Poet Laureates

An evening of culture for the three of us. We picked up Elle at Western Oregon this afternoon, drove to Lake Oswego, a burb of Portland, for an evening celebrating 100 years of the Oregon Poet Laureate program. We had a great dinner at the Oswego Grill before the presentation. The three representative Poet Laureates were the current one, Anis Mojgani; my friend and Poet Laureate from 2018-2020, Kim Stafford; and Paulann Peterson, who held the position from 2010-2014. Their poems were incredibly powerful, poems about connection, poems for other poets, poems of reparations. It was a packed Lake Oswego Public Library, and a receptive and grateful audience.

I introduced Elle to Kim, and he said, “Are you a basketball player?” and she said, “I was.” He said, “Oh no. Once a basketball player, always a basketball player.” His reading tonight was so good.

And a quick note about Paulann. When Paulann took a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University in 1986 to work on her poetry and writing, she was teaching at Mazama High School, in Klamath Falls. She took a year’s leave of absence. Her replacement teacher for that year? Yours truly. What a great evening, even in the long drive in the torrential rain.

Here’s to poets everywhere.