Join us March 7th for a memorable First Saturday free writing workshop, PIE* reading and Open Mic with Raul Sanchez & Mary Pneuman
4:24 pm Writing Workshop - Travelling poems -
" All of us have been "SOMEWHERE ELSE"
Bring your bring your notes, black books, spiral books, postcards, stamps collected, trinkets bought. T-shirts (to brag around town). Let's write about our impression when visiting foreign places, the feeling of discovery, the people, food, smells, what images have stayed with you. Tell us about it. Have you been to Niagara Falls or the Rio Grande? Neah Bay? Dizzyland? Hollyweird? Paris? Las Vegas? Acapulco? Cucamonga?
6:15 pm - Mary Pneuman will read from her just published: Late and Soon
Raul Sanchez will read from his latest collection When We Were Water
Followed by an Open Mic
PIE* = Poetry Is Everything
Join us to participate, to listen, to share.
Bios:
Raúl Sánchez is is a retired Seattle Bio-Tech and self-taught poet whose work reflects the immigrant experience as well as his own story. He volunteers as a bilingual mentor in middle schools, detention centers, housing for the homeless and disabled, as well as with immigrants and laborers. He leads community "Poetry in the Park" readings May-September in northeast Seattle. During COVID, he installed a "Poetry Box" in front of his home filled with single poems for the neighbors to put in their pockets as encouragement. He wrote the libretto for the Sinfonía "Moctezuma"monologue in response to Vivaldi's Motezuma, original version for Orquesta Northwest. Some of his poems have become permanent public art in Seattle and Shoreline.
His 3rd collection of poetry When We Were Water has just been released (from World Enough Writers).
Mary Pneuman
Mary’s attraction to the natural world and its inhabitants provides the subject matter of much of her writing. As she explores the natural world and the poignant and often paradoxical relationships of the inhabitants of our Earthly home, she draws on childhood memories of the fields and forests of the family farm, observations of the flora and fauna of the Pacific Northwest, and speculation about what lies ahead in the world beyond.
Mary has warm memories of the Illinois farm where she lived before leaving to attend the University of Colorado, where she majored in English. Next, she moved to Seattle, worked for a year as a technical illustrator, married Fred (nearly 60 years ago), and began a short-lived career as an English teacher. After launching two daughters, she earned an MA in educational psychology and worked for over 25 years as a school psychologist and counselor.
Mary thinks her love of words is inherited from her father, who wrote limericks on nearly every available surface, from match book covers to napkins and placemats. She sees poetry as a way to explore the “nature of things” and make sense of the world. She says that sometimes certain words or phrases begin to echo in her head until they insist on being captured in writing, and sometimes they take on a life of their own. Maybe most importantly (possibly stemming from her early years as a lonely, and only child), poetry has become a way to connect with fellow human beings in a search for what we share in common. Mary Pneuman’s newest collection of poetry is Late and Soon continuing here work in exploring the nature of things and making sense of the world.