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Meet Cascadia Magazine’s poetry editor: Rachel Rose
One thing we’re dedicated to publishing at Cascadia Magazine is poetry from across the region. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say we have a wealth of talented poets on both sides of the US-Canadian border here in the Pacific Northwest. To help us select a diverse and quality assortment of poems, we’re honored to have Rachel Rose joining us as our associate editor for poetry.
Rachel has roots on both sides of the border–she’s a dual Canadian/American citizen, having spent some of her youth in Seattle before moving to Vancouver. She’s the previous poet laureate of Vancouver, and her most recent project was as editor of Sustenance: Writers from BC and Beyond on the Subject of Food (Anvil Press), which was nominated for a Vancouver Book Award. In addition an assortment of poetry collections and chapbooks (including Marry & Burn, Song & Spectacle, and Thirteen Ways of Looking at CanLit) she’s the the author of The Dog Lover Unit: Lessons in Courage from the World’s K9 Cops (shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis award for best non-fiction crime book).
You can read two of her recent poems, Ars Poetica and Tooth online at Poetry Northwest. Rachel has also written several author interviews for Cascadia Magazine, including one with BC First Nations novelist Eden Robinson.
And Rachel’s doing this all while on a sabbatical in France! We’re grateful to her for helping us find and publish talented poets from across the region.
If you’re interested in submitting poetry to Cascadia Magazine, feel free to email us here.
Online at Cascadia Magazine:
I’ll Never Own a Home in Vancouver
Poet and memoirist Chelene Knight was awarded the Vancouver Book Award this weekend for her book Dear Current Occupant, a poetic look back at growing up in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. We’re thrilled she received this well-deserved award and honored that Chelene wrote an essay for Cascadia Magazine that’s a follow-up to that book: “I’ll Never Own a Home in Vancouver,” an exploration of what happens as a city gentrifies and pushes out people on the margins. Read more here.
If Portland were rezoned, rents would decline
Portland Tribune writes about a new report that finds that if Portland succeeded in rezoning as proposed in the Residential Infill Project and allow multi-family housing in most neighborhoods, rental rates would decline over the next 20 years. Meanwhile the Seattle Times reports on how Seattle is divided into two cities: one dense and urban, and the other, a suburban landscape that excludes apartments. In related news, Crosscut finds that much of Seattle’s existing affordable public housing is in disrepair.
Fracking halted in northern BC after earthquakes
Andrew Nikiforuk, writing for the Tyee, reports that that Canadian government has determined that recent earthquakes near Fort St. John in northern BC were caused by fracking of natural gas, and has ordered a 30-day halt to all operations. The quakes occurred near construction of the controversial Site C Dam.
ICE releases all detainees in eastern Oregon
The Oregonian reports that the ACLU has dropped lawsuits against ICE now that is has released all 124 immigrant men seeking asylum who had been detained in a federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon. In related news, Crosscut reports that members of Congress are asking for an investigation into the death of a Russian asylum seeker, Mergensana Amar, in a federal detention center in Tacoma, WA.
In high school and homeless near Seattle
The Seattle Times has a heart-breaking first-person account of a high school student in a Seattle-area high school who, along with her mother, was homeless. “The first four months of my freshman year, I hid my secret as easily as a bruise or a grumbling stomach.” At the Georgia Straight, you can read Stanley Q. Woodvine’s account of what it’s like to sleep on the streets of Vancouver in the winter.
Miranda Schmidt on the homecoming of salmon
Orion magazine has a lovely essay by Miranda Schmidt, “Salmon Homecoming,” in which the author, who relocated to Portland from the Midwest, contemplates the annual return of salmon to spawn in Oregon’s Sandy River. “So I tromp out to welcome them. I squint at the white blob under the water and hope that it is, in fact, a fish. I wonder if this place feels disappointing to her, if she remembers it differently, with clearer water and gentler currents. I wonder if she regrets coming back to it.”
“Arsenal 4,” poetry by Cedar Sigo
Over at the American Academy of Poets’ Poem-a-Day, you can read “Arsenal 4,” by Cedar Sigo, who was raised on the Suquamish Reservation in Washington.
“Cinders
in clotted
smoke
stone of
the war
and its gleaming
battle plans
reduced to
perfection…”
Read the full poem here.
That’s this evening’s collection of news, arts, and culture from across the Pacific Northwest. –Andrew Engelson
Photo credits: migrating sockeye salmon by S. Huffman, National Park Service (public domain)