ROMTVEDT A WINTER FISHTRAP PRESENTER: From a press release: The theme this year for Winter Fishtrap is "Crossing the Great Divides: Civil Conversation in the West." The place is the Wallowa Lake Lodge in eastern Oregon; dates are Feb. 23-25. In this election year, we have been bombarded with stories of Red and Blue, Democrat and Republican, city and country, east and west. It has seemed like a game, an exercise in sorting the entire country, all 300 million of us, into opposing camps. Are we indeed sorting ourselves into two (or more) camps? David Romtvedt, Wyoming poet laureate and author of Some Church (Milkweed Editions), has argued that "coding our states red or blue" might be harmful, that such labeling "isolates us and forces us to lead lives that are intellectually and emotionally impoverished." Bill Bishop of the Austin (Texas) American-Statesmen, wrote a series of articles called the "Great Divide," which he is now working into a book about how America is segregating itself, "by race, by skills, by the way we form our families, live our lives and, in the end, by our politics." Romtvedt and Bishop will be joined at Fishtrap by Howard Berkes, who has roamed the country from Hurricane Katrina to Olympic scandal for years, and became National Public Radio's first rural affairs correspondent in 2003. Winter Fishtrap is a weekend conference of readings and discussions. It’s a package deal, with all meals included and lodging available at the Wallowa Lake Lodge on a first-come basis. It is open to writers, readers, and thinkers interested in the conversation, a kind of "citizens' symposium" of the West. FMI: 541-426-3623.

Labels: Deep West, poets, politics

- posted by Michael Shay @ 8:26 AM