CWU to Host Award-Winning Poet Ross Gay for NEA Big Read Event Series

Over the next several weeks, the Ellensburg community will come together in exploration of Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, an award-winning collection of poetry by Ross Gay. The event series, part of the National Endowment for the Arts' Big Read program and orchestrated by CWU Libraries, will feature two talks by Gay and will draw on Ellensburg's abundant connections to its natural surroundings.

The planning process for the events involved a number of community partners coming together with common purpose, according to CWU Interim Dean of Libraries Sydney Thompson.

"What I'm most excited about is all the different partnerships and collaborations," she said. "We've got a team of organizers at the library, but our campus partners are also doing a lot of the planning work. It's really neat, because we're giving the events direction, then putting them in the hands of some amazing creative people, so each one is going to be a little different."

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude explores the joys, sorrows, and blessings of life from Gay's perspective as a poet, community organizer, avid gardener, and founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard. In this spirit, many of the Big Read events focus on the connection between poetry and our environment.

Two of the events-"Strangers Maybe Never Again: Knowing and Writing Wilson Creek" and "Strangers Maybe Never Again: Writing Odes To Urban Wilds"-are led by naturalists from the Kittitas Environmental Education Network (KEEN), as well as writer and poet WLS (the pen name of Wendy Lee Spaček), who studied with Gay at Indiana University. These two interactive events take attendees on walking tours through Ellensburg, inviting them to draw inspiration from their surroundings in guided writing exercises.

"You have to think about his community-oriented process of writing," WLS said. "Farming, food, and access to food are really big passions of his, so I took that as inspiration for those two writing workshops. The idea is to bring people together who maybe didn't realize they wanted to write."

Poetry is often seen as requiring a certain mindset or level of experience to read and write, so WLS says that these writing exercises were designed with accessibility in mind.

"All of the writing prompts are really accessible and easy to jump into for people who have no experience," she said. "People need to know that there's no special skill they need to enter into reading a poem. People should think about poetry the way they do about music, where they can enjoy the melody and the mood of a song without necessarily wondering what it's about. I like many poems just for the way they sound."

The event series kicked off April 22 with "Letters from a Garden: Writing and Planting at the Wildcat Neighborhood Farm." This Saturday, April 29, will feature "Strangers Maybe Never Again: Knowing and Writing Wilson Creek." Gay will give two talks Wednesday, May 3. May 6 will feature "Strangers Maybe Never Again: Writing Odes To Urban Wilds" as well as the Brass Band of Gratitude Celebration featuring screen printing by Wenatchee artist Heather Dappen. The programming will wrap up with "Walk & Write at Helen McCabe State Park: A KEEN Shrub-Steppe Event" on May 13. A full calendar of events can be found online.

CWU Libraries has been handing out free copies of Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude this spring, and more copies will be available at all the Big Read events, as well as the First Friday Art Walk on May 5. Thompson says the giveaway is intended to prepare the community to discuss the book on a deeper level.

"The purpose of The Big Read is to do exercises like these that build community and make sure we get books into as many hands as we can," she said. "A lot of our funding has gone towards books that we give away at events. People are often surprised; they think we're selling something. But what we're really doing is getting the book out there so people can participate in these events, which has been really neat to see."

No registration is required to participate in the Big Read events, which are free and open to the public. More information can be found on the CWU Libraries website.

NEA Big Read Community Partners

CWU English Department, CWU Wildcat Farm, Ellensburg Public Library, Gallery One, Kittitas County Regional Library Board, Kittitas Environmental Education Network, Kittitas Valley Universalist Unitarian Congregation, National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Big Read Program, and the musical group The Wooden Tubas.