FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (pdf)
MEMORIAL PLAQUE FOR DENISE LEVERTOV TO BE UNVEILED
Seattle, WA, November 25, 2016 — A plaque to honor the memory of internationally-renowned poet Denise Levertov will be unveiled in a ceremony at 10am, Saturday, December 3, 2016, at her former Seattle home, 5535 Seward Park Avenue S.
The memorial is being presented by SPLAB (Seattle Poetics LAB) and the Rainier Valley Rotary, the two organizations who helped raise funds for the plaque. Longtime Levertov friend and University of Washington Professor Emeritus Colleen McElroy is scheduled to attend and address the gathered.
SPLAB Founder Paul Nelson said today, “Denise Levertov was one of the most gifted poets to ever call Seattle home. That there is no public acknowledgment of that is an oversight we felt needed correction. Thanks to the Rotary’s efforts and to the crowdfunding campaign that included some of her longtime friends and fans, this beautiful plaque will inform the generations to come that Levertov lived here, in Seward Park, where she wrote some of the best poems ever written about Mt. Rainier. We honor her life and achievement.”
Levertov lived at the home the last eight years of her life, until her death, December 20, 1997. In her storied career, she published over thirty books of poems, essays and translations and her work clarifying the open form approach she called Organic Poetry was a huge influence on post-World War II North American poets. Her work and legacy was the subject of a tribute at the recent Cascadia Poetry Festival produced by SPLAB.
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For more information, contact Paul Nelson at 206-422-5002 or splabman@gmail.com
Contributors include:
Richard and Nina Edelman
Ann Hedreen
Valerie Trueblood
Leslie Donovan
T. Clear
Ron and Les Kinkade
Dick Lourie
Judith Roche
James Rosenzweig
Denise Cottingham
Gregory Wolfe
Susan Parr
Kristine Iredale
Margo Stever
Sarah Mangold
Stanley Sabre
Seattle Review of Books
Melanie Noel
Allison Durazzi & Thomas Hard
David Lasky
Anne Erde
Trudy Mercer
Susan Eisenberg
Mark Pawlak
Tom D’Evelyn
Lynn Learned
Deborah Woodard
Greg Bem
Bill Yake
James Anderson
Ruth Lepson
Joel Sloman
Cindy Smith
Amy Murphy
Kevin Bowen
William O’Daly
Robin Birkbeck
Sam Hamill
Lou Oma Durand
Two Sylvias Press
Raven Chronicles
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.
