PoetryMusic

PoetryMusic at Olympia Timberland Library

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 …

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Amy Solomon-Minarchi

Olympia’s First Poet Laureate (UPDATED)

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 …

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Hank and Jeanne Lohmann

Jeanne Lohmann, 1923-2016

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, …

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Lucia Perillo (photo by Becky Liebman)

Lucia Perillo, 1958-2016

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 …

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Poet Eva Donjacour, photo by Ryan Harris

Olympia People’s Mic

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 …

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Scarlett Pedersen, Kelly Miller, Rachel Greene and Brian McCracken

Socially Conscious, Brutally Honest: Poetry Slam

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 …

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