PORT TOWNSEND — Song-writer and poet John Paul O’Connor will offer songs, poems and stories when he performs at the Quimper Grange for “An Evening of Song, Protest and Hope” on Friday.
O’Connor will perform “songs, poems and stories of struggle, hope, hitchhiking and love” at 7:30 p.m. at the grange hall at 1219 Corona St., organizers said in a press release.
Admission at the door will be a suggested $15 with no one turned away for inability to pay. Proof of vaccination must be presented for entry.
O’Connor was a mainstay of the Seattle music and political scene in the 1980s, when his debut album release brought him to national attention, organizers said.
He, and often the singing quartet Shays Rebellion, were regularly heard performing throughout Puget Sound for a wide range of causes, from labor to anti-apartheid, to solidarity with revolutions in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
His album, Songs for Our Times, was named by the Washington Post as one of the year’s best when it was released.
O’Connor’s poetry has been published in “Peregrine,” “Atlanta Review” and “Columbia Review,” among scores of literary journals and magazines.
In 2015, he won the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry for his first book of poems, “Half the Truth.”
His most recent album, Rare Songs, “is a welcome return of one of our best and most humane songwriters,” John McCutcheon said.
Former Northwind Poetry Series coordinators Sheila Bender, Sharon Carter, Gayle Kaune and Linda Robertson will open the second set with poems in harmony with the evening’s themes.
