Rena Priest is an enrolled member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation. She has been appointed to serve as Washington State's Poet Laureate for the term of April 2021-2023.

She is a recipient of the Vadon Foundation Fellowship, and an Allied Arts Foundation Professional Poets Award. Her debut collection, Patriarchy Blues was published by MoonPath Press and received an American Book Award.

Her second collection, Sublime Subliminal is available from Floating Bridge Press. Individual poems are featured at Poets.org, Poetry Northwest, A Dozen Nothing, and elsewhere. She is a National Geographic Explorer (2018-2020) and a Jack Straw Writer (2019). Learn more at www.RenaPriest.com.

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CYCLOID, FOCUS, AND CIRCULI

​Growth on the scale starts at the focus… 

Circuli… are similar to rings on a tree.

-Alaska Department of Fish & Game

A salmon is a song sung in rounds

a series of concentric circles

like a raindrop in the sea, 

rippling out and returning.

​

A series of concentric circles,

a chorus and a verse 

rippling out and returning

in a shining body of treasure.

(Excerpt, read the poem in its entirety at the Echology poetry walk.)

My name is Elijah Brambila, and I attend Peninsula High School as a graduating senior. I currently have not applied to any universities, but am planning on finishing my associates degree the year after high school graduation through Tacoma Community College.

I've utilized creative writing to express my ideas for as long as I've had the ability to spell. Through that expression, I was able to find poetry as an interest, and even a way to publicly read my literary creations.

SPAWNING GROUNDS

Under the blanket of gravel, 

Pink orbs are scattered to protect my siblings

Tucked in by the lagging energy of my dying mother.

I am hopeful to ascend among the swimming.

Burrowing for freedom, with newfound fins

The swarm of fry are welcoming in numbers

And at night, we gather to feed under the moon beams. 

I am gracious now, and settle in their comforts.

(Excerpt, read the poem in its entirety at the Echology poetry walk.)

Lydia K. Valentine is a playwright and poet, director and dramaturg, editor and educator. Her proudest accomplishment, though, is being a mom to two creative, intelligent, and caring  individuals and activists.  In her own writing and the projects to which she contributes through Lyderary Ink, Lydia seeks to amplify the voices of those who are often stifled, ignored, and marginalized in what has been the accepted narrative of the United States. 

Lydia’s first poetry collection, Brief Black Candles, was published in November 2020 by Not a Pipe Publishing. Poems from the collection were recently showcased in the Eugene Contemporary Art exhibit, A Critical Conversation: Art, Race, Privilege, and Place (on view January 14 – March 21, 2021). Her writing has also appeared in online and print publications such as Speak, The Pitkin Review, and Shout! An Anthology of Resistance Poetry and Short Fiction. She has been the recipient of various awards and recognitions with the most recent being named the 2021-2021 City of Tacoma Poet Laureate. She was the 2017 poetry fellow serving Nuestras Pequeñas Rosas in San Pedro Sula, Honduras; recipient of the 2017 Goddard College Engaged Artist Award; and recipient of the 2021 Unsettling Dramaturgy Award.

Lydia is a faculty member of Northwest Indian College and Seattle Girls’ School. She is also a highly sought after sensitivity/authenticity reader, developmental editor, and copyeditor and has worked on publications such as the social justice and literary arts magazine Speak, books such as Rough House by Tina Ontiversos, and various projects for companies such as Agate Publishing, Forest Avenue Press, McGraw Hill, and Pearson. Website: www.LyderaryInk.com.

sčədádxʷ: həlíʔ-du-but

From our beginning, our eyes are watching.

We see the pearled tumble of our brothers and sisters.

We see the sediment of past lives passing  

and we try not to suffocate in its wake.

​​(Excerpt, read the poem in its entirety at the Echology poetry walk.)

​Author's note: sčədádxʷ means salmon or sea-going trout in txʷəlšucid (Twulshootseed) or Southern Lushootseed, the primary dialect of the Suquamish, Duwamish, Snoqualmie, Puyallup, Nisqually, and Squaxin people. həlíʔ-du-but means recover, one’s soul returns in Lushootseed. Thank you to Aryana Sherman and Misti Saenz-Garcia for their help with the language.

Josie Emmons Turner wakes every morning to hearing Gig Harbor’s birds and wildlife from her sanctuary on the Crescent Creek estuary. She sees baby salmon as they make their way out to the harbor and anxiously looks for their return home in the fall.

She was Tacoma Poet Laureate 2011 - 2013 and has been published in many regional and national journals. Her most recent project was the completion of a song cycle in collaboration with Pacific Lutheran University professor and composer Gregory Youtz. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from the Rainier Writing Workshop at PLU in 2007 and has taught poetry classes and workshops to youth and adults.  www.JosieTurnerPoet.com

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SALMON SPIRIT

​Before you swam out, beginning your journey,

you were egg, one of a thousand, and before 

you were egg, you were old and battered,

returning home to create and die and because

you were old before you were young

you were wise and gave spirit to your 

rebirth, here in this water, this place,

your human family, called Swift Water People

embraced, honored you, for you fed and nurtured

what they, by themselves, could not.

(Excerpt, read the poem in its entirety at the Echology poetry walk)