PORT ANGELES — A number of events to honor the late poet and writer Raymond Carver are planned Thursday during the inaugural Raymond Carver Day.
Peninsula College will host the poet laureate of Washington state, Tod Marshall, who will read at 12:35 p.m. Thursday in the Little Theater at the college’s Port Angeles campus at 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd. as part of the Studium Generale series.
Carver’s widow, poet Tess Gallagher, will join Marshall on the stage for the midday reading, and the two will share Carver’s poetry as well as their own original works. This event is free and open to the public.
“It’s a great way to celebrate Raymond Carver,” Gallagher said.
“[He] wrote in a way which is accessible to so many and poignant enough to touch hearts in every corner of the world and in 28 languages.”
Marshall will also offer a poetry workshop from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Thursday.
The workshop will be held on the college’s Port Angeles campus, with the location to be determined. Space is limited to 20 participants, and they must preregister by emailing kreavey@pencol.edu.
Later Thursday, Marshall will join Gallagher and other poets, friends of Carver’s and Peninsula College faculty for a celebration of pie and poetry at 3:30 p.m. next to Carver’s gravesite at Ocean View Cemetery, 3127 W. 18th St. in Port Angeles.
“It’s not a sad occasion at all,” Gallagher said. “It’s really wonderful to have his spirit with us and to be together out there under the sky, near the water where he used to fish with me.”
Pie and Poetry, founded during the Raymond Carver Festival, which was held at Peninsula College on his 75th birthday, has become a yearly tradition at Ocean View Cemetery.
Pie was his favorite dessert, Gallagher said.
Peninsula College faculty poets, friends of Carver and Gallagher, and former state poet laureate Kathleen Flenniken have joined Gallagher in past years to honor the writer, his poems and his love of pie.
Carver is an internationally recognized short story writer, poet and essayist who made his home in Port Angeles for the last decade of his life. He was buried in Ocean View Cemetery on Aug. 2, 1988. Carver wrote many of his poems and stories in Port Angeles.
Port Angeles Mayor Patrick Downie read a proclamation during the Port Angeles City Council meeting May 16 that named May 25 of each year Raymond Carver Day.
Gallagher invited Downie and the city council to join her Thursday at 3:30 p.m. at Ocean View Cemetery, where the proclamation will be read once again, followed by an abundance of pie and poetry.
The event is free and open to the public.
Gallagher encouraged people to celebrate Raymond Carver Day in any way they see fit, whether it’s attending any of the events or just going to a place he wrote about.
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Reporter Jesse Major can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56250, or at jmajor@peninsula dailynews.com.
