NOTE: “Today” and “tonight” refer to Friday, Jan. 9.
Robert Michael Pyle, a Guggenheim Fellowship honoree who lives in Wahkiakum County, is eager to return to the North Olympic Peninsula this weekend.
Pyle will reunite with people he admires: poets and booksellers in both Port Angeles and Port Townsend, whom he’ll join for free readings tonight and Saturday.
He’s got a brand-new book out: his 18th, but the first full collection of poetry inspired by life in the West.
Published by Lost Horse Press, Evolution of the Genus Iris buzzes with pieces such as “Horseback at Dawn” and “When Once in Mt. St. Helens’ Lap.”
Port Angeles
This evening, Pyle will come to the Raymond Carver Room at the Port Angeles Library, 2210 S. Peabody St., to read a few along with two of the Peninsula’s best-known poets, Tim McNulty and Alice Derry.
“We’ll be the warm-up band,” quipped Derry, author of Tremolo, a collection of poems on Red Hen Press.
“I’m going to read a poem about winter light and one for Bruce [Murdock, her late husband], which has to do with cutting firewood, a classic Port Angeles activity,” she promised.
McNulty, the prolific nature writer and poet whose recent book is Ascendance, will read just two poems as well in the free 7 p.m. gathering.
It was Pyle’s idea to have Derry and McNulty on the bill, said Alan Turner, owner of Port Book and News in Port Angeles and the host of tonight’s reading.
For more details about the event, phone the bookstore at 360-452-6367.
Port Townsend
On Saturday night, Pyle will come to Port Townsend for a second reading from Iris alongside Chimacum poet Holly Hughes.
They plan an evening of poetry from 7:30 p.m. until 9 p.m. at Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 2333 San Juan Ave.
Admission is free, though donations are welcome.
Hughes’ newest book is Sailing by Ravens on University of Alaska Press; she’s co-author with Brenda Miller of The Pen & the Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World.
A former Alaskan salmon gill-netter, mariner and naturalist, Hughes writes about finding her way across the water — she worked 30 seasons at sea — and making her way through love and life.
This makes her voice a fitting counterpoint to Pyle, who has traveled into deep woods and across continents.
He’s known for his nature writing and monarch butterfly-following journeys, and for books such as Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide and Walking the High Ridge: Life as a Field Trip.
Pyle has done butterfly research on Hurricane Ridge; taught at the Olympic Park Institute, now NatureBridge, on Lake Crescent; and given many readings in Port Angeles.
He is a poet who does not separate humans from the rest of the natural world.
“It is our co-evolution with everything else that really grabs me most,” Pyle has said, “and how we might or might not adapt to get along in this beautiful, volatile world.”
For more information about Saturday’s reading, phone Bob Francis at 360-344-4108 or email bfrancis@u.washington.edu.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
