PORT TOWNSEND — Roger Dunsmore, a distinguished poet from Montana, will read from his new book “On The Chinese Wall, New and Selected Poems, 1966-2018” at 7 tonight.
The reading will be at Port Townsend’s Quimper Unitarian Fellowship, 2333 San Juan Ave.
It is free and open to the public.
Dunsmore taught humanities, wilderness studies, and Native America literature at the University of Montana (Missoula and Dillon) from 1963-2013.
He trained teachers for the largest Native American high school in the U.S. on the Navaho Reservation, 1988-89, and was faculty exchange fellow between University of Montana and Shanghai International Studies University in 1991 and ’97.
His book “Earth’s Mind: Essays in Native Literature,” was published by University of New Mexico Press, 1997.
“Blood House,” his second volume of poems, 1987, was selected by the Yellowstone Arts Center, Billings, for its Regional Writer’s Project “to promote fine writing about the American West.”
His book of China poems, “Tiger Hill,” was awarded an Individual Artists Fellowship from the Montana Arts Council in 2001. Humanities Montana selected him as one of their Humanities Heroes in 2012.
“On the Chinese Wall,” his fifth volume of poetry, was published by Drumlummon Institute of Helena, Mont., last September.
“Here, among echoes of Archilochos and Meister Eckhart, can be found a poem for a loose ram, a poem for a woman kissing all the icons in the Byzantine Museum in Athens, a poem for a trapper in Montana whose pet wolverine loved Oreo cookies, and a man named Mike Blue Horse, ‘best night-hawker on the Hi-line,’ dancing solo in a bar in Montana,” according to organizers.
Dunsmore has been short-listed to the governor for the position of Montana Poet Laureate twice, in 2005 and 2007.
For more information, contact Dick Conway at 360-379-1046 or richard_conway_2000@yahoo.com.
