Sunday, October 1, 3 PM: Book Event: "Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology and Poetry" with Editors Elizabeth Bradfield and Derek Sheffield, and "Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens and the Hands that Tend Them,” edited by Tess Taylor, featuring a Host of Contributors. Co-Sponsored by McKenzie River Trust and the Eugene Natural History Society
Books will be available for sale at the Event.
————————————————- Join us for an afternoon of nature writings and art produced by the collaborators of these two dynamic new anthologies. Hosted by Editors Elizabeth Bradfield, Tess Taylor and Derek Sheffield. Sponsored by The McKenzie River Trust and the Natural History Society. A list of contributors presenting so far include Tom Titus, Garrett Hongo, and Tsunami clerk Emily Poole.
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Regarding “Cascadia Field Guide”:
Science and art combine to create a poetic ecology--a field guide and literary anthology that celebrates the natural beauty of the Cascadia bioregion.
Have you ever been so filled up with the wonder of a place that it wants to spill out as a song? Well, here is the songbook. I imagine walking through a forest and pausing to read these illuminating pages aloud to a listening cedar or a dipper. There are field guides that help us to see, and to name, and to know; Cascadia Field Guide does all of that and more. This is a guide to relationship, a gift in reciprocity for the gifts of the land. - Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass
Cascadia stretches from Southeast Alaska to Northern California and from the Pacific Ocean to the Continental Divide. Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry blends art and science to celebrate this diverse yet interconnected region through natural and cultural histories, poetry, and illustrations. Organized into 13 bioregions, the guide includes entries for everything from cryptobiotic soil and the western thatching ant to the giant Pacific octopus and Sitka spruce, as well as the likes of common raven, hoary marmot, Idaho giant salamander, snowberry, and 120 more!
Both well-established and new writers are included, representing a diverse spectrum of voices, with poems that range from comic to serious, colloquial to scientific, urban to off-the-grid, narrative to postmodern. Likewise, the artists span styles and mediums, using classic natural history drawing, form line design, graffiti, sketch, and more. All writers and artists have deep ties to the region.
Contributor Bio:Bradfield, Elizabeth
Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of five books, and her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, Orion, and elsewhere. A Stegner Fellow and Audre Lorde Prize winner, she is the founder of Broadsided Press, teaches at Brandeis University, and has worked as a naturalist in Cascadia and beyond for the past twenty-some years.
Contributor Bio:Sheffield, Derek
Derek Sheffield grew up in the Willamette Valley and on the shores of the Salish Sea. He is the author of four books, and his poems have appeared in High Country News, Poetry, and Orion. For the past 20 years, he has taught nature writing at Wenatchee Valley College.
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Regarding “Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens and the Hands that Tend Them”:
This beautiful poetry anthology offers a warm, inviting selection of poems from a wide range of voices that speak to the collective urge to grow, tend, and heal--an evocative celebration of our connection to the green world.
Much like reading a good poem, caring for plants brings comfort, solace, and joy to many. In this new poetry anthology, Leaning toward Light, acclaimed poet and avid gardener Tess Taylor brings together a diverse range of contemporary voices to offer poems that celebrate that joyful connection to the natural world. Several of the most well-known contemporary writers, as well as some of poetry's exciting rising stars, contribute to this collection including Ross Gay, Jericho Brown, Mark Doty, Jane Hirshfield, Ada Limón, Danusha Laméris, Naomi Shihab Nye, Garrett Hongo, Ellen Bass, and James Crews. A foreword by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, reflective pauses and personal recipes from some of the contributing poets, along with original, whimsical illustrations by Melissa Castrillon, and a ribbon bookmark complete this stunning, hardcover gift format.
Review Quotes:
"This collection brings together many of my favorite writers to celebrate the limitless offerings of nature; wandering through its pages feels like taking a long stroll through a beautiful garden."-- Alice Waters, chef, author, food activist, and founder of Chez Panisse and the Edible Schoolyard Project
Review Quotes:
"Among the many things to love about this beautiful anthology is that it reminds us that gardening is a gathering practice, a practice of gathering, and the more we do it together--with collaborators human, critterly, fungal, floral, meteorological, cosmic, unborn, living, living now as soil, etc.--the better, by which I mean the more lovingly, the more belovingly, the more truly, we do it."-- Ross Gay, author of Inciting Joy and The Book of Delights
Review Quotes:
"It's thrilling to see in these pages a reflection of the world I want to live in."-- Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of the New York Times bestseller World of Wonders, from the foreword.
Biographical Note:
Tess Taylor, an avid gardener, is the author of five acclaimed collections of poetry including Work & Days, which was named one of the 10 best books of poetry of 2016 by the New York Times. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, Tin House, The Times Literary Supplement, CNN, and the New York Times. Taylor has been Distinguished Fulbright US Scholar at the Seamus Heaney Centre in Queen's University in Northern Ireland, and the Anne Spencer Poet-in-Residence at Randolph College. She has also served as on-air poetry reviewer for NPR's All Things Considered for over a decade. Taylor lives in El Cerrito, California, where she tends to fruit trees and backyard chickens.