Central Library hosted readings and presentations commemorating
Oregon's late poet laureate on Sunday, January 25, 2009.
Featured participants included:
Jim Scheppke presents “William Stafford and the Oregon
Poetry Collection.” Mr. Scheppke has been State Librarian of Oregon
since 1991. Ellen Louise Hart and Holly Springfield present
“Where the Right Word Again Begins Time”: William Stafford and
Emily Dickinson. Ms. Hart writes about Emily Dickinson's
manuscripts, and about prosody and the visual line in Dickinson's
poetry and correspondences. Ms. Springfield is a meditation
teacher, storyteller and independent student and teacher of Emily
Dickinson’s poetry and founder of the Portland Chapter of the Emily
Dickinson International Society (EDIS). Don Colburn is a health reporter for The Oregonian. Kirsten Rian was recently nominated for inclusion in the
2008 Best New Poets anthology. Joseph A. Soldati, host for the program, has published
numerous poems and essays in a variety of literary journals and
anthologies, including most recently The Litchfield Review, The
Enigmatist, and Writers Dojo. His poem, “Elegy” will appear in the
forthcoming (April 2009) anthology Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems
of Grief and Gratitude.