What: TCC’s Second Annual Poetry in the Harbor Event
Where: TCC Gig Harbor
When: 6-9 p.m. April 18
Registration: $25. Register here.
Featuring readings by four local poets, this National Poetry Month celebration is open to everyone. Emcee Allen Braden, a TCC Literature Professor and author of “A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood” and “Elegy in the Passive Voice,” will introduce:
Asha Berkes
Asha Berkes is a poet and educator living in Tacoma, Washington. They are the Director for Educational Partnerships for Write253 and teach poetry at Tacoma School of the Arts. Find them riding his bike around town or sitting by the Sound gluing leaves into their journal.
Kathleen Byrd
Kathleen Byrd was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest and has lived in Olympia for over 30 years. She is a mother, daughter, sister, auntie, and a teacher of writing at South Puget Sound Community College. She holds an MFA from Western Washington University. Her poetry explores insights garnered from deep relationships to place, attention to dreams, and a longing for matrilineal wisdom. She co-authored two chapbooks of postcard poems in correspondence with Dan Leahy, Hand it Over, 1st and 2nd editions. Her poems have appeared in Subjectiv, UnspokenNW, Crosscurrents, Pontoon, Works in Progress, The City of Olympia’s Bus Stop poetry, and Godiva Speaks. Her chapbook collection, Hold the Babies was a finalist for Finishing Line Press’s Emerging Women’s Voices chapbook contest. She was awarded a Sue Boynton Poetry Award in Bellingham in 2021 and is the current poet laureate of Olympia, Washington.
Josie Emmons Turner
Josie Emmons Turner’s poems are most recently published in The Madrona Project IV: The Empty Bowl Cookbook, The Madrona Project V: Art in a Public Voice, and Now That You Are Gone from This World (Poet’s Choice). She has taught poetry workshops to youth and adults and is a contributor to West Sound Magazine. She lives on a beautiful estuary feeding into Gig Harbor with her show dog, Gabbie, gardens, practices French cooking, and is a former Tacoma Poet Laureate (2011-2013).
Michael Haeflinger
Michael Haeflinger is the author of Low Static Rage (Blue Cactus Press, 2019), the chapbooks The Days Before and Love Poem for the Everyday (Dog On A Chain Press, 2014 and 2011), and the audio book Let’s Don’tBe Crazy (2016). He lives in Tacoma.
