My Kindred

PAULANN PETERSEN, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita, has seven previous full-length books of poetry. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Poetry, Prairie Schooner, The Birmingham Review, Catamaran, Tikkun, the Internet’s Poetry Daily, and POETRY IN MOTION, which placed poems on the Tri-met busses and lightrail cars in the Portland area. The Latvian composer Eriks Esenvalds has chosen her poems as the lyrics for four of his choral compositions, including the song that ends the award-winning Latvian film Es Esmu Šeit and— most recently—his three-part song cycle Naming the Rain. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. In 2006 she received the Holbrook Award from Oregon Literary Arts, and in 2013, Willamette Writers’ Distinguished Northwest Writer Award. As Oregon’s 6th Poet Laureate, she traveled over 27,500 miles within Oregon, visiting all of its 36 counties to give workshops, readings, and presentations at schools, libraries, and community centers.