TAMMY ROBACKER: BILL’S BOOK SMARTS >>>

Bill is going out with a bang. And a book. Concluding the last days of his term as Urban Grace Poet Laureate of Tacoma for 2008-2009, William Kupinse has published a first book of poems this April to coincide with National Poetry Month. Titled Fallow, the 84-page volume features 43 poems, many of which are set amid the natural and urban landmarks of Tacoma. 

Advance copies of Fallow will be available at his farewell reading in Tacoma. Joined by colleague poet Hans Ostrom, Kupinse will read at University of Puget Sound, in McIntyre Hall’s Rausch Auditorium at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 30. This event will conclude with Tacoma Mayor Bill Baarsma announcing Tacoma’s next poet laureate, who will succeed Kupinse as the city’s second poet laureate. The event is free and open to the public.

Fallow, which is funded in part by a grant from the Tacoma Arts Commission’s Tacoma Artist Initiative Grant, will appear under the imprint of Exquisite Disarray Publishing, a nonprofit organization newly founded by Kupinse and dedicated to highlighting the work of Northwest poets. Exquisite Disarray Publishing is also currently publishing In Tahoma’s Shadow, an anthology of Tacoma-area poets.

With the support of the Tacoma Arts Commission, 100 copies of Fallow will be made available to local schools and libraries. Additional copies will retail for $12.95 and will be available at King’s Books in Tacoma . All proceeds from sales of the book will support the future publication of other emerging Northwest poets.

Deirdre O’Connor, author of Before the Blue Hour, comments,“Fallow engages reflectively with the world as it is â€" decaying, damaged, lush, fallow, oblivious â€" not the world as we might wish it to be. These poems warn and memorialize, notice, name, and remember. Kupinse’s compassion is personal and political, and these poems draw our attention to the natural world we inhabit â€" and which inhabits us.”

FALLOW

All’s at rest, nothing is happening here.
Yellow grasses crows carried
laze and shimmer in the animated
still life of a disused wheatfield.

All’s at rest, except the red worms
weaving their lattice work,
the pill bugs scattering the soil,
curling like armadillos at any small threat.

Nothing’s happening here, but the red and white clover
stitching the ground, fixing
nitrogen with a saint’s patience:
clover, trifolium, trinity; rhizobium, root of life.

All’s at rest, except the ant scout’s curved antennae
ground-bent, divining intelligence.
Inches and a world above, the bees
hum and dance, skim data of their own.

Nothing is happening, as the nuthatch
plucks the pokeweed’s acrid berry:
the land is dreaming with even breaths,
its mind washed in the milk of sleep.

All’s at rest; nothing is happening,
but the earth fixing its memories
of touch taste smell sound sight
and of all the other senses not yet named.

My last Poem-A-Tacoma will post Wednesday. Check out the Poem-A-Tacoma archives.

Poem-A-Tacoma is sponsored by Embellish Multispace Salon in downtown Tacoma.

TAMMY ROBACKER is a poet and writer living, breathing, typing and spitting words in Tacoma. She owns a freelance writing and marketing communications company called Pearle Publications. Her poetry has appeared in Plazm, Women's Work, The Wild Goose Poetry Review, and the Allegheny Review. A recent recipient of the 2009/10 TAIP grant, she will be publishing her first book of poetry, The Vicissitudes, through the generous support of this funding made possible by the City of Tacoma and the Tacoma Arts Commission.