Celebration honors Oregon poet with ties to Sisters

A gathering at Paulina Springs Books in Sisters will honor the late William Stafford, Oregon's most famous poet.

"Home Away From Home - A Stafford Birthday Celebration" is set for Friday, January 20 at 6 p.m. Admission is free and open to all. Refreshments will be served.

Oregon writers will read a Stafford poem, as well as one of their own pieces written in the spirit of Stafford's works. In addition, members of the audience are invited to read a favorite Stafford poem or to share a personal anecdote about the late Oregon poet laureate.

This free event is sponsored by Friends of William Stafford (FWS) in conjunction with Paulina Springs Books. FWS is a nonprofit organization providing education in literature, particularly in poetry, in a way that will encourage readers, writers and those who aspire to find their own voice. This year, FWS is sponsoring more than 60 poetry readings and presentations throughout Oregon and Washington, and also in California, Kansas, Nevada, Ohio, New Jersey, Vermont, New York, and in Glasgow, Scotland, and Sapporo, Japan.

Featured writers include Ellen Waterston, Jim Anderson, Neil Browne, Kit Stafford and Dennis Schmidling.

A New Englander who married and moved to the ranching West, Ellen Waterston grounds her writing in both of those cultural and geographic landscapes. Her award-winning essays, short stories and poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies and reviews. Waterston is the founder and director of The Nature of Words, an annual literary event that brings nationally recognized authors and poets for four days of readings, panel discussions, and workshops to Bend the first weekend of November.

Sisters naturalist Jim Anderson was born March 27, 1928, and raised on a small farm in West Haven, Connecticut. On that farm, he learned the conservation ethic that would guide his life from his maternal grandfather. His weekly columns in The Nugget Newspaper are a form of poetry to his many friends and fans. He will talk about poetry and the natural world.

Kit Stafford, daughter of William Stafford, is an artist, dancer, educator and poet. She is a teaching artist with the Americana Project at Sisters Middle School, who is especially known for her creativity and use of "found objects." She coordinates the summer arts program at Camp Caldera and is deeply involved with Sisters Folk Festival. She will talk about her father and his life in Sisters.

Neil Browne is associate professor of English at OSU Cascades, where he runs the Liberal Studies and the Americana Studies programs. He is the author of the book "The World in Which We Occur," and is working on a book with the working title "The Habit of Reading."

Dennis Schmidling is the chair of the board of directors of Friends of William Stafford, and has served on that board since 1999. He is a photographer, writer, graphic designer, business consultant and a third-generation framer, currently managing the Sisters Gallery & Frame Shop. He will talk about potential plans for the upcoming centennial of Stafford's birth in 2014.

William Stafford loved to retreat to his cabin in Sisters, his "home away from home."

Stafford was one of America's most prolific poets, authoring more than 50 books in his 79 years. A professor at Lewis & Clark College, where he taught for 30 years, he was appointed Oregon Poet Laureate in 1975 and also earned a National Book Award. He was known for his encouragement of other writers and for his advocacy of free expression in writing and speech.

A pacifist, Stafford was a conscientious objector during World War II. He served his time in Civilian Public Service work camps in Arkansas and California, where he did work for the U.S. Forest Service. For the following 50 years, Stafford included poems of pacifism and reconciliation in his readings.

Stafford believed that treasures were to be found beneath your feet, and that searching for things that fit together was to follow the "golden thread." About his own works, he once said, "I have woven a parachute out of everything broken."

Born January 14, 1914 in Hutchinson, Kansas, he died of a heart attack in Lake Oswego, Oregon on August 28, 1993. He was 79.

For more information about "Home Away From Home - A Stafford Celebration," contact Helen Schmidling, [email protected]

williamstafford.org or visit www.williamstafford.org.