Writer Roll Call
One benefit to writing is making friends with writers. Here are a few I appreciate.
It’s my staunch belief that everyone is provided with at least one type of artistic expression, and one of my favorite aspects of writing is befriending other folks who cultivate words as their craft. I hope to use this space to draw your eyes an ears to other writers I like, so let’s begin with these three gems of humanity.
Maurice Cowley
Last week, Portland poet Maurice Cowley officially released his debut, Identity Politics. Maurice is a good friend and an absolutely spectacular person/fantasy sports commissioner and I’m fortunate to hear him read in writing groups and to have seen a few of his poems before. Now they’re gathered in one central collection.
This is a generous compilation, both in the amount of poems offered and in the author’s intimately personal storytelling. Identity Politics offers angles on the many facets of Maurice’s identity—Black Man, Father, Husband, Teacher, and Ecclesiastic, among others—with an engaging and resonant voice. His poems are, in turn, funny and sharp and heartbreaking and warm. Here’s one of my favorites.
Alarm by Maurice Cowley
Tiny feet
slap
across wooden floor.
Little knuckles
knock
away morning silence.
My alarm has sounded
and there is no snooze.
Laura Stanfill
If you frequent Powell’s Bookstores, you’ve definitely crossed paths with the work of Laura Stanfill. She is the publisher behind Forest Avenue Press, a burgeoning indie house so far notable for The Royal Abduls by Ramiza Shamoun Koya, The Alehouse at the End of the World by Stevan Allred, and City of Weird, a collection of thirty Portland-centric short stories which earned a plush spot on Powell’s bestseller lists.
Because of her diligence, ebullience, and a savvy editorial eye, Laura is a maven in independent literary circles. This is a good thing for me because she also happens to live down my street with her husband, Jonathan, and their two daughters and a puppy named Waffles.
Laura is also a great writer. This year, after losing one close friend to cancer and another to COVID-19, Laura still managed to pilot her publishing house, write a zine called Sad House: Parenting, Grief, and Creativity in the Coronavirus Crisis, continue work on her novel, and launch a new Substack called The Bright Side.
I especially liked Laura’s recent post on model airplanes and the joy of making. I recommend following along and getting to know Laura heartily, especially if you’re a Portland-area writer.
John D. Blase
John Blase is an author, editor, and poet who lives in Colorado with his wife, Meredith. He is a friend and mentor to many of us who follow Jesus in publishing, and a literary ally since the early days of the Burnside Writers Collective.
John is a stunning writer and has a few books you can read, including a poetry collection (which I’ve purchased multiple copies of), and books on fatherhood and the Nativity. Some of his finest words can be found at his website, The Beautiful Due.
John’s writing is always deep and rich, yet his most recent posts are especially poignant after his father, Charles David Blase, passed away alone in a COVID ICU in February. John’s written extensively since, including eight poems and three letters steeped in sorrow.
Three million people died like John’s father this year. That’s too much sorrow for each of us to possibly carry, yet still the weight has to be carried. John’s writing has a way of bringing the grief in close, of making it more manageable. His first poem after the death, My Father Was a Sower, is a beautiful eulogy. Sacrilege carries both anger and lament. In Do You See What I’m Doing?, John considers good deaths, and how they aren’t always reality.
The way we carry all these deaths is one-by-one. Along these lines, I’ll leave out on John’s most recent poem, Small Gods, which hints at Jim Harrison and extols us shake free of our hardened hearts and recall what we’re made to be.
Small Gods
By John Blase
The one-eyed poet saw the world awash
in small gods—everything from stink bugs
and hollyhocks to forest creeks and girls
in green bathing suits. Lord what a vision.
To consider loons as small gods would
be a stretch for most two-eyed people.
And to float the idea that we consider,
even refer to, one another as small gods?
Cries of blasphemy, blasphemy would
ring from the peaks of slippery slopes
as the blind clutched their children close
and grabbed blank bibles in search of
chapter and verse, or at least a footnote.
Believing people to be small gods could
lead one God knows where. One might
consider, dare see, that black gods matter.