PORT TOWNSEND — Directors of two upcoming Centrum Foundation workshops at Fort Worden State Park say they’re miffed over having been abruptly given their walking papers.
One of the two made the parting immediate in advance of the Port Townsend Writers Conference scheduled later this month.
Nationally known Port Townsend poet Sam Hamill and renowned jazz saxophonist Bud Shank of Arizona separately received letters of termination from Centrum, which receives partial funding from the state.
Centrum Executive Director Thatcher Bailey on Monday said “a change in philosophy” led to the terminations.
Hamill, founding editor of Copper Canyon Press, said Monday that he quit as program director of the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference Reading & Lectures Series scheduled July 15-25.
Hamill’s picture still appears on the Centrum Web site advertising the conference, but the poet said he isn’t interested in mending broken fences.
“I’m not asking anyone to take any action on behalf,” he wrote in a “Dear Friends” e-mail.
Hamill made the e-mail available to Peninsula Daily News on Monday.
Busy with other projects
“I know what I have given, and I am deeply grateful for the support I was given,” Hamill wrote.
“I am busy with Copper Canyon Press and Poets Against the War.”
Hamill thinks personalities rather than a change in philosophy is behind his ouster.
“Thatcher Bailey and I have a history,” Hamill said in a phone interview Monday.
When asked earlier Monday if Hamill was mad about the change in his status, Bailey said, “You’ll have to call Sam,” and didn’t mention that Hamill had resigned.
Hamill’s e-mail outlines clashes he claims to have had while Bailey was publisher of Copper Canyon Press, which has a permanent residency with Centrum.
Cooperation was urged
Hamill said he offered an olive branch after Bailey was named Centrum executive director earlier this year.
“If we cooperate, the (Writers Conference) program will benefit; if we do not, it will suffer,” Hamill said he told Bailey.
“On March 17, he wrote that he was ‘thinking on it and will get back to (me) in a couple of days.’
“Three months later, I received his letter of dismissal, asking me to stay on and in essence celebrate myself at this conference.”
Bailey on Monday evening claimed that Hamill’s message of March 17 also included an offer to resign at the end of this year’s conference.
“That’s not true,” Hamill said in response. “He always wants to have everything both ways.”
Changing Centrum needs
Bailey said the decision to replace artistic directors was based on Centrum’s needs. He denied there were personal reasons behind Hamill’s dismissal.
Shank plans to take part in the jazz workshop planned for July 25-Aug. 1, but said the next workshop in his name will be in a new location in 2005, he said Monday.
Shank isn’t upset that Centrum’s board of directors decided to make a change, but he’s angered by the way the change was handled.
“It’s not what they did, but how,” Shank said Monday during a telephone interview from his Tucson, Ariz., home.
“They sent me a letter saying my services were terminated. It’s not the best way to do things like that.”
Shank said he didn’t mind that Centrum officials had decided to make the change, which was publicly announced in a news release issued Friday.
“Naturally, I would not have been there for the next 10 years,” Shank said. “Sooner or later I would be leaving.”
Shank termed Bailey’s handling of the matter “inexperienced and provincial.”
