The Skagit River Poetry Foundation will host a free poetry reading in memory of longtime islander and poetry lover Anne McCracken on Sunday, May 19, from 2:00 to 4:30 p.m. at the Schoolhouse Park Community Stage or Guemes Island Community Center on Guemes Island, depending on weather.
Anne co-founded the Skagit River Poetry Foundation and helped organize the first Skagit River Poetry Festivals, which bring nationally celebrated poets to work with Skagit-area high school students, teaching them poetry writing and appreciation. For 35 years, Anne was a beloved educator in the Anacortes community for students from kindergarten to community college, noted for her compassion and ability to inspire. Here on the island, as stated in her obituary, “Many strangers became friends over a cup of tea at her table, and one never left her presence without a poem pressed into one’s hands, chosen from the thousands she collected over her long life.” Anne died at age 96 on September 25, 2023.
The reading will open with three poets Anne introduced to islanders numerous times in readings here to support the Skagit River Poetry Festival. Irish poet Tony Curtis is author of 16 books of poetry, the most recent being, This Flight Tonight, and he has been awarded the Irish National Poetry Prize. Sam and Sally Green are co-editors and publishers of the award-winning Brooding Heron Press. The Greens live on Waldron Island. Sam was raised in Anacortes; he was named the first Poet Laureate of Washington State and his book of poetry, The Grace of Necessity, won the Washington State Book Award for Poetry. He is the author of 12 books of poetry. Besides publishing exquisitely printed broadsides and books, Sally Green’s poems have appeared in many magazines and anthologies. Her latest collection of poems is Full Immersion. The three of them have always been crowd pleasers at their Guemes readings.
The second half of the event will be an open mic—a time for you to share your own poetry, or some of those poems she pressed into your hands after tea, or those ones you know were ones of the hundreds of her favorites. Few people love poetry more than Anne. Let’s honor her in the way she would love best.