PORT ANGELES — Facebook posts-turned-poetry, a fond look back at people left behind, lighthearted “sonnettes” and the sound of a chant — like a November rainstorm, they will pour together into one event Saturday night.
The 16th annual Reading for Hunger Relief, a convergence of short stories and poems from local writers, is set for 7 p.m. Saturday at the Port Angeles Library, 2210 S. Peabody St.
Admission is $5, or $10 with a chapbook of the evening’s writings, and all proceeds benefit the Sequim and Port Angeles food banks.
More than a dozen local writers will offer their reflections on past trials and triumphs, present-day life on the Olympic Peninsula and, in Angie Huckstep’s case, the future for her young daughter.
Huckstep, 31, is a single mother to Tabetha, 6, and Zeal, 5.
One day, she asked friends on Facebook what advice they might give to the young women and girls in their lives.
The advice flowed in and led to “Dear Daughter,” a poem for Tabetha.
It’s one of two poems Huckstep will read Saturday night, and “while it strays from my normal style of writing, I really love this piece,” said the poet.
“The bits of wisdom were all gleaned from friends and friends of friends” writing on Facebook.
Also during Saturday’s event, Huckstep will present “My Religion,” a poem she wrote while her toes were buried in the sand in Port Townsend.
Huckstep is a training coordinator at Peninsula College, as well as a spoken-word performance artist.
She discovered the art form while searching for new ways to teach writing to teenagers incarcerated at the Green Hill Training School, a state facility in Lacey.
Working with them on both writing and performance, Huckstep fell in love with the sound of the words and with the passion of the poets.
PC writers
A cluster of others from Peninsula College will take part in the Reading for Hunger Relief.
They include former Californian and Arkansan Michael Mills, Indian Voices writing group mentor Kate Reavey and traveling English teacher Jim Fisher, who pens those 14- to 20-line comedies he calls “sonnettes.”
Medical assistant program coordinator Jen Gouge, also a novelist; self-described “hard-core nature lover” Kate Goschen; and Mark Twain scholar Mark Valentine are other college faculty members on the bill.
Retired professor Charlotte Warren, whose poetry collection is titled Gandhi’s Lap, will also read.
Helping bring the array together is Janet Lucas, the Port Angeles-born waitress-turned-Ph.D. who teaches writing at the college.
She’s chosen to read Stanley Kunitz’s “The Layers,” a poem about the people we used to know but whom we’ve left behind.
These people are a tribe, Kunitz writes; they’re the layers of our lives.
Jerry Kraft, a poet and playwright who moved to Port Angeles seven years ago, is yet another of Saturday’s readers.
North Coast Writers
He’s part of the North Coast Writers Group, invited in to the event for the first time this year.
“The poems I’ll be reading are not based on someone else’s hunger but on my own experience of being out of money, physically incapacitated or generally in a condition of need,” Kraft noted.
One of his poems, “That We Not Be Lost,” is in a form called a pantoum that he said sounds much like a chant.
Other North Coast Writers to offer their words are Suzann Bick, a New Orleanian working on a short-story collection titled Twelve-Stepping through the French Quarter; Pushcart Prize-nominated poet Sally Albiso; prose and poetry writer Mary-Alice Boulter; and Olympic National Park wildlife biologist Patrick Loafman.
“There is such a variety of human experiences and styles,” Lucas said, adding that the readers range in age from 30-something to 70-plus.
So in a sense, Saturday’s reading is not unlike a campfire gathering, she mused.
“We’re storytelling creatures,” Lucas said.
And this is a chance for people to connect through their personal tales.
To find out more about Reading for Hunger Relief, phone its co-sponsor, Port Book and News, at 360-452-6367.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
