Paulann Petersen
Because Every Jot of Earth Is a Grave
Because Any Pip or Pit Is a Solar Seed
Artist Statement: Talking & Listening to Plants
We are all made from the stuff of stars. I am. You are. We all are. And when I say “all,” that means the entirety of earthly creatures, both animate and inanimate. Every tree, every moth, every gnat, every seed from a fireweed or wheat-beard or orange. Each dust mote and boulder and meadow-stream. The oceans. The clouds. The reach of rain.
We poets bear witness to the common ancestor of all earthly beings, the interconnectedness of all existence. Our voices sing the kinship-songs given by, and giving off, the light of stars.
Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita, has eight full-length books of poetry, most recently My Kindred from Salmon Poetry of Ireland. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Poetry, The Birmingham Review, Prairie Schooner, Orion, Catamaran, Wilderness Magazine, the Internet’s Poetry Daily, and POETRY IN MOTION, which put poems on Portland, Oregon buses and light rail cars. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she’s the recipient of the Holbrook Award from Oregon Literary Arts, and the Distinguished Northwest Writer Award and the Legacy Award from Willamette Writers.