The William Stafford Commemorative Birthday Event at Central Library: Readings & Presentations

Central Library hosted readings and presentations commemorating Oregon's late poet laureate on Sunday, January 25, 2009.Featured participants included: Jim Scheppke presents "William Stafford and the Oregon Poetry Collection." Mr. Scheppke has been State Librarian of Oregon since 1991. Ellen Louise Hart and Holly Springfield present "Where the Right Word Again Begins Time": William Stafford and Emily Dickinson. Ms. Hart writes about Emily Dickinson's manuscripts, and about prosody and the visual line in Dickinson's poetry and correspondences. Ms. Springfield is a meditation teacher, storyteller and independent student and teacher of Emily Dickinson's poetry and founder of the Portland Chapter of the Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS). Don Colburn is a health reporter for The Oregonian. Kirsten Rian was recently nominated for inclusion in the 2008 Best New Poets anthology. Joseph A. Soldati, host for the program, has published numerous poems and essays in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, including most recently The Litchfield Review, The Enigmatist, and Writers Dojo. His poem, "Elegy" will appear in the forthcoming (April 2009) anthology Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude. Target Audience: Adults