Harold Rhenisch presents 'The Salmon Shanties: A Cascadian Song Cycle'

Third Place Books welcomes Canadian poet Harold Rhenisch to our Ravenna store for a presentation of his new book of poetry, . In poems that move between English and Chinook Wawa, The Salmon Shanties explores memories of people, place, and of returning home, speaking the land’s names as a music of its own. This event is free and open to the public.

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A collection of shanties (songs) laid out in couplets that move between English and Chinook Wawa, The Salmon Shanties celebrates a poetic tradition deeply rooted on the West Coast. Harold Rhenisch explores memories of people, place, and of returning home, speaking the land’s names as a music of its own and creating a series of aural maps.
Imbued with rhythms of Secwepemc grass dances, the colloquial chatter of the Canadian poet Al Purdy, and the voice of poet and historian Charles Lillard, Rhenisch’s work sings of roots to the land lifted up by the sea into the sky—as if Ezra Pound had sung of Cascadia instead of Europe.
Do not be in Mareuil and Périgeux tonight; it is 1912 no longer.
We, the land’s singers, are walking the star road on the long way home
with the crickets of a July evening above Tuc el Nuit,
the burrowing owls of N’kmp,
and the long memories of the dwarf shrews of Nighthawk.
Breath cannot be denied. Poh cannot be forsaken. Ezra, shantie.

Harold Rhenisch has published 33 books of poetry, fiction, memoir, translation, criticism and nonfiction since 1981. He has twice won both the CBC Prize and the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize and received the George Ryga Prize for Social Responsibility in Literature.

Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle's Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events

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