PORT ANGELES — The North Coast Writers, a Port Angeles-based group of poets, memoirists and playwrights, will present well-traveled poet Andrew Rahal in a free reading at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
Rahal, an alumnus of Vanderbilt University in Nashville and cofounder of the Nashville Review, now lives in Forks and teaches at the Quileute Tribal School in LaPush.
He’ll offer his poems at at Wine on the Waterfront, the all-ages venue upstairs in The Landing mall at 115 E. Railroad Ave.; listeners are invited to come early for beverages and appetizers.
Rahal, who spent a year bouncing between teaching in Nashville and an internship with Copper Canyon Press in Port Townsend, also served as an AmeriCorps volunteer, working with children in the Port Angeles School District and the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe before moving to the West End to teach.
Also an assistant poetry editor at Narrative magazine, Rahal has published his writing in journals such as Silk Road Review, Danse Macabre and Nashville Arts Magazine, and has read his work at art and literary festivals including a Center for Book Arts event in New York City.
Rahal is also an avid surfer who devotes his free time to the waves along the Pacific coast and Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Tuesday night Rahal will read from No New Wilderness, his manuscript in progress.
He calls it an exploration of “our cultural relationship to place and land, those regions both new and familiar.”
In addition, Rahal will read from a working translation of poems by the Moroccan protest writer Mohammed Khair Eddine, whom he discovered in 2008 while studying in Ifrane, Morocco.
“The translation will showcase Eddine’s modern and radical poetry, born out of witness to both the political turmoils of a French-occupied Morocco and the country’s struggle toward modernization since gaining independence,” Rahal said.
North Coast Writers spokeswoman Mary-Alice Boulter anticipates a lively night.
“I am personally excited about this evening, after hearing Andrew read. He’s a dynamic talent,” she said.
For information about Tuesday’s event and the North Coast Writers, phone 360-457-6410.
Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
