by Christina Butcher for OLY ARTS Olympia’s first poet laureate, Amy Solomon-Minarchi, is already hard at work promoting poetry within the community with her call for Writing in the Rain poems. Solomon-Minarchi is accepting short-poetry submissions until April 10, when she’ll select short poems of three to six lines to be “painted” onto city sidewalks …
WEEKEND PREVIEW is your weekly guide to events in Thurston County. This week, there’s no shortage of highly anticipated musical performances, exquisite dance or thought-provoking theater to keep you entertained. Get ready for a full lineup of arts and culture in Olympia! Click here to listen to our podcast version of Weekend Preview, sponsored by Alan …
by Christina Butcher for OLY ARTS Each month, Olympia poets, authors and literary enthusiasts gather for an evening of poetry and camaraderie. It’s a chance to let their guard down and simply enjoy the spoken word. Seldom do featured readers have much in common with each other in the way of theme, style or poetic …
by Christina Butcher for OLY ARTS What would the holiday season be if it didn’t include a bit of winter poetry, read under the warm glow of a lamp in a cozy room? The Olympia Poetry Network (OPN), a nonprofit organization with 25 years of history in the South Sound, invites community members to join …
by Molly Gilmore for OLY ARTS Library concerts, once startling, have become commonplace. But PoetryMusic—which fuses literary classics with wide-ranging music—is truly at home among the stacks. The Port-Angeles-based chamber-jazz duo, performing Where Words and Music Meet at the Olympia Timberland Library this Thursday, has played libraries from California to Massachusetts. “They’re the main venues …
Writing in the Rain With Olympia’s Poet Laureate UPDATED Nov. 23, 2016: City Arts Program manager Stephanie Johnson announced that the Olympia City Council approved Amy Solomon-Minarchi as Olympia’s first poet laureate. Solomon-Minarchi is in her fourth year of teaching at North Thurston High School. She grew up on the Jersey Shore and moved to …
UPDATED JAN. 17, 2017: One correction and one addition were suggested by Ms. Lohmann’s daughter, Karen Lohmann. We apologize for any misinformation or confusion in our original article. In the aftermath of poet Lucia Perillo’s death, OLY ARTS was saddened to learn of the passing on September 26 of renowned Olympia poet Jeanne Lohmann. Lohmann, …
Renowned author and poet Lucia Perillo died in her Olympia home October 16 of unknown causes. Her passing was reported by her publisher, Port Townsend’s Copper Canyon Press. She was 58. Perillo’s 2009 poetry collection, Inseminating the Elephant, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the Library of Congress’s Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National …
by Jonah Barrett for OLY ARTS As the seasons change from green to orange, Old Growth Poetry Collective continues to bring poetry events to Olympia. The collective’s weekly poetry show, “Olympia People’s Mic,” takes place every Thursday evening at Ben Moore’s Restaurant. Every first and third Thursday event will take the form of Olympia’s only …
by Molly Gilmore for OLY ARTS Consider those impassioned poems about the state of the world—poems that are being not simply read but performed—that one sees all over social media. That socially conscious, brutally honest poetry is also happening in Olympia, and the still-young poetry slam here has already hit the big time. This is …