Field Notes
Salmon Nation at Fisher Poets Gathering
Poets, artists, and writers celebrate life and love on the waters of Salmon Nation
(ASTORIA, OREGON) If you look for it, you can see fishing life in the hands of the poets up on stage, their rough and weathered fingers wrapped around the microphone like they might be wrapped around the nets and ropes aboard their boats. Their voices reveal deep reflections on life and love and work on the waters of Salmon Nation. This is the 9th Annual Fisher Poets Gathering in Astoria, Oregon, which was held on February 24-26th, 2006.
While the event is called the Fisher Poets Gathering, it's not just about poetry and it's not just about fish. It's about celebrating the men and women trying to live by fishing up and down the coast, and it's about giving voice to their time out on the sea by letting them tell their own stories and poems in their own ways.
The Wet Dog Café hosted an evening main stage in a pub environment, while the Voodoo Room and Columbian Theater hosted music, readings, film screenings and other performances. Baked Alaska hosted several workshops throughout the day, including several writing and poetry sessions, a demonstration by Lorrie Haight Smith on how to fillet a salmon, and a talk by Trevor Corson about his new book The Secret Life of Lobsters. Finally, the Astoria Visual Arts center hosted readings, music, and a poetry contest.
Aside from the down-to-water poetry, there were several other highlights. Moe Bowstern of Portland, an author and fisherwoman for the last 20 years, organized a shadow puppet show of the life of a salmon. Using cut-outs and a projector, the piece follows a salmon from hatch to spawn and was accompanied by a live violin soundtrack performed by Moe.
Sketch Pasinski of Studio City, CA was also in attendance to screen his Reefnet, a short documentary film about reefnetting off Lummi Island, WA. This film demonstrates the power of connection to place even when a way of life may not be financially lucrative. Reefnetting satisfies the soul more than the pocketbook, which is why folk’s are still doing it.
Irene Martin hosted a discussion about her study on the socioeconomic impact of the Columbia River gillnet fishing industry. The study involved collecting information about fishing permits via personal conversations with fisherman, and then evaluating per capita income for gillnetting counties in addition to stats about community health. Her basic conclusions were that as gillnetting fishing becomes more difficult and less lucrative, fisherman don't stop fishing. Rather, they buy permits to fish other types of fish in different waters to supplement their incomes. Poverty leads to negative social and community health, which is unacceptable, and the state needs to do something about it.
One comment from an attendee indicated that there were no young people getting into the industry and that the only place to find work was in the urban centers. This does not bode well for the future of the industry.
This started a discussion about how we might begin to reestablish the connection and mutual interdependence between urban and rural communities. How do we help young people in the city to understand this connection in a more profound way? How do we keep kids from migrating to the city for jobs? How can we encourage new economic activity in our region's rural areas? (In a recent Salmon Nation Voices, Scott Boley, suggests some possible answers to these questions.)
There was a wonderful Saturday afternoon session featuring a fisher’s story circle with five long-time fishermen just telling unwritten stories. These stories are best heard from the mouths of the men themselves.
The fisher poets gathering offers a wonderful opportunity to hear about life on the water from those who do it everyday. It offers a great combination of poetry, music and song, stories, and written words in an informal setting with kind and genuine people. If you missed it this year, I highly recommend you consider heading out to Astoria next February for more tales and verse about life on the coast of Salmon Nation.
