Poet W.H. Auden wrote, “A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.” And for more than three decades the Olympia Poetry Network has been encouraging, supporting and giving platforms to local poets who, like Auden, are devoted to language. The network’s volunteers are dedicated to increasing literary awareness and an appreciation of poetry in the South Puget Sound in Thurston, Mason, Lewis and Grays Harbor counties.
Co-founder Jim Bill says the network informally organized in 1990 and held its first public poetry reading in Olympia in 1991. “There were four of us that launched it, to give readings to the public,” Bill says. “Attendance was pretty good.”
And attendance in 2024 is still robust. Perhaps that’s because although the world has transformed in recent years, some things never change. “Poetry may be our last—as well as our first—opportunity for clarity,” the network newsletter’s 1991 premier issue declared, adding that, “As our new world continues to face the same old story: a barrage of misinformation, the need for poetry in our lives has in no way been diminished.”
The same can be said today.
Olympia Poetry Network Fosters a Sense of Community Through Local Gatherings
Spurred by its inaugural public interest, the Olympia Poetry Network’s founders expanded to about a dozen poets and the organization took off. They issued newsletters, held poetry readings and re-launched a weekly poetry program on The Evergreen State College’s KAOS radio station from 1990 to 1992.
Today, the network is incorporated as a nonprofit with a board, website and Facebook page. “In 2025, we will have our 35-year celebration,” says board member Cynthia Pratt. And although they created a governing body, they do not have a board president. “It’s an egalitarian thing,” explains Pratt. “We used to be more formal, but we’re poets.”
Despite having no president, the network and its board are fully organized. The network schedules monthly readings in Olympia for poets to showcase their writing, holds special events, conducts local workshops with regionally and nationally known poets, and hosts monthly poetry readings via Zoom, to name just a few of its ongoing activities.
“I am proud of our community,” says board member Chris Dahl of the network’s local gatherings. “We try to foster a sense of community.”
Olympia Poetry Network Invites All Poets and Public to Readings, Open Mikes, Special Events and Workshops
The Olympia Poetry Network’s board members and other participating poets come from all walks of life. Bill worked for the Department of Ecology and says he is now on an “emeritus” status with the network board. Long time board member Pratt is a former Lacey Council member and deputy mayor, appointed as the first poet laureate of Lacey. Board member Dahl is also a published poet, as well as a designer and the network’s newsletter editor. Other board members have careers outside their poetry writing, such as in teaching, fishing, photography and various arts.
Dahl says they typically see between 30 and 40 people attending the monthly in-person readings. Like the board members, attendees have various life experiences along with a shared love for poetry. “We have a mixed bag,” Dahl says. “We have people who have never read before, and well-known poets.”
The popular in-person monthly readings are held the third Wednesday of each month at 6 p.m. in the New Traditions Café and Fair Trade Gallery (300 5th Avenue SW, Olympia). They are free and open to the public. The format includes an open mic where people sign up in advance to read their poems for three minutes, then a featured poet reads their own work. The last Tuesdays of each month are online readings via Zoom for network subscribers, where board members Sandy Yannone and Thomas A. Thomas conduct an open mike and reading by a featured poet. “We bring in good poets to share their work,” explains Pratt of the two monthly readings.
The network holds other gatherings, including its annual nondenominational “Season’s Readings” each December where board members offer original or favorite poems to celebrate winter festivities, followed by an open mic time. “It’s also nice for people who are not poets,” says Dahl. “They get a spiritual renewal.”
The network also conducts local workshops with award-winning poets. Gary Copeland Lilley guides the October 2024 workshop. Lilley is the Port Townsend Writers Conference artistic director and recipient of the Washington, D.C. Commission on the Arts Fellowship for Poetry.
Love the Language of Poetry? Then Check Out the Olympia Poetry Network
Well over 100 featured poets, plus hundreds of other poetry-loving participants and readers, have enjoyed the Olympia Poetry Network’s platforms in the last nearly 35 years. If you want to learn more about participating or attending, visit the network’s website.
