How much of where you are affects what you write? I’m at the tail end of a 1-week writing residency at Centrum — located in the Fort Worden State Park in charming and artsy Port Townsend, WA — with my fellow poet and longtime collaborator Rachel Kessler.
Here’s a sampler plate of what we saw, learned, and wrote about:
1) Poets, Live Off the Land — or, Everything and Its Baby Eats Plums.
Several nearby plum trees hit the height of their ripeness while we were here, so we picked plums each day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. One day a bandita raccoon and her child made their way up the plum tree trunk next to Rachel’s cabin, munching on fruits while we enjoyed our lunch. (“They taste good to her / They taste good / to her. They taste / good to her…” – William Carlos Williams.) Throughout the week, a doe and fawn appeared and disappeared in the underbrush beneath the plum tree next to my cabin. (“The deer slip back into the mountain/ like hungry, rose-colored smoke…” – Jane Hirshfield) Also picked: blackberries, pears, apples, roses. And Britta Johnson (a Seattle-based animator also here for a Centrum residency) said she’d hunt down her Swedish relatives’ recipe for rosehip soup. (Next time!)
2) The Sea & Its Beautifully Gross Details.
Pictured: Valentine of fish guts —
Poemed: “How tiring the sea. How sullen the dunes. How vigorous the sand fleas!” (from “Signs from God”, RK & SN)
3) You Say Pajamas, I Say Pyjamas. When getting down to serious, don’t-leave-the-house-until-you-finish-this-draft business, we learned about one writer who wakes up in the morning, changes out of her sleeping pajamas, and puts on her writing pyjamas. Genius.
4) Hike 1: Memory’s Vault. Ascending into the woods above our cabins, we soon saw signs pointing out the path to “Memory’s Vault.” This Stonehenge-savvy permanent installation features the poetry of Sam Hamill, acclaimed poet of the Pacific Northwest and original founder of Copper Canyon Press (which also makes its home on the Fort Worden grounds).
Reading poems of place posted monumentally in that place, I worried it would feel a little too monumental, a little too MEMORY’S VAULT. But reading some of those poems in that context was actually quite moving. The rustling pine needles really were overhead! We did see a heron just earlier that day! And the poetry’s ability to conjure some of Fort Worden’s uneasy military past helped complete the emotional picture of the defunct bunkers surrounded by natural beauty.
I’m sorry I doubted you, poetry of place. And next time I hear “the blotch, blotch/ of big drops/ plunketing through the leaves” — I am totally sitting in that metal-roofed concrete slab chair.
5) Hike 2: Port Townsend’s Heaven & Hell Portal. Our residency method went something like this: “Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.” (William Blake, Proverbs of Hell, from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.) During the action portion of the day, which often involved hiking up to the woods or down to the sea, or both — we found this tunnel:
6) Birds.
Sighted: Swallows (see below), hummingbirds, a bald eagle in a deadwood perch overlooking the Puget Sound, ravens watching us as much as we watched them, crows, several varieties of gulls (including a smaller, grayer, more plaintive type, and the classic white ker-aw-aw-aw kind).
Poemed:
“Did you ever hear a whippoorwill? Lift needle from record and fall asleep.” (from “So Lonesome I Could”) —
and —
Seascape with Emergency Exit Plan
Kree-kree, cry the gulls
crumbling down sky, wobbling
morning, rain.
“She is not for you!” screams
an orange, immortal beak.
“Where is my french fry?”
The crows in the pear tree know
how often my sneaker has shuffled yonder road,
how often my laces have themselves undone,
a mountain undone on the sea.
The seagulls warp and weave behind her,
her voice cracks like a shiv.(RK & SN)
“How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way, / Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?” (William Blake)
7) If You See Something, Say Something — or, A Wedding Appears Under the Madrone Tree. Challenged to write poems titled “False Unicorn,” Rachel and I adjourned to the field near Alexander’s Castle for a little pastoral input and inspirational view. Then, out of nowhere, 50 white folding chairs and a crew of men drinking cans of beer appeared, and so it began — our collaborative, medieval-modern medley (1 of 2):
False Unicorn
50 folding chairs under a tree
for virgins and non-virgins in grand attire.
Whites of eyes streaked red as fire,
hands captured in laps, placidly.10 a.m. already drinking
the groomsmen sing a ribald song of joy,
plow the lawn in yellow cars like toys,
jostle the groom from terrored love or thinking.The men set up while the ladies get up
the baby’s breath, water-proof prepare
for leaking eyes, for blowsy summer rain.A woman and a beast drink from one cup.
He writhes on the dance floor like one ensnared.
Silent huntsmen pull back their bows again.(RK & SN)