Peter Culley 1958 – 2015
This was originally posted on the Cascadia Poetry Festival by Kim Clark (below). See also an interview your humble narrator did with Peter last year. (http://paulenelson.com/2014/06/29/peter-culleys-hammertown/)
He will be missed.
* * *
Peter Culley, one of our local Cascadia poets, passed away in his sleep Friday, April 10, 2015. He was scheduled to be one of the featured readers at the third Cascadia Poetry Festival in Nanaimo, BC, Apr 30-May3.
Such a loss. Heartfelt condolences to his family and friends.
A LETTER TO HAMMERTOWN
(excerpt)
I abandon my self
to a blushing
of precise boundaries,
like where a squirrel would
step up to snap the branch
back fast enough
to ride the torque all the way back,
a walnut under each arm–
getaway with intent to spring
rather than English leave.
It’s why I wear my
shirts backwards
& my jacket is the color
of the sky.
Peter Culley‘s books of poetry include The Climax Forest (Leech 1995), Hammertown New Star 2003, The Age of Briggs & Stratton (New Star 2008) and Parkway (New Star). His essays and art writing have been appearing since 1986.
About Splabman
Poet & interviewer Paul E Nelson founded SPLAB (Seattle Poetics LAB) & the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Since 1993, SPLAB has produced hundreds of poetry events & 600 hours of interview programming with legendary poets & whole systems activists including Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Joanne Kyger, Robin Blaser, Diane di Prima, Daphne Marlatt, Nate Mackey, George Bowering, Barry McKinnon, José Kozer, Brenda Hillman & many others. Paul’s books include American Prophets (interviews 1994-2012) (2018) American Sentences (2015) A Time Before Slaughter (2009) and Organic in Cascadia: A Sequence of Energies (2013). Co-Editor of Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia (2015), 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards (2017) and Samthology: A Tribute to Sam Hamill (2019) Make it True meets Medusario (2019), he’s presented poetry/poetics in London, Brussels, Nanaimo, Qinghai & Beijing, China, has had work translated into Spanish, Chinese & Portuguese & writes an American Sentence every day. Awarded a residency at The Lake, from the Morris Graves Foundation in Loleta, CA, he’s published work in Golden Handcuffs Review, Zen Monster, Hambone, and elsewhere. Winner of the 2014 Robin Blaser Award from The Capilano Review, he is engaged in a 20 year bioregional cultural investigation of Cascadia and lives in Rainier Beach, in the Cascadia bioregion’s Cedar River watershed.
