Arkady Renko, a police chief investigator, who is assigned a grisly case of three mutilated corpses found in Gorky Park, the Moscow amusement park.  A wonderful story of inter-agency rivalry, failed relationships, a love story, friendship, betrayal and redemption wove together the strands of suspense.  A thirty year old story that aged well.

After reading a book, if there has been a movie based on it, we try to watch the movie, as soon as we can. so the book is fresh.  In 1983  the  movie Gorky Park was directed by Michael Apted.  Dennis Potter wrote the screen play, which won an1984 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.  Movietime Video in McMinnville has a great selection of movies and Gorky Park was in the Suspense Section.  We wondered if the movie had aged as well as the book.

The movie eliminated and changed many of the relationships but keep the main love story.  Film has to simplify.  Eliminating the wife and failed marriage did not effect the film's story.  What did surprise me was eliminating the New York and FBI part.  It showed a nice parallel with Russia police and KGB and New York Police and FBI.  And changing the KGB Major Pribulda  character to another corrupt Russian, worked for the film story.  I preferred the book Major Pribulda and the interactions with the Renko character which the richness of the characterization.

Beautiful as ever

J Elizabeth

You were beautiful at 19.  Here we are 40 plus years later and you are as beautiful as ever.  I am one of the luckiest men alive because you have let me share your life.

We've become "geezers" together.  What a blessing.

We are working on designing our "last house" like we were young again, well not exactly young.  But the dreaming is still there.

I look at a time when we might not be able to walk up stares and we might need caretakers.  Our search for words, sometimes both of us searching, becomes longer, more arduous. 

When I see your smile, the years settle in, the past eases, the present holds and the future waits. 





(drawing by Tracy Prescott MacGregor)

Display art in the Community Living room

Cornerstone Coffee House

Last November I had a mask show at the  Cornerstone Coffee House in McMinnville.  A long brick wall with my faces.  Selecting pieces to show were folks sip coffee and work away on their laptops is like deciding what to wear to a party where you do not know anyone.  You are sure to be judged by the few who my look, but it is not worth fussing over it. 

Re Garlini

I like having shows in public places like coffee houses.  It is where people spend time.  They are community living rooms and what better place to have your work than where folks live. 

Sider Ryley

Owl

I sat in Cornerstone and watched a college student look up from her sleek laptop.  She looked at Re Garlini for maybe a minute.  Just gazed.  Maybe she was day dreaming, or composing a reply to an email from her friend who needed advice about what to eat for lunch.  She got up slowly walked over to Re and touched him on the nose. She returned to her table, sipped her coffee and hunched over her computer.  Her fingers skipping lightly over the keyboard. 

I like to think that she was telling her friend about the encounter she just had.  There was something about Re Garlini which resonated.  She did get up and touched his nose.  What did he say to her?  

Oregon writers coming together, Terroir Creative Writing Festival

In Arts Alive Part Two Emily Chadwick, one of the founders of Terroir Creative Writing Festival and guest Debra Voorhees and Craig Bodmer talk with Arts Alive host Lynda Phillippi.  The Festival will be all day Saturday April 14th at the McMinnville Community Center.

Emily Chadwick

An early registration discount is available until March 23.

The Terroir Creative Writing Festival brings Oregon writers together for a day of celebrating this special place, as well as the joys of writing and books.  Some of the benefits of attending the are meet nationally acclaimed Oregon writers, share your passion for words and books, attend workshops, talks, readings and book signings, and earn more about your craft.

Some of the Festival workshop leaders and speakers include: Chelsea Cain, Willy Vlautin, Matt Love, Charles Goodrich, Leanne Grabel, Molly Johnson, Bill Siverly, Michael McDowell, Lex Runciman, Mary Slocum, Linda Kuhlmann, Marilyn Worrix, Barbara Drake, Phoebe Newman

This is third year of the Terroir Creative Writing Festival sponsored by Arts Alliance of Yamhill County with funding from the Yamhill County Cultural Coalition.

The full Arts Alive TV show of the Terroir Creative Writing Festival interview will air on McMinnville Community Media

Terroir Creative Writing Festival bringing Oregon writers together

In Arts Alive TV show Part One the organizers of the Terroir Creative Writing Festival Barbara Drake and Emily Chadwick and guest Debra Voorhess talked with Arts Alive TV show host Lynda Phillippi about the Festival.

The Terroir Creative Writing Festival  will be all day on Saturday April 14th at the McMinnville Community Center. The registration form is available at the Festival Website.  There is a per-registration discount through March 23.

Barbar Drake

Terroir (terr whah) refers to the site- and region-specific characteristics of a wine. Climate, soil and landscape define the wine grapes’ character and helps give the wine its distinctive identity.

Like the vines that line the hillsides of Yamhill County, our words take on the qualities of place, growing rich in the soils of life experiences.

The Terroir Creative Writing Festival brings Oregon writers together for a day of celebrating this special place, as well as the joys of  writing and books.  There will be workshops and speakers on fiction, poetry, writing creative non-fiction, memoir and more.

This is the third year for the Festival, which is sponsored by the Arts Alliance of Yamhill County  funding from the Yamhill County Cultural Coalition.  

William Stafford, Writing the Australian Crawl

I found a copy of Stafford's "Writing the Australian Crawl" in the Chemeketa Regional Library Service  and picked it up at McMinnville Public Library .

William Stafford

The chapter titled Writing opens with the lines,

It is a whisper, You turn somewhere
hall, street, some great event: the stars
or the lights hold; your next step waits you
and the firm world waits -  but
there is a whisper.  You always live so
a being that receives, or partly receives, or
fails to receive each moments touch.   

Stafford's view of artists and art is "the care of artists is not central to the care of art.  The accumulation of art objects is peripheral to the activity of art, in any area."

Art is in what we do and how we live and how we respond to the world not in the objects that accumulate around us.

One of his concluding points could be considered an almost spiritual  relationship to Art. 

Arts has its sacramental aspect. The source of art's power is one with religion's:  the discovery of the essential self and the cultivation of it thought the act of its positive impulses.

It rings true to me.  Art is what you do, how you interact and how you are in the world.

Mary L Slocum at William Stafford Birthday Celebration at Linfield College

Mary L Slocum was one of the featured poets at the 2012 William Stafford Birthday Celebration in the Nicholson Library at Linfield College.

Mary indicates on her Website: Maryslocum.com she has been published in a number of publications, such as, NW Literary Review,  Upper Left Edge, Stanza, Black Cat and others.  She self-published "Stray - Work" chapbook in the 1980's and "Work Poems" in the 1990's, both chapbooks now out of print.
She reads locally in coffee houses and at open mic events in the Portland, Hillsboro and Forest Grover area.  She has co-lead writing workshops at the Forest Grove Library.

                                                       11 minutes

She talks about William Stafford and his influence.  She read a pantoum she created using lines from William Stafford.  She read poems of her own.  The one hour Meadowlake Studios Encounter of the 2012 William Stafford Birthday Celebration will air on McMinnville Community Media

Paper Gardens Literary Contest Deadline February 15th

Paper Gardens Literary Contest DEADLINE is postmark February 15th.  Applications are now being accepted for the 2012 Paper Gardens Literary contest. Click here for the application form.

The Arts Alliance of Yamhill County invites submissions to the 2012 Paper Gardens Literary Contest.  Open to all residents of Yamhill County ages 6 and up, Paper Gardens is a wonderful creative-writing outlet for the community. 

Charles Goodrich

Corvallis poet and essayist Charles Goodrich will be the judge this year. Goodrich is the director of the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature and the Written Word at Oregon State University.  He is the author of "The Practice of Home" and "Insects of South Corvallis" His newest collection of work may be found in his book "Going to Seed: Dispatches from the Garden" (Silverfish Review Press, 2010).

Paper Gardens features two main categories for submission, poetry and prose, and encompasses three age groups: children (ages six to 12), youths (ages 13 to 18) and adults (19 and above). The prose category includes subcategories of short story and memoir, and is limited to one submission per person. Poetry has four subcategories: traditional, free verse and haiku, and returning for a second year, poetry-of-place.

The poetry-of-place subcategory is specifically intended for poems written about or inspired by places in Yamhill County. As Paper Gardens is a literary contest for residents of Yamhill County, work inspired by our local surroundings is a natural fit for the competition.

Writers may submit up to three poems total. More than one submission per subcategory is allowed. The entry fee for adults is five dollars. Children and youth submissions are free of charge.

The judge will select three winners in each category, and the winning poems will be published in the 2012 Paper Gardens chapbook. The winning authors will receive a free chapbook and certificate of recognition, and will be invited to read their work at an awards ceremony Friday April 13th at the McMinnville Community Center.

                                       Kelli Grinich, Paper Gardens Part One

Recently Kelli Grinich, the Chair of the Paper Gardens Literary Contest talked with Lynda Phillippi on the Arts Alive program. Arts Alive: Paper Gardens Part One  and Arts Alive: Paper Gardens: Part Two the 30 minute show is in Part One and Two because of Youtube limit of 15 minutes.  The full show will air on McMinnville Community Media begin Saturday, February 11th and run four or five times during the week. 

Paula Sheller Adams at William Stafford Birthday Celebration at Linfield College

Paula Sheller Adams

Paula Sheller Adams was on of the featured poets at the 2012 William Stafford Birthday Celebration in the Nicholson Library at Linfield College.  She is a well known Portland area poet who does many personal readings.  Her poem "Autumn Gauntlet" won an honorable mention in the Oregon Poetry Association poetry contest.


                        3 minutes

The one hour Meadowlake Studios Encounter will air on McMinnville Community Media.

Mark Thalman at William Stafford Birthday Celebration at Linfield College

Mark Thalman

Mark Thalman was one of the featured poets at the 2012 William Stafford Birthday Celebration in Nicholson Library at Linfield College.

Mark Thalman's poetry has been widely published in small presses, college reviews, anthologies, and e-zines for almost four decades.   He is the author of Catching The Limit , which is available from his website.    
Thalman has been a Poet-in-the-Schools  for the Oregon Arts Commission, an Assistant Poetry Editor for the Northwest Review, and a board member of the Portland Poetry Festival.  He has also been an instructor for Chemeketa Community College.  He is the editor of Poetry.us.com 

                                                        8 minutes
The one hour Meadowlake Studios Encounter of the William Stafford Birthday Celebration will air on McMinnville Community Media

History and Donald Duck, taxes and spending

History is interesting. 1943 and here we are 2012. What a difference 69 years makes. War, Taxes, Saving, Spending.

I like the line "for it is our taxes that run the factories" It is wild - spending bad - taxes good. Now it is taxes bad - spending good. oh well.

Donald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Taxes (1943)(from Open Culture)

During World War II, some of the greatest living filmmakers put aside their commercial aspirations and directed propaganda films for the Allies. Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, John Ford, John Huston – they all made a cinematic contribution to the war effort. (More on that here.) And so did Walt Disney, big time. 90% of Disney employees produced propaganda films for the American government, creating 68 hours of continuous film, including this short film for the Treasury Department. The Spirit of ’43 puts Donald Duck in the always unenviable position of asking Americans to pay high taxes to fund their wars. (Imagine doing that today!)

Barbara LaMorticella at William Stafford Birthday Celebration at Linfield College

Barbara LaMorticella was one of the featured poets at the 2012 William Stafford Birthday Celebration at the Nicholson Library at Linfield College.

Barbara LaMorticella lives in a cabin in the woods outside Portland, Oregon.   In 1997, her second collection of poems, Rain on Waterless Mountain, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award.  In 1999 she received an Oregon Literary Fellowship in poetry for women writers.    She has edited or co-edited three collections of Portland poetry including Portland Lights in 2000.

In 2005, Barbara was awarded the  Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award by Literary Arts, an award in recognition of significant contributions that have enriched Oregon’s literary community.

Her work is in many anthologies,  most recently To Topos Poetry International: Poverty and Poetry, (Oregon State University,  2008), Not A Muse (Haven Books 2009   Not a Muse, (Haven Books, 2009), and Eating the Pure Light (Blackwater Press 2009 , an anthology of the inner lives of women .  She's been featured at Bumbershoot , Seattle's Music and Arts Festival, where she won a Bumbershoot Big Book Award. In addition, Barbara was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize , has had her work featured as part of  Poetry in Motion.  She is a long time co-host with Walt Curtis of KBOO-FM radio’s Talking Earth.

                                                       6 minutes
The one hour Meadowlake Studios Encounter of the 2012 William Stafford Birthday Celebration will air on McMinnville Community Media .

Creative process in glass & video

Out in the studio as I trimmed through the bottom of a bowl, I started thinking about fused glass.  Bottomless bowls can be great glass molds.  Then I went to Writing Without Paper blog and, as usual, found inspiration in both video and glass.

Videographer Karen Rodriguez in 2009 produced a video for Corning Museum of Glass  introduces Artist-In-Residency glass sculptor Mielle Riggie.  She explains the technique of cast-glass sculpture and gives a wonderful insight into her creative process.

Mielle Riggie works with both the strength and fragility of glass to illustrate the dynamics of human emotion or conditions. In her residency at The Studio, Riggie created cast-glass sculpture amplifying elements in nature, such as leaves or roots, and recombined disparate parts in ways that exaggerated the tension and balance of humans with their surroundings.

In 2010 Riggie had an exhibition at the Winston Wachter Fine Art  in Seattle which provides some dramatic images of her sculptures. It is worth a visit. 



We do these artist interviews videos.  Karen Rodriquez's video does a great job of presenting an artist as they talk about how they work.

Jakob Gowell at William Stafford Birthday Celebration at Linfield College

Jakob Gowell

It is traditional at the William Stafford Birthday Celebration to invite members of the audience to present a poem by William Stafford and to read a poem of their own.

Jakob Gowell recently graduated from Grinnell College in Iowa.  He talked about reading letters from his grandfather and discovering and connecting with his grandfather who he never knew. He recited two poems,  William Stafford's poem "Traveling In The Dark" and a poem by Edna St Vincent Mellay "Conscientious Objector" . He read a poem of his own.

His recital of the poems was easy and natural, in keeping with the William Stafford approach.

The one hour Meadowlake Studios Encounter of the William Stafford Celegration will air on McMinnville Community Media

William Stafford, a compeling voice

William Stafford

We filmed the 2012 William Stafford Birthday Celebration at Linfield College.  After putting an hour TV show together for McMinnville Community Media I separated the individual poets presentations, which I have been posting on our YouTube channel and here. 

Before the event I was reading Stafford's "The Darkness Around Us Is Deep".  After the Celebration I wanted to find out if I could hear and see William Stafford.  Yes the The Friends Of William Stafford website has poems and video clips of him.   The poem Farm on the Great Plains is a wonderful video clip of Stafford reading.  His voice is quiet, compelling. 

There are videos of Stafford from Poetry Videos but they cost more than I can afford at the moment.


Here in Oregon, the Friends of William Stafford are committed and have been celebrating his birthday (January 17, 1914) with poetry readings throughout the month of January for many years.    Born in Kansas, William Stafford, Kansas poet, he is also claimed by Kansas as a native son. 

Stafford taught writing at Lewis and Clark College for 30 years.  He published over 50 volumes of poetry.  "He kept a daily journal for 50 years, and composed nearly 22,000 poems, of which roughly 3,000 were published." (Wikipedia - William Stafford (poet))  He wrote "Writing the Australian Crawl" about the craft of writing poetry.  I haven't read it, but now I'm out to find a copy.

There are many, many Stafford poems across the internet, too many to try and list websites, at this time.  Maybe for a later project.

Joanna Rose at William Stafford Birthday Celebration at Linfield College

Joanna Rose

Joanna Rose was one of the featured poets at the 2012 William Stafford Birthday Celebration in Nicholson Library at Linfield College

   She is the author of "Little Miss Strange" (Touchstone 1998), winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award for Fiction.

Her poetry and prose has appeared in, Windfall A Journal of Poetry of Place, The Bellingham Review, Marco Polo Quarterly, ZYZZYVA , Gobshite Quaterly , High Desert Journal.

Joanna Rose contributes poetry to the Oregonian book section  and often reviews books for the Oregonian.  She is part of The Pinewood Table critique group, which has a Facebook presence.  She teaches writing and goes into the schools around Oregon and Washington.

                                                  5 minutes
Joanna Rose read William Stafford poems and a poem of her own.  The one hour Meadowlake Studios Encounter of the Stafford Celebration will air on McMinnville Community Media