Spring Creek Project Presents: An Evening with Poet Charles Goodrich
Join us to celebrate Knot House: New and Selected Poems, the latest collection by beloved local poet Charles Goodrich.
At the heart of Charles Goodrich's poetry is a quest for a deeper sense of community with the land, the weather, and the waters of his chosen home. Members of the natural world — insects, birds, plants, humans and other mammals — conspire with him in the journey. Sly, quirky, infused with wry humor and a contrarian spirit, his poems go in pursuit of what Thich Nhat Hanh calls "interbeing," the interwoven interdependence of all things. With their nuanced and varied themes of building and making a home, love of family, and kinship with all creatures, these are, in Clem Starck’s words, "the musings of a latter-day Zen gardener."
Knot House brings together a generous selection from four earlier volumes with 30 new poems. Readers discovering Goodrich's work for the first time will feel they've met a new friend, while those familiar with his work will revel in finding fresh aspects to this multilayered poet.
Goodrich will share work from the new collection, and the reading will be followed by a book signing. Grass Roots Books will be on hand with copies for sale.
Charles Goodrich keeps finding secrets hidden in plain sight, and he wants to tell us about them — an insect, an irony, a carpenter’s trick. These poems recall the shadow side of modern life so richly chronicled in verses from the Tang Dynasty in China. For this, too, is a time when, far from the emperor’s grand designs, a writer can find spots of insight and satisfaction in daily life: the garden, winsome enigmas of seasonal change, musings over the startling sensation of growing older if not wiser, or the taste a few tart berries. Goodrich offers self-evident facts of lasting local experience while the empire falters.
— Kim Stafford, author of As the Sky Begins to Change
Charles Goodrich grew up in the Midwest and moved to Oregon after college in 1974. Determined to maximize his time outdoors, Charles found work as a groundskeeper, first for a convent, then a residential treatment facility for troubled teens, and finally as the Master Gardener for the county parks department. Gardening put him on intimate terms with weather, soil, insects, mammals and birds who became the characters and co-conspirators of his poetry. During these years, Charles and his wife Kapa built Knot House, doing much of the framing, plumbing, wiring, and finish work themselves. Their son, Elliot, was born at home in 1993.
Charles is the author of four previous volumes of poetry; a book of narrative essays, The Practice of Home; and a novel, Weave Me a Crooked Basket. He also co-edited two anthologies, Forest Under Story: Creative Inquiry in an Old-Growth Forest and In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens. His poems and prose writings have appeared in Orion, The Sun, Terrain.org, and many other publications. He is also a former director of the Spring Creek Project.
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