Washington poet laureate Claudia Castro Luna, who visited Vancouver earlier this month to greet poetry lovers and read from her works at the downtown community library, has won a $100,000 award to highlight poetry and poets along the length of the Columbia River.
“I’m still a little bit in shock,” Castro Luna said by phone Thursday morning from Spokane, where her poet laureate travels had taken her last week to read and teach.
The award was made by the Academy of American Poets. It’s one of 13 given to poets serving in official civic-poet and poet-laureate roles around the nation, and it’s intended to support impactful, innovative public poetry projects.
Castro Luna’s project will be called “One River, A Thousand Names,” and she said she consulted Clark County Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Morgan before proposing it. She means to convene poetry readings and workshops all along the river, she said. “My idea was to follow the river from the moment it enters the state … and work with local poets like Gwendolyn. I talked to Gwendolyn and asked if she’d work with me on it, if I ever got it.
“I’m hoping to create communication and linkages. The river has been around forever and it has nourished native people, but let’s take a look at what’s happening to it now, in the voices of the people who see the river every day. There’s a lot of pain along the river. The river bisects our state right in the middle, but that middle is kind of the part we hear about the least. This is a way of getting to hear those voices.”
Meanwhile, Castro Luna and Morgan are planning a June 28 “Evening of Dance, Music and Poetry” at downtown Vancouver’s Magenta Theater, also featuring Josh Murry-Hawkins and the Washington Dance Collective, and Clark County composer/musician Judy A. Rose.
Castro Luna has served as Seattle’s Civic Poet and teaches at Seattle University. She’s the author of “Killing Marias,” a book of poetry about the disappeared women of Juarez, Mexico, and “This City,” a book of poetry about Seattle.
She’s also the creator of two interactive, map-based poetry projects, the Seattle Poetic Grid and, as of her recent travels around the state as poet laureate, Washington Poetic Routes. She is a native of El Salvador and is currently working on a memoir called “Like Water to Drink,” about her escape from the Salvadoran Civil War.
Castro Luna’s term as Washington poet laureate lasts from February 2018 through January 2020.
