Get hooked on poetry

Celebrate the written word with FisherPoets performances

Bob Eder

By Mike Francis

For the Lincoln Chronicle

The FisherPoets Gathering, a rollicking, three-day celebration of poetry, song and commercial fishing that draws around 2,300 people to Astoria each winter, is coming to Newport, Lincoln City and four other Oregon Coast towns this month.

A small group of fisher poets — people who have made a living from fishing or still do — will present capsule FisherPoets sessions to audiences from Garibaldi to Port Orford, spreading the idea that a rich lode of narrative creativity is often found alongside the nets, hawsers and Grundéns.

At the FisherPoets gatherings, people like Rob Seitz, an Astoria-based crabber, fisherman and, with his wife, restaurateur, offer sentences like these:

Working our way through the pile of crab gear

in the dirt floored Quonset hut by the shipyard.

I notice the look of concentration on the boy’s face

while his hands learn the necessary contortions for

tying a carrick bend.

It’s cold and his hands hurt,

I know because my hands, that already know this work

hurt too.

He continues despite the discomfort; he likes learning these skills,

working with his hands.

I wonder if I’m doing the boy a disservice

teaching him this work.

I wonder if it will be enough

to keep him out of the homeless mission

and the methadone clinic.

Will it still be able

to provide for most of his needs and some of his wants?

Or am I just being selfish, wanting to get back

some of the time I lost when he was younger

and I was at sea.

“Hey boy,” I say

we’re staying late tonight

we’ve got a lot of work to do.

Seitz is one of the fisher poets taking part in the coastal tour, which is intended not just to spread the word about the annual gathering in Astoria, but to recruit new blood. The FisherPoets is coming up on 30 years old, and some of the participants have been there since the beginning, or nearly so.

There has been, acknowledges Seitz, “a graying of the fleet.”

Along with Seitz, the coastal tour will include deckhand Chelle Meyers, salmon troller/artist/researcher Duncan Berry and others, including local performers.

“We really want to draw some voices from the local commercial fishing fleet,” said Amanda Gladics, an Astoria-based associate professor in Oregon State University’s Fisheries Extension and the primary organizer of the tour. The stops in Newport and elsewhere along the coast, she said, offer a kind of “tasting menu” of the full FisherPoets event.

Gladics is like many who have gotten involved with FisherPoets — she volunteered her way upward to a key position in the very loosely organized group.

“I was a fan first,” she said. Then she reached out to the founders and asked how she could help.

The organization is about the furthest thing from a well-oiled, businesslike, for-profit venture. “We’re kind of like the Vikings,” said founder Jon Broderick, a former schoolteacher and seasonal set netter in Bristol Bay. “We have no leaders.”

Also, he said, “Nobody makes any money.”

While the gathering has gathered notice from the BBC, the New York Times, Smithsonian and others, Broderick said organizers generally have resisted publishing books or DVDs or other sellable items.

“We try to emphasize the ephemeral nature of the performance,” he said. “We want to value the spoken word above all else.”

Sunday’s VIP reception runs from 2 to 3 pm, followed by the main program from 3 to 5 pm at the Pacific Maritime Heritage Center, located at 333 SE Bay Blvd. in Newport. General admission is $15 and includes the main program. A $25 VIP ticket includes admission to an artist meet-and-greet with a hosted bar and hors d’oeuvres before the main event. For more information, go to oregoncoasthistory.org.

Other Central Coast Performances

Garibaldi: Monday, Oct. 26, 1-2:30 pm, Tillamook Bay Seafoods hosted by FishHer Columbia Pacific Community Alliance & Tillamook Bay Seafood. Garibaldi's commercial fleet is invited to meet the touring fisherpoets and swap stories; light refreshments provided;

Pacific City: Monday, Oct. 26, 7-9 pm, Kiawanda Community Center hosted by Pacific City Dorymen's Association

Lincoln City: Tuesday, Oct. 27, 5 pm, Pelican Brewing. The world premiere of a film on the Cascade Head Biosphere Region’s 50th anniversary, fisherpoetry readings, and a custom "Biosphere" brew developed by Pelican.

Mike Francis is a longtime journalist at The Oregonian, The Business Journal of Portland and The (Bend) Bulletin. He lives in Astoria, where he is an editor at large for The Lund Report. He can be reached at mike@thelundreport.org.

This article is published as part of our partnership with the Lincoln Chronicle. For more, go to www.lincolnchronicle.org.