You are invited!
The Oregon Poetic Voices project, <www.oregonpoeticvoices.org > , through the Special Collections at Lewis and Clark College, is in the process of creating a permanent online audio repository of Oregon poets’ voices. The project aims to create a truly comprehensive audio library of poetry in Oregon, historically and in the present, in diverse venues, geographical regions and populations.
The initial backbone of the project is material from three extensive collections: The two decades of sound archives of the Fishtrap Writers' Gathering in Wallowa County, collected by Rich Wandschneider; the twenty years of programs recorded by Barbara LaMorticella and Walt Curtis at KBOO radio; and the recorded archives at Sandra Williams's long-running Mountain Writers project. There are more than 100 recorded voices already online, and many more in the process of being archived. These range from children to high school and college students, to poets who are already known locally or nationally
OPV's goal is to build an audio archive as widely representative as possible of Oregon poets from across the state, and with this aim the OPV staff has partnered with libraries in rural communities and traveled there to record local poets. In conjunction with these recording sessions, OPV has also sponsored free writing workshops. Many of these workshops have been conducted by noteworthy Oregon poets and writers, such as Oregon’s current poet laureate Paulann Petersen in Klamath Falls, Jarold Ramsey in Madras, and Matthew Dickman in Ashland.
OPV invites poets who wish to make an appointment to be recorded and included in this permanent online archive to contact Melissa Dalton, Poetry Fellow Lew8s & Clark College, 0615 SW Palatine Hill Road, Portland, OR, 97219. email: <mdalton@lclark.edu>
