Poetry Northwest is proud to be a sponsor of the AWP Conference in Seattle, February 26 – March 1, 2014. Find us at the Book Fair (South Hall, Table BB40), along with students and faculty of the Everett Community College Written Arts AFA program, who help produce each print issue. Please come visit us to pick up a copy of our latest issue, and learn about our plans for 2014 and beyond to ensure that Poetry Northwest remains the most vibrant poetry magazine in the region.Â
 Poetry Northwest is grateful for support received from the National Endowment of the Arts. To find out more about how NEA grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov  We are grateful for the support of The Kinsman Foundation. Kinsman Foundation grants have supported publication of Poetry Northwest since 2007. Major support also provided by the Community Foundation of Snohomish County’s Robyn Johnson Poetry Fund. Poetry NW Honor Roll 2010 – 2016 Here’s a list of all the people who contributed some form of time, energy, money, or expertise to help keep Poetry Northwest going in the early part of this new century. We are deeply grateful for all your love and support. Editorial / Production / Web: Annie Ashley, Aaron Barrell, Jennifer Beebe, William Bernhardt, Cherisa Bertain, Zach Bivins, Justin Boening, Jay Bryant, Bill Carty, Jack Chelgren, Elizabeth Cooperman, Sarah Erikson, Steve Fouts, Kelley Frodel, Willie James, Connie Jensen, Matthew Kelsey, Kimberly Kent, Brandon Krieg, Chris Larson, Erin Malone, Per Nilsson, Katharine Ogle, Carol Peters, Emily Pittinos, Montreux Rotholtz, Lissa Sjogren, Kendra …
January 5 Jason Witmarsh, Writers on Writing Lecture Series “Occupy that critical part of your brain–the thing that says, ‘this is useless’–and give that part of your brain a crossword puzzle, while the other part writes.” (J.W. on: writing in form) January 6 Rebecca Albiani on Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, The Frye “William Blake couldn’t stand falsity in anyone . . . and so he was a difficult companion.” March 11 Barbara Courtney, Tiny House Reading Series, hosted by Emily Johnson “You will have to learn . . . how to dispense with teachers, even me.” April 14 Troy Jollimore, Seattle Arts & Lectures “Any really good poet has to be philosophical . . . if you pursue any field long enough you eventually end up doing philosophy.” April 16 Andrew Feld, Open Books “I don’t think there are that many people these days writing narrative-poems-in-heroic-couplets-that-are-visionary-quests. So, I sort of enjoy doing that.” April 22 Gregory Laynor, Tiny House Reading Series “I think I’m more of a worry doll than a poet . …
If you stay, you will always make that face. If you stay, a dog will bark and a chandelier will break. A child will bite another child, right on the nose. A lesson learned will be a lesson worn, thread barren. What is a good friend but apology? As in: I need my old habits. As in: I am sorry for the beetles littering the ceiling, for keeping miserable company. Truth is, I am nothing but a close stranger, well begun, half done. Having taken the bull by the sinking ship. We both know when it rains, a snail opens its eye. To see water seeking its own level. To say there is no word for standing in a windy field, looking at the back of the one you love. Out of sight, out of sigh: an open window. I once threw a stone into a glass house and nothing happened. I threw it again. If only to hope for you, if only to waste not to want all too much. — Congratulations to Jane …
Jennifer Bullis, the inaugural winner of Poetry Northwest‘s contest, The Pitch, writes of her winning poem: I knew I would love writing to Rebecca Hoogs’s prompt, which calls for re-grounding in the language of physical place. I looked forward to tracing, verbally, one of the routes familiar to me:  the way through sagebrush to a pond in the gully below my house where, as a six year old, I looked for frogs; or the way on horseback through Reno’s outskirts, where, as an adolescent, I’d ride into the foothills to find shade among pines; or the way  up logging roads above the Nooksack River outside Van Zandt, Washington, to the washout at Skookum Creek where, in August, you can be surrounded by tiny purple butterflies. The poem that eventuated, however, had a source far different from personal memory or physical place. “Directions to Pt. Rupture,” it turns out, was an entirely imagined piece that found its inspiration in language, in the mouth’s commerce with air—in that particular set of vocalizations produced when we stop and …
