Earth Day opens with Poetry, Music and Luminaria
Ecopoetry is a precious walk through natural spaces that evoke the sounds of the wind, lapping shores, bird calls, and the haunting howl of a wolf. Bringing those wild spaces inside, through the spoken or written word, can resonate with a wild aspect of ourselves we have long tamed and yearn to reacquaint.
Each Earth Day, the San Juan Islands Makers Guild hosts a beautiful reading with esteemed poets who are guides for their listeners, pulling aside a fern or branch to help us enter a trail where moss, river rocks, and the hover of a Kingfisher transports us to the Wild.
We are honored to help convene this year’s trio of authors, Jill McCabe Johnson, Quinn Bailey, and Derek Sheffield. Following the poetry reading there will be a luminaria lighting at the labyrinth and a book signing with the authors.
Please join us on Friday, April 19th, at 6:30pm to launch Earth Day Orcas with an unforgettable poetry reading in the Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Eastsound, Washington.
A special thanks to Jill McCabe Johnson and Debra Babcock for bringing this gathering into being.
Meet the Poets and Authors
Jill McCabe Johnson
Jill’s latest poetry collection, Tangled in Vow & Beseech, is now available from MoonPath Press. Named a finalist for the Sally Albiso Poetry Award and Michigan State University’s Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, this is Jill’s third poetry book.
Jill McCabe Johnson (she, they) grew up in the Pacific Northwest and spent her childhood digging for clams and geoducks, harvesting wild berries, and reading in poor light. Jill writes poetry and narrative nonfiction, plus occasional forays into fiction, with a deep social conscience and even deeper roots in nature and the natural sciences.
Her aims and interests lie at the intersection of protecting the endangered and leaning into what’s just and beautiful in this world. So while her writing may address issues such as entrenched racism, gender violence, climate change, or mass killings, she believes every piece of writing at heart is a communique of hope. Jill’s scholarship focuses on the influence of walking on literature, and her personal life often veers toward trails, too—from hikes in her beloved Pacific Northwest to historic routes such as the Campostela and Grande Randonnée.
Quinn Bailey
Born and raised on Orcas Island, Quinn Bailey, is a poet, naturalist, and wildlife tracker who feels most at home wandering the wooded hills and rocky shores surrounding the Salish Sea.
Quinn’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in a number of publications including Camas, Deep Wild, Big Sky Journal, and Terrain.org. His first full-length collection of poetry, The Currents of the World was published by Homebound publication 2020. Quinn currently resides in Bothell WA, with his partner and two cats.
See more about Quinn’s work here.
Derek Sheffield
I write because the words of others saved me in the long blue silence of my childhood and making poems for me has come to be about living more deeply and widely.
Reading the poems of others and making my own is about expanding the available Beauty and meaning of life amidst all the losses we must face.
Writing is redemptive, individualistic, and the process puts me in touch with a mysterious aspect of being. Call it what you will – God, muse, imagination.
It is like nothing else I’ve encountered.
- Poetry Editor, Terrain.org
- Poetry Faculty, Writing the Wild
- Poetry Faculty, Western Colorado University’s low-residency MFA Program