Samuel Green coming to town

Art historian, Susan Platt, right, passes a mural on the Land Bridge that depicts life in the area in the year 1845. (Files/The Columbian)

Washington state poet laureate Samuel Green

Tammie Cook, left, and Jennifer Hausinger walk across the land bridge that crosses over Highway 14 and links Fort Vancouver with the Columbia River on Feb. 15. (Files/The Columbian)

Samuel Green wrote his first poem in sixth grade, a love declaration to a girl. The effort failed, but, undaunted, Green continued to hone his craft. In 1970 while in college, Green published his first poem, which were words of love for a woman named Sally. This poem proved more successful, as Sally is now his wife.

Nearly 40 years and 10 published poetry collections later, Green is still writing about love and what he describes as other emotional urgencies. Now he’s in a unique position to share his words, as well as those of other Washington poets.

Last year Washington became the 41st state to establish a poet laureate position. Green, a lifelong Washingtonian, holds the honor of being the Evergreen State’s first poet laureate. This week he comes to Vancouver to read from his latest title, “The Grace of Necessity,” and yet-to-be-published poems in a public appearance at Clark College.

It’s one of many stops on Green’s packed travel itinerary; he’s slept away from home more often than not since assuming his poet laureate duties in January.

For Green the appointment has meant an opportunity to promote poetry across the state, as well as champion the work of the state’s poets.

Green is not only a supporter of Washington poets, but he’s counted himself among them for decades.

Green, 60, grew up in the fishing and mill town of Anacortes. For the past 25 years he’s lived on remote Waldron Island off the Washington coast in a log house he built himself.

In addition to writing poetry, Green co-edits with Sally Brooding Heron Press, a letterpress focusing on the work of Washington poets.

Poetry education is another of Green’s passions. He’s taught in elementary, middle and high school classrooms for more than 30 years, as well as at Southern Utah University and Western Wyoming Community College. In January he’ll begin his seventh winter quarter as Distinguished Visiting Northwest Writer at Seattle University. For the past six years he’s taught a summer study abroad course in Ireland for Seattle University.

Green spoke with The Columbian from his Waldron Island home about his poetry, his duties as poet laureate and the ways the Northwest has influenced his work. Here are his comments, edited for space and clarity:



How did you get started writing poetry?

In sixth grade I fell in love with a girl. I thought about her all the time. I really didn’t know what to do about it because she was distant. Because I was reading a lot of poetry that year, I was reading Edgar Allen Poe, I thought it would be romantic if I wrote her a poem. It didn’t work but it was the first time I had encountered an emotional emergency that I couldn’t deal with in any other way. I had already discovered that I could go to other poets and they could speak for me, help me understand my feelings, but this was the first time I had thought about using language to work the emotional urgency out myself. It didn’t matter that the poem didn’t have the effect I wanted it to have on the audience, what mattered was the writing, working it out for myself. Essentially nothing has changed since I was in sixth grade. I’m just more skilled at it. My poems are more sophisticated, but I’m still working out emotional urgencies.

As a lifelong Washingtonian, how does the Northwest impact your work?

We have a rich literary tradition of our own. One thing I think is important to find is that writers aren’t from another planet, they can be from your own backyard. The fact that someone who lives in the same neighborhood you do, the Pacific Northwest, can write poems makes it somehow easier to believe that you can write poems yourself. I love poets who write from all over the world, but it’s been important to me to know that we’ve had people like Richard Hugo, Theodore Roethke, David Wagoner, Caroyln Kizer, Madeline DeFrees. These are major Northwest poets. You read their poems and say, “They’re writing from and about a place I live. So can I.”
The other thing is the landscape itself. It’s an amazing place. The physical landscape, the working landscape, the communal landscape. I like poems about work, and we have a long history of logging, fishing and farming. There’s a lot material to draw from and people willing to share their stories. There’s also the Native American experience that’s close to the surface, and the necessity for understanding how cultures impact one another.

Where do you look for inspiration?

I don’t look for it so much as it seems to be around. What I’m trying to do as a poet, and as a person, is to be open to what’s around me and breathe it in.

Are there any recurring images, metaphors or themes in your poems?

The same questions we all struggle with. What does it mean to be alive in the world? Love, death, what we do in the face of death, how to grieve as an individual and as a community, the nature of work, the whole notion of a spiritual quest, cultural events. My latest book deals with the aftermath of 9/11.

Do you employ specific rhyme schemes and meters when crafting poetry, or do you write free verse?

I don’t believe in the usefulness of the term “free verse.” I write organic form most of the time. I do whatever the poem is asking me to do.

In 40 years as a serious poet, is there one poem you’re particularly proud of and feel best represents who you are as a writer and as a person?

Not really. Poems are these things you have to get through. I try to bring my best to every poem I write, but I always finish a poem with this feeling that I wish I could have done it better. I’m more interested in the next poem I’m going to write than what I’ve already done.

What does it mean to you to be the state’s first poet laureate?

It means that I have a chance to be an advocate for other poets in the state. It’s also a responsibility to carry out the mandate of the Legislature. The Legislature has said that poets have a contribution to make to the literacy of the state. And if you think about it, what good is a literacy of the mind without a literacy of the heart?

As you near the halfway mark of your two-year appointment as poet laureate, what have you accomplished?

I’ve traveled around the state giving readings and workshops. I read my own poems as well as those of other Washington poets. I’ve given close to 70 public readings. I opened the Legislature in January. I read to the House and the Senate, and to a couple government caucus meetings. I read in the Capitol building on Arts Day. I’ve written poems on request. I wrote a poem for the dedication ceremony of the Vancouver Land Bridge in August called “What We Carry On the Trail.” I wrote poems for the inauguration of the new Spokane Art School and for the opening of a park in Anacortes.