Washington state Poet Laureate visits schools, Create

NEWPORT — Washington State Poet Laureate Derek Sheffield was in Pend Oreille County Thursday and Friday, Nov. 6–7.

He was at Create in Newport to read poems and take questions Friday night. He said he had been to Selkirk and Cusick schools Thursday and Newport’s Sadie Halstead Middle School Friday.

He was surprised at the interest students showed in poetry.

“An amazing thing happened,” Sheffield said. After he gave a couple presentations at Sadie Halstead Middle School, one to fifth and sixth graders and another to seventh and eighth graders, he went to the Create Arts Center for a workshop Friday afternoon.

“Some of those kids started showing up here this afternoon, where we had a little poetry gathering,” he said. He said he was surprised that they would show up and want more poetry.

“You have some really wonderful young people here,” he said. “They were just so engaged today and it was just so much fun. There was a lot of laughter.”

He said he thinks there is a need for poetry.

“One of the things I like about poems is that we talk about the things that really matter, I think,” he said. “And there’s nothing off the table. We can go wherever we need to go.”

He read his own poems and other people’s poems, some from “Cascadia Field Guide: Art Ecology and Poetry,” a book that brings together art, stories and poems about Cascadia, a region stretching from Prince William Sound in Canada to northern California and from the Pacific Ocean to the Continental Divide. It was the 2024 Pacific Northwest Book Award winner.

The Washington State Poet Laureate builds awareness and appreciation of poetry through public readings, workshops, lectures and presentations. Laureates perform this work in culturally and geographically diverse communities throughout the state. The Washington State Poet Laureate program is jointly sponsored by the Washington State Arts Commission and Humanities Washington.

Sheffield is a professor of English at Wenatchee Valley Community College. He said he and a biologist, Dr. Dan Stevens, taught a class that combined ecology and writing.

“Doing that work, I learned so much,” he said. He said he was already “a bit of a nature geek.”

After Newport, Sheffield was headed to the Salish Sea Poetry Festival in Bellingham. He had stops planned for a women’s prison, the Purdy Correctional Facility and senior center in Bellevue, to name a few places he plans to go in November.