Walking Bridges

"Walking Bridges" authors featured at November 15 Nye Beach Writers' Series.

Seven contributors to the 70-poet compilation "Walking Bridges Using Poetry as a Compass," were featured on November 15, 2008: Jonah Bornstein, Don Colburn, Cecelia Hagen, Margaret Gish Miller, Rita Ott Ramstad, and Sandra Stone.


Sharon Wood Wortman, co-editor of the book, is also the author of "The Portland Bridge Book," which had its first and second editions published by the Oregon Historical Society Press in 1989 and 2001. "After OHS went out of the business of books, I founded my own press, took out a loan on our house, and published a third edition in 2006," said Wortman. That edition was awarded the 2007 Silver Medal from Independent Publisher. Wortman is also the driving force behind the ongoing "Portland Parks & Outdoor Recreation Bridge Walks" series held since 1991, which evolved into "Poetry and Bridge Walks" in 2006. Wortman is also involved with the 2009 Portland-Vancouver Bridges & Rivers Calendar, a fundraiser for the 100-year birthday celebration of the Hawthorne Bridge planned for 2010. Additional information about her many projects is posted at www.bridgestories.com.


Jonah Bornstein was raised in Southern California and received a Master's in creative writing from New York University before moving to Oregon in 1989, where he co-founded the Ashland Writers Conference. His published books include "A Path through Stone" and "Voices from the Siskiyous." His poem, "Night Blooming Men," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2000 and two of his poems are included in the nationally acclaimed anthology September 11, 2001, American Writers Respond. His many accolades include the Oregon State Poetry Association Prize and the inaugural Southern Oregon Prize for service to the writing community of the region.


Don Colburn lives in Portland where he is a reporter for The Oregonian. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing, he worked for many years at The Washington Post. Colburn became interested in poetry and started writing poems while on a mid-career Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. In 2006, he had two collections of poetry published: His chapbook, "Another Way to Begin," won the Finishing Line Press Prize; and his full-length book, "As If Gravity Were a Theory," won the Cider Press Review Book Award. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.


Cecelia Hagen grew up Norfolk, Virginia, and studied writing and dance at Connecticut College, later receiving a Master's of fine arts in poetry from the University of Oregon. Her work has been published in many national magazines, and in 2007, Passager magazine in Baltimore chose her as its poet of the year. Presently, Hagen teaches memoir writing and coordinates the monthly Windfall Reading Series for the Lane Literary Guild in Eugene.


Margaret Gish Miller was born in Palo Alto, California and now lives in the Willamette Valley where she is a retired English teacher. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and she has received awards from New Millennium Writings and The Writers Digest.


Rita Ott Ramstad's first book, "The Play of Dark and Light," won the 2003 Stafford-Hall Award for Poetry at the Oregon Book Awards; and her poem "Night Beach" traveled on Portland's TriMet buses and MAX trains as part of Poetry in Motion, a campaign that showcases the work of local and national poets on transit vehicles. She teaches English at the Center for Advanced Learning, a charter high school in Gresham.


Sandra Stone is the 2007 winner of the Dana Award in poetry, which is presented to an under-recognized American poet for mastery of craft, inventive use of language, and substance. Her first collection of poems, "Cocktails with Breughel at the Museum Cafe," was selected in the Cleveland State University annual manuscript competition. The following year, "Cafe" received an Oregon Book Award. Stone's work has appeared in numerous national publications and in several anthologies.

Kathleen Dean Moore

Kathleen Dean Moore is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Oregon State University, and the founding director of the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word. Her current work is in the areas of environmental ethics and philosophy and nature, where she has published three award-winning books of essays: The Pine Island Paradox (Milkweed Editions, 2004); Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World (Lyons Press, 1999, 2004); and Riverwalking: Reflections on Moving Water (Harcourt Brace, 1996). She is co-editor of a forthcoming collection of articles about Rachel Carson's legacy and challenge and the co-editor of How It Is: A Native American Philosophy, the collected papers of the late Viola Cordova.

By combining personal narrative with natural history and philosophical inquiry, Moore brings environmental philosophy to a general audience in journals that range from Orion, Discover, Field and Stream, Audubon, and Wild Earth to the North American Review, the New York Times Magazine, and Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment.

At Oregon State, Moore teaches the Philosophy of Nature, a field course that meets beside a Cascades Mountain lake; Environmental Ethics, a community-based projects course; and Critical Thinking. She coordinates a university/community lecture course on Native American Philosophies. Off-campus, in a variety of landscapes from interior Alaska to the Apostle Islands, Moore teaches the art of the nature essay.

Moore's Ph.D., from the University of Colorado, is in the philosophy of law, where her particular interest is in the nature of forgiveness and reconciliation. Her book, Pardons: Justice, Mercy, and the Public Interest (Oxford UP, 1989, 1997) outlines a justice-based argument for pardons.

Long interested in innovative teaching, Moore is a "Master Teacher" and the recipient of the highest teaching honor bestowed by alumni, the "OSU Alumni Distinguished Professor Award." She is the author of two textbooks that connect the skills of critical thinking and effective writing, Reasoning and Writing and Patterns of Inductive Reasoning: Developing Critical Thinking Skills.

Kathleen and her husband Frank, an OSU biologist, have two grown children, Erin, an architectural designer, and Jonathan, an aquatic ecologist. They are all wild for anything wet--big rivers, small boats, desert canyons, and the edges of the sea.

For more information http://oregonstate.edu/cla/philosophy/faculty/kathy

Elizabeth McLagan

ELIZABETH McLAGAN was a founding member of CALYX. She has also been a bookkeeper, gardener, housecleaner, writer and high school English teacher. After her son graduated from high school, Ms. McLagan returned to graduate studies and earned an MFA in Poetry from Eastern Washington University. Since then she has taught composition, creative writing and literature at Portland Community College, Cascade Campus. Ms. McLagan has also pursued research and writing in the area of minority history in Oregon. Her nonfiction publications include A Peculiar Paradise: A History of Blacks in Oregon, Women and Minorities in the Construction Industry, and Notes Toward a Biography: The Papers of John Hiram Jackson. Her poems have been published in numerous literary journals, and in 1990 a chapbook of poetry was published by Howlet Press. She has won poetry awards from the Oregon State Poetry Society, Clark College, and Cream City Review, as well as the 2001 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Introjournals Award. Her full-length manuscript, Visitation in the Form of a Blue Feather, is currently in search of a publisher.

Jerry Martien

Poets have a lot of latitude when it comes to the role they play in a culture. They can chronicle or comment, entertain or enlighten or simply bear witness to the slice of time they occupy. Jerry Martien does all these things. An environmental and political activist in the Humboldt Region of Northern California for thirty years, he has labored as a carpenter, editor, teacher and board member of several organizations. He has taught creative writing and nature writing for the past seven years at Humboldt State University. His published work includes Shell Game, described as A True Account of Beads and Money in North America, and a collection of poetry, Pieces in Place.

Pieces in Place is a collection of poems that are best described in the opening lines of Martien's essay, "A Defense of Poetry (Is a Defense of Place:)"

"The poem arises from the ground of its making. By way of a human attention, deliberately placed there-- held there, till it is shaped by the rule of that ground. ... The poem surrounds us. The poet loiters deliberately in the dooryard, maintaining cultural access to that nourishing circumstance. Speaks on behalf of the still-living, still sacred grove, and labors to restore the springs to which we all go when thirsty."

Please welcome Jerry Martien

Win McCormack

McCormack was an honors graduate of Harvard College and earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon. He was editor of the New Oregon Publishers books Profiles of Oregon, Great Moments in Oregon History, and The Rajneesh Files.

Win McCormack is a major publisher in Oregon and the president of McCormack Communications. His latest publishing endeavor was a 1999 foray into creative writing when he launched Tin House Press and produced the first issue of Tin House literary journal, a serial named for the tin-covered Victorian home in Portland that acts as the journal’s West Coast headquarters. Tin House is a very upscale, intelligent, bi-coastal, book-size publication with offices in Manhattan and Northeast Portland. It publishes–as stated on the cover–Fiction, Poetry, Pilgrimages, Profiles, Lost Books, Food and other Obsessions. McCormack serves as the publication's editor-in-chief and publisher.

"This was a dream I had for many years, but it always seemed too impractical an undertaking," McCormack said. "I was sort of getting into my 50s and realized if I was going to do it, I should do it now." The idea of the upscale, well-designed quarterly, was to pay its writers well, present funky features, and not be too trendy.

McCormack’s own writings go back to his arrival in Portland from New York City when he earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon. He is also an honors graduate of Harvard College.

He has been investing in magazines since the 1960s when he helped create Mother Jones. He has been treasurer of Oregon Business Magazine since 1984, and is president of two publishing companies: New Oregon Publishers, and McCormack Communications. He is an official of the Democratic Party of Oregon, and has taught creative writing at the University of Oregon and the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.

McCormack's feature article, "Deconstructing the Election," appeared in the March 26, 2001 issue of The Nation.

www.tinhouse.com

Doug Marx

DOUG MARX is a poet, essayist, freelance journalist and teacher. His first book of poems, Sufficiency was a 1994 Oregon Book Awards nominee. His literary journalism includes dozens of profiles and interviews of literary figures such as Czeslaw Milosz, Carolyn Forché and Barry Lopez.

He is a frequent contributor to the Oregonian, Willamette Week, Writer's Northwest, Left Bank, and Publisher's Weekly. His poems have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Alaska Quarterly Review, Columbia, WILD DOG Literary Magazine, Willow Springs and many other literary journals.

Doug was a founding member of Northwest Writers Inc., and is a board member of Oregon Literary Arts. His eight-week workshop So You Want To Write, offered through Mt. Writers Series in Portland, begins this coming week. This class, he says, is for "closet scribblers" and helps students become acquainted with fiction, creative writing, nonfiction and poetry, in addition to encouraging their own writing. Doug has participated in the Portland Public Schools’ Writer-in-Residence program since 1996.

Doug is also a professional land surveyor, rabid poker player, and fine blues guitarist.

Judith Minty

Judith recently returned to her home in Michigan after a year as Visiting Professor/Poet in Residence for the creative writing program at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. She has taught in or been the visiting poet for the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, the University of California at Santa Cruz, Interlochen Center for the Arts, Syracuse University, even at the Muskegon Correction Facility in Michigan. Judith was also director of the Creative Writing program at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California for 12 years.

Her first book, Lake Songs And Other Fears, was recipient of the US Award of the International Poetry Forum in 1974. Her other full-length books are Yellow Dog Journal, In The Presence Of Mothers, and Dancing The Fault. Her chapbooks are Letters To My Daughters, Counting The Losses and The Mad Painter Poems. Judith’s poetry, essays and short stories have been published in numerous magazines and in over fifty anthologies.

In July, renowned poet Diane Wakoski suggested that Judith Minty be nominated Michigan state poet laureate instead of songwriter Bob Seger since Seger has never been considered a poet. Wakoski wrote: "Judith represents the state in a wonderful way. She’s a woman, which would be nice, a native Michigander, she is in love with the wilderness, and has a whole series of poems… about the Yellow Dog River in the Upper Peninsula."

Joseph Millar

JOSEPH MILLAR’s poetry reflects his life as a telephone installer, commercial fisherman and single father. He received a Masters degreein poetry from Johns Hopkins University and is the author of two chapbooks, Slow Dancer and Midlife: (Passionate Lives: Eight Autobiographical Poem Cycles). He received a 2003 National Endowment for the Arts grant and now teaches at Oregon State.

In 1995, his poetry won the Montalvo Biennial Poetry Competition, placed second in the National Writer’s Union Competition judged by Philip Levine, and was selected by Carolyn Forche for honorable mention in the Jacaranda Review Poetry Contest. His poetry has been published in Prairie Schooner, DoubleTake, Manoa, Shenandoah, Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, New Letters and Many Mountains Moving. His first book, Overtime, was published in 2001 by Eastern Washington University.

Joseph recently gave up his job as a telephone installation foreman to teach and now works for the Oregon Writer’s Workshop, the Oregon State Poetry Association, Mt. Hood Community College and the Vancouver School of Arts and Academics.

He is at work on a full-length manuscript titled Dark Harvest, which was a finalist for the Carnegie Mellon Award and the National Poetry Series for a first book. His seminar, Poetry of The Workplace, will be available through Eastern Washington University’s Summer Writer’s Conference in Tacoma.

The Memory Place

THE MEMORY PLACE — "Hilarious, Touching, Revealing" — was written by and stars a six-member cast: SUSAN BANYAS, LEANNE GRABEL, STEVE SANDER, WENDY WESTERWELLE, GREG BIELEMEIER, AND ELIZABETH TSCHALAER.

What does it mean to remember? The ancient cartographers found that to represent the world in perspective, they had to draw it in the shape of a heart. I began to notice in working with people on the poetry of their stories that landscape shaped memory in particular ways, and in this sense, shaped the character of the person remembering. Like the land itself, autobiography is a living, breathing, moving, changing dance.

-- writes Susan Banyas, co-founder of Dreams Wells Studio and the eclectic theatre, SO&SO&SO&SO, Inc., in Portland.

The Nye Beach Writers’ Series welcomes the six performers in "THE MEMORY PLACE," a choreographed literary performance. The show is a combination of f storytelling, dance, comedy, song and drama performed in Portland this past winter to sold-out audiences.

THE MEMORY PLACE layers film, dance and monologue into 10 scenes of memories. Normally, the Nye Beach Writers’ Series hosts just two writers each month, but in this Special Performance, we are privileged to experience a collaborative foray into words and linked pieces expressing perception and memory where love and food and landscape play prominent roles. The result is a tight and meaningful wander through deep conceptual waters presented in a mix of storytelling, dance, comedy, song and drama.

Susan Banyas, a writer and the director of Dreams Well Studio, spent the past several years developing a method for helping performers turn their own personal histories into performing material. Her title piece, which begins the show, incorporates dance into two love stories evoking 1940s San Francisco.

Elizabeth Tschalaer, a movement artist, performs her bilingual passage from Switzerland to Portland in "Between Places," a haunting and sparse memory drama.

Gregg Bielemeier, dancer and choreographer, recalls a Catholic holy day of his childhood in the dance monologue "Pilgrimage to Crooked Finger," which is as much about the physical images of a story as it is about the story itself. He also provides smooth dance cameos with his signature quirkiness and intuitive awareness of how movement reads on the stage.

Wendy Westerwelle, master storyteller, shines like a diva, casually fanning herself as she recounts the flamboyant characters of Storefront Theatre’s glory days and of her childhood summers at a Jewish resort community.

Steve Sander reflects on discovering the world of sensuality through literature in "The Burrough of Queens," as he recounts his first experiences of erotic literature in a tale woven around family life.

Leanne Grabel shows a polished craft in the beat-poetry saga "The Family That Fate Ate" and paints her landscape — 1950s Stockton, California -- in hilarious detail as she searches for a Bohemia paradise.

Jeff Meyers

Jeff was born in Miami, Florida in 1965 but grew up in a small fishing village on Long Island where he was subjected to all the awfulness the 70’s could bestow upon a teenager. From the joy of gas-rationing (his father owned several gas stations) to the hell of Top 40 Radio, he managed to bury himself in books, acted in as much theater as possible and spent the summer of 1977 going to see Star Wars thirteen times.

He attended the University of Illinois-Urbana on a scholarship, transferring from the Theater Department to a major in Animal Science to a degree in Microbiology, thus losing his scholarship. In his final two years as a senior, he discovered the joys of writing and film... and picked up a Minor in Cinematography.

In 1988, Jeff moved to Chicago and began working at Northwestern University in Genetic Analysis. He started writing screenplays with his best friend and became loosely affiliated with the Neo-Futurists Theater Company. He also started experimenting with poetry because he wanted to impress women.

In 1993, he moved to Portland so his wife could start her residency in surgery. In February 1994, The Portland Poetry Slam was founded and since then Jeff lead five teams through national competition, organized the 1996 National Poetry Slam (which was made into the documentary, SlamNation), established The Great Northwest Salmon Slam (now in its fourth year) and started a monthly show. He won Seattle’s Bumbershoot Poetry Slam in 1997.

Jeff is the co-founder of Theatre Vertigo and is a well-respected theatrical director in Portland and the author of two chapbooks, Come Over Here And Leave Me Alone and Half Empty. His latest screenplay, The Darkest Way is currently making the rounds in Hollywood.

His current projects include a play involving a religious cult, a manuscript of poetry based on the porno industry, moving his theater company into a new space and more screenwriting and directing. He makes his living as a molecular biologist.

www.theatrevertigo.org

Robert McDowell

Robert McDowell is the founder and executive director of STORY LINE PRESS. The mission of the press is to advance works that tell a story, works that fit into the "new formalism" and new narrative movements in poetry. The new formalists work in a traditional poetic framework, such as sonnets, formal rhyme schemes or blank verse. New narrative poets are interested in telling a story in verse.

Robert is also a poet and critic. His books include Sound and Form in Modern Poetry (with Harvey Gross, University of Michigan Press, 1996); The Reaper Essays (with Mark Jarman, Story Line Press 1996); The Pact, a poem published in limited edition by Aralia Press, 1996; The Diviners, a 71-page narrative poem published in 1995 by Peterloo Poets of England; Quiet Money, poems published in 1987 by Henry Holt & Co.; History, Hardware, & Romance, a fine art book published by Indiana State University and New Harmony Art Gallery in Indiana; and At the House of The Tin Man, a chapbook of 23 poems selected in an open national competition in 1983, published by The Chowder Press in Massachusetts.

Previously, he worked as an associate editor at CTB McGraw-Hill; a Ghostwriter for "Kids N Sports," a nationally syndicated column, Coordinator of the University of Southern California’s Reading Series, a writer-in-residence, and Assistant Professor of English at Indiana State (now the University of Southern Indiana. His formal education includes an MFA from Columbia University’s Graduate Writing Program and a BA from the University of California in Writing & Literature.

Story Line Press: www.storylinepress.com

His newest book, On Foot In Flames was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. www.pitt.edu/~press

Barbara La Morticella

For twelve years, BARBARA La MORTICELLA has been co-host with Walt Curtis of a weekly poetry show "Talking Earth," broadcast on KBOO radio in Portland. From the station’s control booth, she has interviewed almost every writer that ever stepped across Portland city limits. Barbara is also poetry editor of the Alliance, a progressive newspaper.

Her most recent collection, Rain on Waterless Mountain, poems about environment and love, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in 1997. Her work also appears in numerous literary magazines and anthologies including From Here We Speak the Oregon Literary Series anthology, and Women’s Struggles, Women’s Visions published by the Maud Kern Art Gallery in Eugene, OR. She has given hundreds of poetry readings on the east coast and in Washington, Oregon, and California. She was the editor of the Portland Poetry Festival anthology, and is co-editor of Portland Lights. In 1999, she received the very first Oregon grant given specifically for Oregon women poets.