A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
By Jeanine Walker, WITS Writer-in-Residence As a poet, I love to play with words. When writing or revising a poem, I can spend hours switching out a single word or phrase in an attempt to get the exact right one. Despite this, I believe a poet’s business is not words, exactly. A poet’s job is […]
By Rachel Edelman American legislators can’t seem to resist using impoverished children to slander and taunt the opposing political party. Forty-eight hours after Jesmyn Ward spoke for Seattle Arts & Lectures at Benaroya Hall, the U.S. Senate used a standoff over bare-bones protections for undocumented and uninsured kids—DACA and CHIP—to halt all “nonessential” work of […]
This season, SAL’s friends at Poetry Northwest are partnering with us to present reflections on visiting writers from our Poetry Series. Below, Washington State Poet Laureate Claudio Castro Luna gives us her insights on Gregory Orr’s poetry, exploring how the lyric form can bring catharsis in times of chaos and trauma. Gregory Orr will read as part of SAL’s […]
Sing, Mother, Sing sing, Mother, sing sing to me before you leave me sing about your tears puddling up in your eyes sing the high notes and sing the low notes sing in the dark, abandoned streets of China sing the chorus of guilt and sorrow sing about the life I will have sing to […]
By Ramon Isao, WITS Writer-in-Residence For my inaugural WITS post, I hope you’ll forgive a mere anecdote. I’m new here. On the night before my first WITS residency, I was surprised by a bout of panic. I got out of bed and tried my best to chuckle it off. There was nothing to fear. I’d […]
Today, the words and wisdom of legendary poet, Nikki Giovanni, will wow us at the first event in our 2017/18 Sherman Alexie Loves Series. Although the event is sold out, there will be a limited number of tickets available at the door. In this essay, WITS Writer-in-Residence Laura Gamache welcomes us into Nikki’s beautiful descriptions […]
After years of dreaming and planning, and months of implementation, we are thrilled to welcome you to SAL’s new digital home! The new lectures.org was made possible through a generous grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, a pool of benevolent SAL individual donors, and the Nesholm Family Foundation. A partnership with the local design […]
By Letitia Cain, WITS Writer-in-Residence & SAL Event Manager It’s a Scottish tradition to open the front door of your house at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve to welcome in the new year, then rush to open the back door to let go of the past year. It’s a way of ushering […]
By Matt Gano, WITS Writer-in-Residence I hate the word “lecture.” I’ve always considered teaching poetry as a “conversation.” I hope to learn along with my students by talking about creative ideas, to open space in the classroom to unpack concepts such as “writing from the body,” “poetry as an economy of language,” “write what you […]
Whether we’re having a quick conversation by the Keurig machine or scribbling furiously when Tom Hanks cites Everyday Stalinism from the SAL stage, book gossip is our currency at the SAL offices. As we look forward to reading with you in 2018, here’s a sneak peek at our holiday reading hopes and dreams: Alicia Craven, WITS […]