PORT TOWNSEND — “Road Trip.” “Water Children.” “Now that Mornings Are Cold Again.” “Women’s Fashion.” “Cycling.”
The poems, stories and letters to friends in Kathryn Hunt’s new book, “Seed Wheel,” vary in topic from time travel to family members to the four seasons. And this Saturday, three days after the autumnal equinox, Hunt will get together with three other local poets to give a free outdoor reading.
“Fresh air — we aim to have a rockin’ good time,” Hunt said of the 6 p.m. event at Pope Marine Park, on Water Street at Madison Street downtown. Joining her will be Gary Copeland Lilley, Matthew Nienow and Lauren Davis, each to offer 10 minutes or so of their own poetry.
The three are “spectacular poets,” added Hunt; “I’m a huge fan of their work.”
Camille Seaman’s photo of Kansas graces the cover of Port Townsend poet Kathryn Hunt’s new book. Hunt will join three other local poets for a reading at Pope Marine Park on Saturday. (photo by Camille Seaman)
Hunt added that, yes, poetry is a salve in her life. Looking inside herself for what she wants to say — “that in itself can be healing,” she said.
In the writing process, you can find something you’ve forgotten or misplaced, Hunt believes, or you might discover something in yourself for the first time.
“The writer is the one who receives the poem or the story first. It’s an amazing thing to be on the receiving end,” she said. “Art enables me to reconsider my life and its meaning, and what I most deeply hold to my heart.”
“Seed Wheel,” on Lost Horse Press, is Hunt’s second book of poems. Her other occupations range from waitress to shipscaler, short-order cook, food-bank coordinator and film director. Her documentaries include “No Place Like Home,” about a Seattle family who live in hotels and homeless shelters, and “Take This Heart,” about three boys’ experiences in foster care.
Several pieces in “Seed Wheel” look back on Hunt’s youth as an idealist and as a student: “We lived by column inches, hermetic/ deadlines, the pleasure of our names/above the fold,” she writes in “The Journalism Student 1968.”
“Hunched over stand-up/tabletops, our fingers capped with cooling wax,/we wielded dull Xacto knives, pressed yards of adjective -free copy to the page/with rubber rollers. Conjured images / in a closet in the basement, a red light/to let secret lives float up, unharmed,/ in dark. Our photographs, small/flags in black and white.”
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Jefferson County senior reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3509 or durbanidelapaz@peninsuladailynews.com.
Port Townsend’s Kathryn Hunt has published “Seed Wheel,” a new poetry collection.
