WHAT WE HOLD & LEAVE BEHIND: Photos of Special Objects and Linked Poems by Oregon Senior Seasoned Poets

This poetry reading and slideshow is a collaboration between photographer Jim Lommasson and poet Willa Schneberg.
Jim Lommasson has created “What We Carry” projects around the U.S. with the houseless and with refugee communities who had to flee their homelands. Willa Schneberg is the recipient of two fellowships and the Oregon Book Award in Poetry from Literary Arts.

 This event showcases a project which celebrates the lives of Oregon seasoned senior poets, including Paulann Petersen, Kim Stafford, Carlos Reyes and Ingrid Wendt. Jim Lommasson photographed and printed images of objects of special significance from over 20 of these master poets— objects that reveal what truly matters to them— acknowledgments of well-lived lives in terms of work, family, identity, place and relationships. These elder poets paired photos of their objects with poems, and hand-wrote them in the white space of their 19” x 13” digital prints.

In this 90-minute program, slides of the finished works of image and poem will be projected, as each poet reads the poem associated with their special object.