Conservation in Verse

Authors, Artists & Activists on Protecting the Lands We Love

Featuring Poets Jane Hirshfield and Kim Stafford

7-8:30 p.m., Wednesday, March 27
The Old Church Concert Hall
Portland, Oregon

Literature and art have long served as sources of inspiration that have helped fuel community-led conservation efforts to protected treasured landscapes, from the Columbia Gorge to the Grand Canyon. On March 27, Friends of the Columbia Gorge and Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built + Natural Environments will co-host a special evening (7-8:30 p.m.) exploring the intersection of artistic inspiration and community-led conservation initiatives with award-winning poet Jane Hirshfield and Oregon poet laureate Kim Stafford.

Held at Portland's famed The Old Church concert hall, readings by Hirshfield and Stafford will be followed by a moderated panel and Q&A session featuring Hirshfield, Stafford, Ka'ila Farrell-Smith, co-director of the Artist Residency Program of Signal Fire, and Kevin Gorman, executive directgor of Friends of the Columbia Gorge. The panel will explore the intersection of artistic inspiration and community conservation efforts to protect treasured places.

All proceeds from the event will go to further Friends of the Columbia Gorge and Terrain.org public education and conservation efforts.

Limited seating. Reserve your seat!
$15 ($10 for students)

Jane Hirshfield

Jane Hirshfield, an internationally renowned poet, essayist and translator, has lived in northern California since 1974 and is the author of eight much-honored poetry collections, two now-classic books of essays on poetry’s interior and civic working, and four books presenting world poets from past. Jane’s longstanding interest in the environment and science issues has led to residencies with Oregon’s H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest and with a neuroscience research program at University of California, San Francisco. Her reading at the inaugural March for Science in Washington, D.C., in 2017 continues with an ongoing outreach project, Poets for Science. She has been a visiting poet at UC Berkeley, Bennington College, University of Virginia, Stanford, and elsewhere.

Kim Stafford

Kim Stafford was born and grew up in Oregon. He is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, and editor of half a dozen others. His book Having Everything Right: Essays of Place won a citation for excellence from the Western States Book Awards in 1986. Kim has received creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Governor’s Arts Award, and the Stewart Holbrook Award from Literary Arts for his contributions to Oregon’s literary culture. His work has been featured on National Public Radio. Kim holds a Ph.D. in medieval literature from the University of Oregon and lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and children. He is the second Stafford to serve as Oregon’s poet laureate; his father, William Stafford, held the appointment from 1974 to 1989.