WPA presents The Loganberry Festival July 29 & 30

Washington Poets Association is pleased to partcipate in The Loganberry Festival at Whidbey Island's Greenbank Farm. There are craft and food booths, wine tasting, loganberry picking, lots of live music on the main stage AND poetry. The Festival runs from 10 AM to 5 PM daily, and admission is FREE!

Loganberry Poets Presented by the Washington Poets Association And Greenbank Farm

The Poetry Stage is located in front of the Jim Davis House and begins at noon both Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Don't forget the Open Mic sessions. Signups occur throughout the afternoon. Come on out and particpate!

12:00 - 12:10 Announcements, Signup for Open Mic, Introduction

12:10 - 12:30 Don Kentop

Don Kentop is an award winning poet, completed the University of Washington Writers program, was a 2004 Jack Straw Writer, a 2005 Seattle Poet Populist Finalist, and appears in five poetry anthologies including Tattoos on Cedar and Mute Note Earthward. He is a Washington Poets Association Board Member.

12:30 Announcements + Open Mic Sign-ups

12:35 - 12:55 Nancy Dahlberg

Nancy Dahlberg, a Seattle poet with roots in Chicago, serves on the advisory board of PoetsWest and is Membership Chair of the Washington Poets Association. She has been the featured poet in PoetsWest at Seattle's Frye Art Museum, and was a finalist in last year's Seattle Poet Populist competition. Her poems have been published in many literary journals, appeared in Seattle's Poetry on Buses 2004 and anthologized in Poets Table Anthology and Mute Note Earthward.

12:55 - 1:15 Open Mic (5 to 6 open mics less than 4 minutes each)

1:20 - 1:40 Jed Myers

Jed Myers is a Seattle Poet and musician whose work has been on NPR and in literary journals and magazines like Raven Chronicles, Poetica and Forum. He's also been co-editor (with Koon Woon) of Chrysanthemum. He has a poem in the new WPA Anthology Tatoos on Cedar. He's just joined the board of the Washington Poets Association as well.

1:40 Introduction + Announcement for Open Mics sign up

1:45 - 2:05 Victory Lee Schouten

Originally from Central Washington's Yakima Valley, Victory Lee Schouten has made her home on Whidbey Island for the past seventeen years. President of the Washington Poets Association, Chair of the WPA's annual Burning Word poetry festival, Victory is passionately engaged serving poetry and community. She has been published in various periodicals and anthologies and has published two poetry collections, Wolf Love, 2000 Great Path Publishing, and Snapshots from a Moving Life, 2005 Walter Shoe Press, as well as several spoken word CDs. She been a featured reader at Seattle's Frye Museum, Tacoma's Distinguished Writers Series, and at many regional venues.

2:05 - 2:25 Molly Larson Cook

Molly Larson Cook is a Langley poet, playwright and novelist. Although she's a northwest native, she's lived and worked on both coasts in Massachusetts, Maine, Washington and Oregon. In 1995 she was a Fellow at the Fishtrap Writers Conference and in 1998, she was awarded the Dibner Fellowship for Fiction by the Maine Community Foundation. In 2001, she was a juror for the Maine Arts Commission's literature and performance awards. Molly read her poetry for the 2006 Choochokam Festival, and this fall, Molly will teach two classes for Whidbey Island Writers Association: Short Fiction Forms and Poetry. She also leads writing workshops at Island Coffee House and Langley Middle School. Molly has published a one-woman show, On Our Way to Somewhere, and a jazz novel, Listen (both available at local bookstores). Her poetry appears in the 1995 Fishtrap Anthology and in her chapbook, Late Spring.

2:25 Introductions (open mics coming up very soon - sign up now)

2:30 - 2:50 Judith Skillman

Judith Skillman is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Eric Mathieu King Fund Award from the Academy of American Poets for her book Storm (Blue Begonia Press, 1998.) She took 3rd place in the WPA's 2006 Bart Baxter Performance Poetry Award this past April. She has received grants from the Centrum Foundation, the King County Arts Commission, and the Washington State Arts Commission. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Skillman's poems and translations have appeared in many literary journals and magazines including: Poetry, The Iowa Review, FIELD, Northwest Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Literary Imagination, Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and others. She has published ten volumes of poems, including Worship of the Visible Spectrum, Breitenbush Books, 1988, which won the King County Publication Prize, and Red Town Silverfish Review Press, 2001, which was a finalist in the Washington Center for the Book Award. Heat Lightning: New and Selected Poems 1986 - 2006 was published by Silverfish Review Press in 2006.

2:50 - 3:10 Thomas Hubbard

Thomas Hubbard moved from his sloop to Seattle's Lower Queen Anne neighborhood last winter, and is still re-exploring city life. Which is basically just life you can walk to. Thomas is a retired freelance feature writer and writing instructor who became active in Seattle's Slam and other venues in 1993, winning the Grand Slam in 1995. He has been published in various poetry anthologies including Mute Note Earthwardand his first chapbook, Nail and other hardworking poems, was published in 1995 by Year of the Dragon Press. He has since published Children Remember Their Fathers, an anthology of mostly performance poets from across the country. His book reviews have appeared in Square Lake and Raven Chronicles. He runs gazoobi tales publishing, a very small imprint currently offering work by John Kulm, M. Anne Sweet, Dave Caserio and Tiffany Midge. He currently serves on the board of Washington Poetry Association.

3:10 - 3:45 Open Mic

Come join the fun at the open mic!

3:45 ­4:00 Closing Poems, Announcements

Sunday, July 30, 2006

12:00 - 12:10 Announcements, Signup for Open Mic, Introduction

12:10 - 12:25 Robin Barre

Robin Barre has been writing poetry for over 30 years, beginning with a poem in rhyming couplets about God, the sky, and love that her father proudly posted on the bulletin board at his real estate office. Currently, she teaches street-involved youth on Capitol Hill in Seattle, is a mental health counselor, wife, and mother of two wonderful young men. Robin dabbles in mixed media art, would love to learn to tango and samba, and no longer writes in rhyming couplets.

12:30 Announcements, Open Mic Signups, Reminders

12:35 - 12:50 Barton Cole & Max Takanikos Cole

Max Cole-Takanikos and Barton Cole, the dynamic and captivating son-and-father performing duo, have many accomplishments to their credit, both together on stage and separately. Between the two of them, they work in a variety of media. Max is primarily a visual artist, while Barton is mostly a writer. They've appeared in dozens of plays: Barton was most recently seen as Frog in A Year with Frog and Toad, while Max has completed a string of shows, having recently appeared as Humpty Dumpty, Long John Silver, and blanket-toting Linus. They're superior performers, and scrupulously truthful. They wrote this bio themselves.

12:50 - 1:10 David Ossman

Grammy nominated David Ossman has spent 45 years performing, writing, and directing for the audio medium. Best known as a founding member of the legendary Firesign Theatre comedy quartet, Ossman has also written and produced major broadcast series and important individual programs. With Firesign Theatre (dubbed one of the 30 Greatest Comedy Acts of All Time by Entertainment Weekly), Ossman has co-created over two dozen comedy albums and CDs. David Ossman and Judith Walcutt live on Whidbey Island with their sons, Orson, and Preston.

1:10 - 1:25 Open Mic

1:25 Announcements

Don't forget the Open Mic sessions. Signups occur throughout the afternoon. Come on out and particpate!

1:30 - 1:55 Jack McCarthy

Jack McCarthy has been on two national slam teams and has brought out three books of poetry and a CD. His work appears in the anthologies The Spoken Word Revolution and Complete Idiot's Guide to Slam Poetry. He's an engaging minor character in the film Slamnation and was a semifinalist for the Individual Slam Championship in 2000. The Boston Phoenix has named him Best Standup Poet; The Boston Globe says, "In the poetry world, he's a rock star." Poet Stephen Dobyns calls him, "one of the wonders of contemporary poetry." He now lives in Smokey Point, Washington. He took second place in WPA's 2006 Bart Baxter Performance Poetry Awards and wowed the crowd this past April at the Burning Word Festival. His website is www.standupoet.net.

2:00 Announcements

2:05 - 2:25 Jane Winslow

Primarily a performance poet, Jane Winslow writes in a variety of styles; poetry, prose, screenplays, and songs. Jane works as a full-time instructor at Shoreline Community College where she teaches digital filmmaking/video production, directing and editing, cinema studies, and screenwriting. She also is a video editor, director and producer, documentary still photographer, and a product specialist/trainer for high-end broadcast equipment. Jane is a Whidbey Island resident and revels in its beauty with her partner, their cats and horse. She has been a Burning Word stage manager and M/C for 3 years in a row.

2:25 - 2:45 Joni Takanikos

Joni Takanikos has lived in the charming Whidbey Island village of Langley for a decade. She has followed Richard Hugo's instructions - "You found the town, now start the poem" - and continues to be inspired by green pastures, the Clyde Theater, and lovely, chance encounters with fellow villagers. Truth and Beauty, the allies of all poets, provide the foundation upon which she builds, choosing her words carefully, and listening for what lies just beyond earshot. She was an M.C. on the mainstage of the Burning Word Festival for the past two years.

2:45 - 3:15 Announcements and Open Mic

3:15 - 3:30 Additional poems if there is time - CLOSING.

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