Setting the Tone, an Offering

This is a guest post by Georgia Johnson

For the last two years or so, I have had the honor and pleasure to emcee the Madrona Poetry Series, a monthly community poetry reading at Pelican Bay Books in Anacortes that usually draws an audience of 30-75 folks.

After the readings, our guest poets and performers frequently send me emails to say how welcomed, attended to, and loved they felt, far beyond any expected audience response.

How does this — does any — event move us closer to ecstasy? How do we narrow the gap between presenter and audience?

We might train ourselves to notice vibrations occurring around and through us. This may mean identifying and even unlearning or ignoring the wash of familial and cultural information we live with every day. It might mean letting go on emotional levels, and holding a frequency that feels clear. This may take practice; it is a practice. Suddenly, at a reading, or a concert, we are elevated, feeling what seems like electricity, immense joy. We make profound connection.

We are matter. All matter is made up of energy fields, diverse and hopefully friendly frequencies. This is good! I have found that inviting a collective moment of gratitude, humor, and perhaps a bit of humility — actually seeing those in the room, using very particular words to invite blending of frequencies — helps to set this tone. Perhaps you were there and contributed to the tone. Thank you.

These ideas are evolving through a study of esoteric texts, through meditation, asanas, and breath work, by my limited understanding of physics, and my own practice in poetic expression. My poems, the ones that sparkle with something I didn’t know I knew, that take that wild perfect turn just when I think I can’t find any more to say, that point to or are grounded in the huge collective universe, come by this practice.

On occasion I use a prompt to wake up the sleepy poet. Mostly I’m called by that rush of words that might land in my lap at any moment, day or night. I write down that transmission as best I can; if it has a tail, I hang on. Sometimes it bites. I have a file for those.

To waken this attunement, this resonance — in myself, in my poetry, in our audiences — is my mission. Sometimes I succeed. Always, I believe, it’s worth another try.

. . . . .

Georgia Johnson
Food Wrangler Poet, Rebel

Poet Georgia Johnson lives on a farm, on Fidalgo Island, on the Salish Sea. She lives with a husband, cat, and all the resident critters 80 acres might hold. The author of Just Past Dew Point, she has found purpose as chef, teacher, meddler and rebel over around 70 years. You might find her in the audience, at the podium, or in the kitchen, most days.

. . . . .
top photo: Madrona Poetry Series reading at Pelican Bay Books, photo by Georgia Johnson

what are you doing on Saturday?

After months of long, dark days and torpor, Cascadia seems to be bursting into action. While we can’t pretend to capture all of the poetry goings-on, you can get a sense of the profusion on the Calendar page.

Take Saturday, May 18, 2024, for example. You can choose from events in Bellingham, Ellensburg, La Conner, and Port Townsend (among, no doubt, others). Drop by Gilkey Square (at the end of Morris Street on the waterfront) in La Conner at 5:00pm to hear Georgia Johnson and Randall Dills, a reading sponsored by Seaport Books. (The La Conner Guitar Festival is also happening this weekend, so allow time to park and walk to Gilkey Square.)

P.S.: Georgia Johnson reminds us that the following Saturday, May 25, is the final program in this season’s Madrona Poetry Series. Spring Cheng, whose poems were included in the documentary Dancing with the Dead, featuring Red Pine, will bring her unique voice to Pelican Bay Books at 7:00pm.

slurp up some poetry

NOTE (12:54pm, Saturday, January 20): DUE TO SNOWY ROAD CONDITIONS, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED. It will be rescheduled and we’ll post updates when they are available.

Empty Bowl Press and Pelican Bay Books invite you to sample the delicious contents of The Madrona Project, Volume IV, Number 1: The Empty Bowl Cookbook. Join the word-tasting this Saturday, January 20, 2024, 7:00pm, at Pelican Bay Books in Anacortes.

You’ll hear from Michael Daley, Georgia Johnson, Tele Aadsen, Jane Allyn, Anne Basye, Deborrah Corr, Steve Dolmatz, Jessica Gigot, Melanie Graham, Adam Lafayette, Eva McGinnis, Cora Thomas, Jeremy Voigt, Bill Weissigner, and Maggie Wilder.

Yum.

a lively evening of poetry in Anacortes

Pelican Bay Books is a wonderful bookstore in downtown Anacortes, Washington. Along with a huge inventory of used and rare books, wine, and coffee, the store hosts monthly poetry readings that bring out a warm and supportive audience of poets and poetry lovers. On Saturday, January 28, 2023, Pelican Bay will welcome poets Georgia Johnson, Roberto Ascalon, and Natalie Lahr. It should be good. Hope to see you there!

tonight in Anacortes

Here’s some good news: Pelican Bay Books, in Anacortes, launches a new season of in-person poetry readings tonight, Friday, September 30, 2022, at 7:00pm. Bill Ransom (author of Finding True North & Critter, nominated for National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for Poetry) and Jill McCabe Johnson (author of Revolutions We’d Hoped We’d Outgrown and Diary of the One Swelling Sea, winner of the Nautilus Book Silver Award in Poetry) will read as part of The Madrona Project 2022-2023 Poetry Series. Singer-songwriter Steven Dolmatz will perform his original folk and bluegrass music. The series is co-curated by Michael Daley and Georgia Johnson, who bring a specially selected mix of literary and musical arts together in the heart of Anacortes.

The Madrona Project #3

Mark your calendar for Friday, May 27, 2022, 7:00pm, when contributors to The Madrona Project #3: Human Communities in Wild Places will read live, in person, at Pelican Bay Books in Anacortes. The new volume from Empty Bowl is edited by Michael Daley and features the writing of 73 contributors. The evening’s readers will include Luther Allen, Michael Daley, Virginia Hietpas, Georgia Johnson, and Bob Rose, as well as 2021 and 2022 Washington State Poetry Out Loud champion and Student Poet Laureate Lucy Shainin reading her work.

poetry in Edison

Tiny Edison, Washington (pop. 133 in 2010), home of the world-famous Chicken Parade (February 23, 2020) as well as much impressive art and food, will liven up a winter evening with a Winter Poetry Reading featuring Georgia Johnson, Jory Mickelson, and Jeffrey Morgan. Join them on Thursday, February 6, 2020, at 6:30pm, at i.e. gallery, in the heart of downtown Edison.

Come early to view the birds of winter in nearby fields, the “Birds Eye View” bird invitational art exhibit at Smith & Vallee, and enjoy a meal at one of Edison’s stellar restaurants.

before it’s too late

If you’ve been meaning to see the white birds of winter, Empty Bowl has some good poetic reasons for making the drive (all dates 2019):

• Friday February 1, in Edison – Don Kruse, Jessica Gigot, and Georgia Johnson read at i.e. – 6:30pm
• Sunday, February 3, in Freeland – Clemens Starck reads at Unitarian Universalist Congregation – 10:00am
• Thursday, February 7, in Port Townsend – Clemens Starck and Finn Wilcox read at Northwind Arts Center – 7:00pm
• Friday, February 8, in Anacortes – Clemens Starck and Samuel Green read at Pelican Bay Books & Coffeehouse – 7:00pm
• Tuesday, February 12, in Anacortes – Don Kruse and Lorraine Ferra read at Watermark Books – 6pm
• Friday, February 22, in Anacortes – Michael Daley and Jeremy Voigt read at Pelican Bay Books & Coffeehouse – 7:00pm

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photo

next Friday in Anacortes

Enjoy a congenial evening in Anacortes at The Annual Celebration of the Poetry and Music of Robert Sund on Friday, November 30, 2018, 7:00pm, at Pelican Bay Books. Featured poets Georgia Johnson, Chip Hughes, Jeff Langlow, Jane Alynn, Michael Daley, and Costa Lavigne-Thomas, will be joined by musicians Jeff Winston and Brad Killion.

The Sisters Band of 1956

Lifelong friends Georgia Johnson and Maggie Wilder will read poetry and discuss the art and artists of the Skagit Valley on Friday, April 27, 2018, 7:00pm, at Pelican Bay Books and Coffee House.

The small print (in image):

Georgia Johnson and Maggie Wilder were born midcentury to working class parents whose second worst fear for them was that they might become writers or painters, and therefore doom themselves to a life of N’er Do Well.

These pressures of suburban values created in them irresistible urges to make stuff up, in paint, in words. For nearly 60 years their efforts have won them no coveted awards, and very little money, but you may enjoy their persistent pursuit on Non-Sense.

Go. It’ll be good.