Diane Averill

Two of Diane Averill’s books, Branches Doubled Over With Fruit, and Beautiful Obstacles, were finalists for Oregon Book Awards. Beautiful Obstacles was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 1999, she received an Oregon Literary Arts grant in poetry. Diane’s earlier books include the chapbooks Turtle Sky and Ella Featherstone Poems: A Sellwood Sequence.

Diane is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Oregon and was an assistant poetry editor of The Northwest Review. She taught poetry writing for five years in the Talented and Gifted Program for the Portland Public Schools and is currently is a professor of creative writing, poetry and English composition at Clackamas Community College.

Her writing has been included in several compilations, including "From Where We Speak," an anthology of Oregon poets published by Oregon State University, and "Pacific Northwestern Spiritual Poetry," published by Tsunami Inc. She has work in the upcoming anthology of ghazals written by English-speaking people, tentatively called "Ravishing Disunities" published by the University of Massachusetts.

(Ghazals are two-line poems, each stanza standing on its own. Ghazals seldom exceed twelve couplets, averaging seven. The term originated in Iran in the Tenth Century based on a Persian’s verse form and was carried to India in the Twelfth Century by the Moghuls. When Persian gave way to Urdu as the language of poetry and culture in India, the ghazal gained popularity. Although the ghazal deals with the whole spectrum of human experience, its central concern is love. Ghazal is an Arabic word that literally means "talking to women."

Poetry doesn’t have to be serious business. Each of us is a beginner each time we sit down to a blank piece of paper. Keeping this in mind helps us not get stuffy.

-- Diane Averill

Anita Sullivan

Anita Sullivan’s newest book, The Family Piano, is a collection of forty short essays first broadcast on National Public Radio’s "Performance Today" from 1989 to 1999. These essays are about piano tuning and performance; some are funny, some serious. Anita is also the author of The Seventh Dragon: The Riddle of Equal Temperament, a book on the philosophy of piano tuning which won the Western States Book Award for creative nonfiction in 1986, and I Hear the Crickets Laughing, a chapbook of poems published in 1996.

Anita was born in Boston, grew up in Florida, California and South Carolina, received an MA in English in 1970 from Clemson University in South Carolina, and has lived in Corvallis since 1981 where she tunes pianos for a living.

In 1976, she had the chance to become a piano tuner’s apprentice and immediately switched careers from teaching and journalism to full-time piano tuning. She has also written articles and lectured on early keyboard temperaments–- a concept I am sure she will explain. In addition to writing, Anita translates Greek poetry and prose. She is working on a novel about a piano tuner who tunes pianos in a haunted music building.

Diana Cohen

Diana Cohen was born and raised in northern New Jersey and attended Oberlin College in Ohio where she majored in creative writing and women’s studies. She moved to Portland in 1986 and has held myriad jobs in various fields including DJ, janitor, carpenter, bookstore manager, and mediator. She published her first collection of poems, Grasp: Selected Poems from the First 30 Years, in 1995.

Since then, she has been focusing on her moneymaking career, which is not poetry. She earns her living in corporate America as a fabrication technician in a microchip facility. She also recently received her associate of general studies degree, and is currently working towards a bachelors degree in management and organizational communication through Marylhurst College.

Diana has read and performed her work all over Portland including at Portland’s International Women’s Day celebration, and in other states such as at her mom's Unitarian Church in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, in New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, and at political events such as the anti-Oregon Citizens Alliance Walk for Love and Justice.

Her work has been published in Spoon River Poetry Review, Rain City Review, and three anthologies: Sister/Stranger, The Unitarian Universalist Poets, and the soon to be released Between Our Lips. She won an honorable mention in the National Billee Murray Denny Contest.

Diana has performed her poetry in the 3-woman show Dykes Using Our Mouths: Revolutionary Poetics, in Love Cabaret at Dreamswell Studio, and for The Way Back, an arts event for women healing from abuse.

Charles Potts

Charles Potts is the founder and president of Tsunami, Inc., publisher of The Temple, a quarterly of contemporary poetry in Chinese, Spanish and English. He is the author of twenty-two books, and his work has been included in dozens of anthologies. He is a frequent guest on radio and TV, and is heavily involved in business, politics and volunteer work in his hometown of Walla Walla, Washington. Charles has also been chair of numerous poetry festivals for over least three decades, an instructor in computer processing of Chinese and Oriental languages in China, and part-time instructor at Walla Walla Community College. He is also an interim instructor at Whitman College and the Free University of Seattle.

Yesterday we received a copy of his newest book Nature Lovers. On the back cover is a quote from Ronald Koertge, which I will read to you. "When my conscience goes south for the winter, I turn to the fearless Charles Potts, a moralist with a sense of humor. If he had an 800 number I’d call him every day!"

Charles was born in Idaho Falls in 1943 and raised on a ranch east of Mackay, Idaho. He graduated from Idaho State University in Pocatello in 1965 with a BA in English has been writing poetry ever since. Three books were published last year: Little Lord Shiva: The Berkeley Poems, Lost River Mountain, and Fascist Hiakus.

Charles founded Litmus Inc., which published eighteen books in Salt Lake City including Charles Bukowski’s Poems Written Before Jumping Out Of An 8-Story Window in 1968. He was the Northwest representative to Chinese Computer Communications, Inc., and to the Pinxxiee Corporation from 1988 to 1993 in Beijing and Changsha, China. In 1994, Charles received the Distinguished Professional Achievement Award from the College of Arts and Sciences of Idaho State University. From 1995 to 1997, he lived in Japan where he wrote a newspaper column, "Japan’s Political Choices" for the Kyushu Gleaner.

Charles is also an Accomplished Toastmaster, an investment real estate broker, and a Master Practitioner in the Society of Neuro Linguistic Programming.

Copies of SOME of Charles’ books are available at the back table. He will be glad to autograph and sell copies during intermission.

www.thetemplebookstore.com

Zoa Smith

ZOA SMITH (September 19, 1997 AND June 17, 2000)

Zoa Smith is best known for her experimentations in word and sound. Her talent for compiling macabre details of city living is calculated to startle, amuse and shock. Drawing on the conventions of storytelling, performance poetry and dark humor, Zoa's unusual show holds her audiences twitchlessly transfixed. Zoa Smith was a featured author early on, when the Writer's Series was held in Yachats. She had the town chirping about her spoken word and musical accompaniment for days afterward as people gathered at the town's post office to express their delight and fascination with such a startling personality.

Zoa was awarded the 1994 Lilla Jewel Award for Oregon Women Artists by The McKenzie River Foundation for her multi-arts achievements and for the creation of a spoken word form called "Talkapella" which merges storytelling, lyrical poetry and sound performance. Talkapella literally means "talking musically" words are chosen because of how they sound and are arranged with attention to spoken rhythm. Zoa's stylized delivery is riddled with alliteration, puns, irony and humor. She creates her own "impure" poetic diction, combining scientific terminology with street slang, wordplay, strong rhythmic patterns, and post-modern philosophy. Her mesmerizing style, mind-bending content and innovative sound/music creations have earned her the reputation of a performance icon in the local arts community.

Zoa says "For twenty years I've been trying to write the perfect poem. Wouldn't it be cool to change the world as we know it, alter history or put a ripple in the cosmic consciousness through a single poem? My goal is to achieve this in time for the Writers' Series show. Newport would have to change her name to Newportico."

Ken Kesey

Ken Kesey, cultural and literary icon, is the author of One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion, as well as children's books, screenplays, articles, and several other novels.

Kesey grew up in Springfield, Oregon, graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Speech and Communications and received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to enroll in the Creative Writing program at Stanford. During his college years he volunteered at a Veterans Administration hospital in an experimental program involving mind-altering drugs.

Kesey's home-grown parties evolved into 1960s San Francisco day-glo "happenings" and "acid tests" with light shows, body painting, exotic costumes, strobe lights, eastern mysticism, sexual mayhem, and eventually a hook-up with Jerry Garcia's band "The Grateful Dead." In the summer of 1964, Kesey purchased a 1939 school bus, painted it psychedelic, and took the Merry Prankster crew on a road trip to New York. Neal Cassady (made famous as Dean Moriarty in "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac) was the driver. The rest, as they say, is history.

In recent decades, Ken Kesey has been writing, directing and performing plays including "Where's Merlin?" (toured England for the 1999 solar eclipse), and "Twister: a Musical Catastrophe for the Millennium's End." Kesey was awarded the CES Wood Retrospective Award honoring his lifetime achievements at the Oregon Book Awards ceremony in November 1999.

"I think it’s important for writers to get out there on the road and read their stuff to the audience," Kesey said. "I see performance as a "Thing." Performance is a form of publication. Performance is when you go public. And publication of literature is the point. When we go over on the coast to Newport in April to do a "Thing" in front of the public, that’s publication." — Ken Kesey.

http://www.intrepidtrips.com/

Tom Nattell

TOM NATTELL, CHARLIE ROSSITER and DAN WILCOX are friends who share the idea that poetry should be part of society rather than apart from it. Relevant, communicative and above all, honest. As they put it, "We’re trying to help more people find out how neat poetry is."

The 3 GUYS FROM ALBANY became a formal group 1993 and have performed their work throughout the Northeast and Midwest in coffee houses, bars, libraries, community centers, at colleges, and on street corners, mostly in towns named Albany.

Their Pacific Coast tour included a benefit performance for the Albany Regional Museum and West Albany High School on Thursday, a show at Café Lena in Portland last night, here in Newport tonight, Grassroots Books in Corvallis tomorrow, and at the Salem Book Bin on Monday, followed by a LIVE interview on KBOO radio’s "Talking Earth" show in Portland. Then they return home to New York.

DAN WILCOX’s poems have been published in a variety of small press magazines and anthologies. He is also a photographer who has accumulated what he refers to as the "largest photo collection of unknown poets in the world."

TOM NATTELL is an environmental and peace activist who believes in using poetry and the other arts to advance peace, justice and a sane approach to the environment. He originated and hosts Albany’s oldest continuous open mic series.

CHARLIE ROSSITER, producer and host of Poetry Motel TV, has performed on KPFA in San Francisco, at the Kent State Gathering of Poets in Ohio, the Forest Gathering of Poets in Eugene, Oregon, and he helped organize all-day readings at the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. He is also the co-creator of poetrypoetry.com, a brand new international audio poetry website. With links to major poetry sites in Australia, Canada and the UK already in place, poetrypoetry.com is aiming to become the premiere world poetry "gateway" site by leading visitors to the best sites on the globe for English-language poetry. The "3 Guys from Albany" will tape tonight’s open mike session for inclusion on this website.

3 Guys from Albany

TOM NATTELL, CHARLIE ROSSITER and DAN WILCOX are friends who share the idea that poetry should be part of society rather than apart from it. Relevant, communicative and above all, honest. As they put it, "We’re trying to help more people find out how neat poetry is."

The 3 GUYS FROM ALBANY became a formal group 1993 and have performed their work throughout the Northeast and Midwest in coffee houses, bars, libraries, community centers, at colleges, and on street corners, mostly in towns named Albany.

Their Pacific Coast tour included a benefit performance for the Albany Regional Museum and West Albany High School on Thursday, a show at Café Lena in Portland last night, here in Newport tonight, Grassroots Books in Corvallis tomorrow, and at the Salem Book Bin on Monday, followed by a LIVE interview on KBOO radio’s "Talking Earth" show in Portland. Then they return home to New York.

DAN WILCOX’s poems have been published in a variety of small press magazines and anthologies. He is also a photographer who has accumulated what he refers to as the "largest photo collection of unknown poets in the world."

TOM NATTELL is an environmental and peace activist who believes in using poetry and the other arts to advance peace, justice and a sane approach to the environment. He originated and hosts Albany’s oldest continuous open mic series.

CHARLIE ROSSITER, producer and host of Poetry Motel TV, has performed on KPFA in San Francisco, at the Kent State Gathering of Poets in Ohio, the Forest Gathering of Poets in Eugene, Oregon, and he helped organize all-day readings at the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. He is also the co-creator of poetrypoetry.com, a brand new international audio poetry website. With links to major poetry sites in Australia, Canada and the UK already in place, poetrypoetry.com is aiming to become the premiere world poetry "gateway" site by leading visitors to the best sites on the globe for English-language poetry. The "3 Guys from Albany" will tape tonight’s open mike session for inclusion on this website.

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.

Dorianne Laux

Dorianne Laux, born in 1952 in Augusta, Maine, is of Irish, French and Algonquin Indian heritage. She began writing seriously in her early twenties, after her daughter was born. As a single mother, she worked as a housecleaner, gas station manager, TV Guide salesperson, cook in a sanitarium, and doughnut holer. She returned to school to earn a BA in English from Mills College in 1988 and for six years she worked in the Poets in the Schools program in Berkeley and Oakland. Eventually, she moved to Eugene to teach at the University of Oregon and is currently Associate Professor and Director of the University’s Program in Creative Writing.

Dorianne has published two collections of poetry, Awake and What We Carry, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She also co-wrote The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry which was chosen as an alternative selection by the Book of the Month Club, Quality Paperbacks and Writer's Digest. Her poem, "The Shipfitter's Wife" was chosen by Robert Bly for inclusion in The Best American Poetry 1999. Her work can also be heard on National Public Radio's "The Writer's Almanac" hosted by Garrison Keillor.

Her third book, Music in the Morning, is scheduled for publication this year. Presently she is at work on a libretto with composer Wally Brill. As for honors, Dorianne won a Pushcart Prize for Poetry and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the National Endowment for the Arts.

When asked about the confessional nature of her poetry during C.K. Tower’s interview on the Perihelion website, Dorianne replied, "I am often afraid of how much I love my daughter, how much I trust my husband, how helpless I am in the midst of my own hatred and anger, how terrified I am of death. And so, I watch for the stories that will tell these feelings and thoughts, and sometimes it's not the whole story but merely an image: a boat moored to a dock, the gesture a stranger made before walking into a room. Then I confess what that meant to me using the many and varied resistances of poetry. As soon as you begin to pay as much attention to the language as to what you are trying to say, you've set a challenge for yourself that denies the simplicity of confession."