Coming Aboard in Astoria
The FisherPoets Gathering
published in the Jan./Feb. 2013 issue of Oregon Coast magazine
The FisherPoets Gathering
published in the Jan./Feb. 2013 issue of Oregon Coast magazine
February in Astoria is often dark and windy. The clouds that scud up the Columbia River are gray and spit a mixture of sleet and rain upon any unfortunate soul that happens to be out. But there are hundreds of people on the streets of this historic Oregon coastal city tonight. They are laughing, hugging old friends, telling stories and spending their Friday and Saturday nights moving from pub to restaurant to brewery and back again. Warm light, amplified voices, laughter and music spill out the doors as they come and go. The weather is forgotten, and why not? It’s the annual Fisher Poets Gathering!
A celebration of the commercial fishing industry in poetry, prose and song, the Gathering has been under way for fifteen years. Jon Broderick, a Bristol Bay, Alaska commercial fisherman and former teacher who lives in Cannon Beach, Oregon is credited with starting the event in 1998. “Even the first event was surprisingly well-attended,” he remarks. “I invited forty folks gleaned from the contributors’ list of the Alaska Fisherman’s Journal, and thirty-nine showed up with their friends.”
Today the Gathering has grown to nearly eighty performers featured in six venues over two nights, with morning workshops on everything from writing poetry to knot tying. During the evenings, deckhands, cannery workers, skippers and beach fishermen – men and women of all ages and persuasions who work on fishing boats called seiners, crabbers, gillnetters, trollers, draggers and more- ascend the steps to the stage for fifteen minutes to share their private reflections about their industry. Over a thousand visitors fill the seats to listen, laugh, cry and applaud.
Broderick adds, “Anyone can get up on stage as long as they have a connection to the industry. They don’t have to be great, just authentic.” For many, the first time in front of the audience comes at one of the ‘open mike’ sessions or at the wildly popular on-site poetry contest that closes the show on Saturday. After that, it’s just a matter of time before some of them become regulars.
One writer new to the Gathering in 2012 was Tele Aadsen, who trolls in SE Alaska with her husband, Joel Brady-Power. “We were both boat kids growing up in Sitka,” she says. Her participation at the Gathering affected her “Hugely. It’s given me a real sense of community. That first night [at the presenters’ dinner] we were nervous, wondering what we were doing there, until the first readers stepped to the microphone. Then we realized we were in a room full of strangers who weren’t strangers at all.” She also found hearing other fishermen who wrote about their experiences inspired her own motivation and craft. “It was a huge boost for me to pursue my own memoir I’ve been toying with for the past ten years or so.”
His laugh was belly-deep and not unkind. “This is a king salmon.”
Thirty years later, I will have harvested thousands of king salmon, more than my grandpa could have dreamed of, his hands twitching cat-like on an imaginary rod and reel. I’ll whisper apologies to fish gasping for the sea and stroke their sides, tracing scales of emerald, amethyst and opal. I’ll watch the flat aluminum of death swallow their rainbow. I will struggle with what it means to make a living off of death. And with every unmistakable whiff of king salmon, some small, dimly-lit closet of forgotten memories will shine with the echoes of my grandpa’s pride.
– Tele Aadsen, from “You Never Forget Your First”
Broderick came up with the idea for a Fisher Poets Gathering after hearing another Oregon poet, Clemens Starck, perform at Linfield College. “Clem wrote poetry about work. I had never considered doing that. I immediately thought about the fishermen I knew who wrote, and decided to get a few people together to give it a try.” Years later Broderick invited Starck to the Gathering, and Clem has been a well-loved regular reader ever since.
“Fisherpoets is an annual highlight,” says Starck, an award-winning poet with five books to his credit. “There’s a wonderful feeling of camaraderie.” A carpenter by trade, he spent several years as a merchant seaman, and understands life on the water, illustrated by his poem, “At Sea.”
“Another Christmas shot to hell,”
the bosun says. Mid-ocean, last traces of Asia
five days astern.
Door to steel locker rattles softly.
Open porthole, cold air
sucked in.
“Nothing out here
but us,” the bosun says. Black lacquerware
sky, thin
sliver of the waning moon.
Course is zero-eight-zero. Following seas.
Bosun’s name is McCaskey.
He’s a high roller.
In the galley, over coffee and a cigarette, he discusses
women,
and the best way
of stopping off a mooring line.
from China Basin
Story Line Press, 2002
Most of the poets, musicians and storytellers feel the same way. Dave Densmore, a seiner out of Kodiak, has performed since the first year. He says Fisher Poets gave him a venue to speak out for the fishing industry. “It’s the perfect vehicle to talk to the general public,” his voice gets serious. “These fish are dyin’ so we can keep livin’. Most of the general public doesn’t get that. At Fisher Poets we can tell them what this life, this life-style is all about.” Densmore travels the country during the off-season, performing at various festivals “...and spin-offs of Fisher Poets.” An excerpt from his poem, “The Logbook” touches on the fishing life:
There’s a coffee-stained old logbook,
Up on the shelf at home.
It’s terse and to the point,
Unlike the stories in my poems.
As I slowly turn the pages,
Countless stories within unfold.
From flat calm and sunny,
To battling wind and cold.
‘Southwest sixty, and jogging’,
Doesn’t tell the beating that you take.
The strength of faith that you have to have,
Or the money that you won’t make.
Veronica Kessler travels to attend the Gathering from Olympia, Washington each year. “We lived and fished for years in Alaska,” she comments, “and hearing all the different stories takes me back to that time. I love how everyone writes about commercial fishing, but they approach it from so many different points of view.”
Looking out the window at a white-capped Columbia River, Broderick sums up his feelings about his creation. “One of the best things about this is how it seems we’ve created a culture of writing about commercial fishing. We’ve created a genre. I love seeing all the new, young talented writers that show up every year. The look in their eyes when they walk off stage to a round of applause is tremendous.”
A celebration of the commercial fishing industry in poetry, prose and song, the Gathering has been under way for fifteen years. Jon Broderick, a Bristol Bay, Alaska commercial fisherman and former teacher who lives in Cannon Beach, Oregon is credited with starting the event in 1998. “Even the first event was surprisingly well-attended,” he remarks. “I invited forty folks gleaned from the contributors’ list of the Alaska Fisherman’s Journal, and thirty-nine showed up with their friends.”
Today the Gathering has grown to nearly eighty performers featured in six venues over two nights, with morning workshops on everything from writing poetry to knot tying. During the evenings, deckhands, cannery workers, skippers and beach fishermen – men and women of all ages and persuasions who work on fishing boats called seiners, crabbers, gillnetters, trollers, draggers and more- ascend the steps to the stage for fifteen minutes to share their private reflections about their industry. Over a thousand visitors fill the seats to listen, laugh, cry and applaud.
Broderick adds, “Anyone can get up on stage as long as they have a connection to the industry. They don’t have to be great, just authentic.” For many, the first time in front of the audience comes at one of the ‘open mike’ sessions or at the wildly popular on-site poetry contest that closes the show on Saturday. After that, it’s just a matter of time before some of them become regulars.
One writer new to the Gathering in 2012 was Tele Aadsen, who trolls in SE Alaska with her husband, Joel Brady-Power. “We were both boat kids growing up in Sitka,” she says. Her participation at the Gathering affected her “Hugely. It’s given me a real sense of community. That first night [at the presenters’ dinner] we were nervous, wondering what we were doing there, until the first readers stepped to the microphone. Then we realized we were in a room full of strangers who weren’t strangers at all.” She also found hearing other fishermen who wrote about their experiences inspired her own motivation and craft. “It was a huge boost for me to pursue my own memoir I’ve been toying with for the past ten years or so.”
His laugh was belly-deep and not unkind. “This is a king salmon.”
Thirty years later, I will have harvested thousands of king salmon, more than my grandpa could have dreamed of, his hands twitching cat-like on an imaginary rod and reel. I’ll whisper apologies to fish gasping for the sea and stroke their sides, tracing scales of emerald, amethyst and opal. I’ll watch the flat aluminum of death swallow their rainbow. I will struggle with what it means to make a living off of death. And with every unmistakable whiff of king salmon, some small, dimly-lit closet of forgotten memories will shine with the echoes of my grandpa’s pride.
– Tele Aadsen, from “You Never Forget Your First”
Broderick came up with the idea for a Fisher Poets Gathering after hearing another Oregon poet, Clemens Starck, perform at Linfield College. “Clem wrote poetry about work. I had never considered doing that. I immediately thought about the fishermen I knew who wrote, and decided to get a few people together to give it a try.” Years later Broderick invited Starck to the Gathering, and Clem has been a well-loved regular reader ever since.
“Fisherpoets is an annual highlight,” says Starck, an award-winning poet with five books to his credit. “There’s a wonderful feeling of camaraderie.” A carpenter by trade, he spent several years as a merchant seaman, and understands life on the water, illustrated by his poem, “At Sea.”
“Another Christmas shot to hell,”
the bosun says. Mid-ocean, last traces of Asia
five days astern.
Door to steel locker rattles softly.
Open porthole, cold air
sucked in.
“Nothing out here
but us,” the bosun says. Black lacquerware
sky, thin
sliver of the waning moon.
Course is zero-eight-zero. Following seas.
Bosun’s name is McCaskey.
He’s a high roller.
In the galley, over coffee and a cigarette, he discusses
women,
and the best way
of stopping off a mooring line.
from China Basin
Story Line Press, 2002
Most of the poets, musicians and storytellers feel the same way. Dave Densmore, a seiner out of Kodiak, has performed since the first year. He says Fisher Poets gave him a venue to speak out for the fishing industry. “It’s the perfect vehicle to talk to the general public,” his voice gets serious. “These fish are dyin’ so we can keep livin’. Most of the general public doesn’t get that. At Fisher Poets we can tell them what this life, this life-style is all about.” Densmore travels the country during the off-season, performing at various festivals “...and spin-offs of Fisher Poets.” An excerpt from his poem, “The Logbook” touches on the fishing life:
There’s a coffee-stained old logbook,
Up on the shelf at home.
It’s terse and to the point,
Unlike the stories in my poems.
As I slowly turn the pages,
Countless stories within unfold.
From flat calm and sunny,
To battling wind and cold.
‘Southwest sixty, and jogging’,
Doesn’t tell the beating that you take.
The strength of faith that you have to have,
Or the money that you won’t make.
Veronica Kessler travels to attend the Gathering from Olympia, Washington each year. “We lived and fished for years in Alaska,” she comments, “and hearing all the different stories takes me back to that time. I love how everyone writes about commercial fishing, but they approach it from so many different points of view.”
Looking out the window at a white-capped Columbia River, Broderick sums up his feelings about his creation. “One of the best things about this is how it seems we’ve created a culture of writing about commercial fishing. We’ve created a genre. I love seeing all the new, young talented writers that show up every year. The look in their eyes when they walk off stage to a round of applause is tremendous.”
Sidebar Notes:
- The 2013 Fisher Poets Gathering takes place in Astoria, Oregon Feb. 22-24.
- Attendance buttons may be purchased in town:
- $15.00 button or $30.00 highliner pin good for entry all weekend, all venues. $5.00 one venue, one night.
- For a schedule and more information, go to www.fisherpoets.org.
- To see and hear more work by Fisher Poets, visit www.IntheTote.com.
- If you are interested in performing, contact Jon Broderick at jbroderick@fisherpoets.org