Ground 2 Sound
Winners from our themed submissions call!
On March 1, 2024, Tacoma turned out at the Ground to Sound Festival to show the impact and intersections of art and activism, and to focus on the crucial importance of clean waters in our Puget Sound Region. The event was a partnership between City of Tacoma, Fosters Creative, University of Washington Tacoma, and Creative Colloquy, and included a film festival, performances by authors, photographers, art groups, and discussion. (Learn more about the event.)
Creative Colloquy got the plumb role of reading poetry, flash fiction, and essay pieces submitted on the themes of the event: “If it hits the ground, it hits the sound.” Thank you to ALL our authors who turned your art to the subject at hand: We loved reading your work!
Featured authors Pearson, Spiers, Roxborough, and Beck read their works for a packed and appreciative room at Ground To Sound, 2024.
Pieces selected for performance:
Shipping Lanes by James A. Pearson
And its people by Elizabeth Beck
Walking the Beach by Ann Spiers
Ode to the Waterlode by Stephen Roxborough
Honorable Mentions:
Remembering the Salish Sea by Sandra King
Salt of the earth by Burl Battersby
Shipping Lanes
I’ve heard when big ships
chug through the Sound,
the orcas can’t hear to hunt.
Every time a pod is nearby
people with cameras swarm
the cliffs, the waterfront,
anywhere to catch a glimpse
of what’s still wild in this world.
One day the seas went quiet.
It was 9/11 and no ships
came to American shores.
It turns out whales get stressed, too,
when their voices are drowned out
by all that mechanical thunder.
But that day they relaxed
and spoke to each other
in soft tones, and maybe
the memory of it is still sweet
in their hearts. There’s so much
we love while we destroy it.
James A. Pearson is a poet and writer living in Tacoma, WA. His recent work draws on the natural rhythms of the world to show how every season of life deepens human belonging. His first book of poetry, The Wilderness That Bears Your Name, will be published in 2024. You can find more of his work at jamesapearson.com.
And Its People
A tribute to the Nisqually creation story
by Elizabeth Beck
When all the animals are used
Eaten, consumed, blighted, abused
When the waters have been poisoned
Defiled, despoiled, destroyed, ruined
Beyond our ingenuity —
Then will The Changer send another flood
Send us fleeing to Tacobet’s creational mud
The headwaters of Mount Rainier and its glacial
Indifference, no longer willing, no longer able
To sustain us
Shall we bend again to the forest floor
Crawl around on limbs of four
Eat fern roots and camas bulbs
Return to hidden homes
Underground
Who will teach us how to stand
If we mock each Spirit Man
Once the Nisqually has been sacked
The Changer may just turn their back
In abjuration
Or shall we grasp the arrow now
Determine will and set our brow
And slay the beast we’ve raised
So worshipped in our final days
Of corporate ease
Each watershed made of watersheds
Puzzle pieces and wonderous thread
Revivers of land, of salmon, of trees
We may find ourselves the final key
To the stream
The river
The Sound
The sea
Elizabeth Beck (she/her) is an island writer who likes to overshare and underline. Her poetry and short stories have been featured at WRIST Magazine, Underneath the Juniper Tree, The Laureate Listening Project, The Washington State and Gig Harbor History Museums, TAM, The Washington State Department of Commerce, and glimpsed floating down storm drains.
Walking the Beach
by Ann Spiers
Back on the beach, I hike, mumbling to myself about grey skies, grey water, and no horizon between the two greys. The tide is receding. The wind bullies me. It is Christmas-week cold. One, two miles go by slowly although I am trucking along. The beach is narrowing; the surf curls a skinny jagged lip; the cut bank grows to three feet high, then drops away. The southwest wind presses my back, and wetness crawls up my ankles to my knees.
As I go forward, ahead I spot giant forms on the upper beach. As I close in on them, I see they are dead trees, upright, branchless, black with salt curing, probably fir or cedar, not the twitched trunks of shore pine. They are still rooted in place where the forest floor dropped below high-tide level, perhaps after an earthquake. But there is no elevation from where they could slip forward, and no forest of their age or kind grow nearby. I can’t decipher how they got here, Battered by wind, I move into the salal, rooted in the near shore. I maneuver through their shrubbery and
along deer trails. Waves overwash, leaving a sandy frosting on the glossy leaves. Each step breaks through, making tedious footfall. Now the grey seascape is eerily coloring red and yellow. The long winter sunset has commenced on the cloud-cluttered horizon, and noon just three hours ago. Rain falls as predicted.
In a heavy chair set in the salal, a girl doll, decked out in indestructible ringlets and ruffles, sits getting wet. She outwaits winter until spring low tides when the family comes back for geoduck digging. Settled back of the beach are architecturally kissed houses, very Northwest-y, two floors high, cedar sided, and windows wood-framed. I trespass onto one porch. Inside the windows, mirrors reflect beach light into the home’s dim interiors. These houses are vacant for the winter. On their eaved porches and wide verandas are chairs inviting a sit-down, a rest-a-spell, a come-take-a-load-off. I do.
Out in the waves, a ship rises and falls in and out of view. I think of my grandfather, Captain Wiley, long ago master at crossing any bar and navigating through the shoals. He is now out to sea eternally in a phantom tug. I say to him what he used to say, even after he was beached on my parents’ front porch up in Seattle. I say, as I dare to huddle in a stranger’s deck chair, Wake me when the tide turns.
Ann Spiers is Vashon Island’s inaugural Poet Laureate. She belongs to Vashon’s haiku group, Mondays at Three. As steward of the Poetry Post in Vashon Town's Village Green, she invites all to pin up poems there. She has enjoyed reading in Tacoma, including Distinguished Writer series, King's Books, Sound Poetry (KTAH- FM radio), and U of Puget Sound Collins Library. She co-wrote Walks, Trails and Parks on Vashon Island, 6th Edition, 20th Year. Published poetry includes “Back Cut” (Black Heron, 2021), “Rain Violent” (Empty Bowl, 2021), and “Harpoon” (Ravenna Triple No. 16, 2022).
Ode to the Waterlode
by Stephen Roxborough
i.
all the water on earth
is all the water that ever was on earth
& all the water on earth
is all the water that will ever be
all the water that will ever be
there’s water over land in the land
under land & water in the air
there’s water water everywhere
she circulates & celebrates
she automates & generates
she moderates & regulates
she intoxicates & eliminates
all life on earth originates from water
born out of the ecstatic & chaotic
& the proof is emphatic
94% of life on our planet
remains aquatic
we speak of mother earth
as if she only exists on land
yet when we unravel the mystery
of our distant history
we see she’s really mother ocean
mother lake mother river mother sky
mother rain mother snow mother ice
mother water mother water
mother water
ii.
our fluid natural solution
our true nature is nirvanic
97% of all water on earth oceanic
& our great water bodies create
70% of the air we breathe in & out
in & out we breathe ocean in & out
the true mixer-fixer-elixir of life
mother water the key to our ecology
the key to our ecology
our blood 85% water
our brains 77% water
even bones 25% water
it takes 1,000 years for water
to travel around the world
it takes 1800 gallons of water
to refine a barrel of crude
the blue whale has a heart
the size of a car
iii.
mother water the key to our ecology
she circulates & automates
she centers & tempers global temperature
she instructs & conducts energy
resonates & tunes to the moon
she echoes & bellows the subtle pulse
of surroundings
so whisper
positive thoughts into your coffee
murmur deep sea prayers into your tea
give thanks for mother water
with a swirl of your spoon
a verbal ancestral twirl of elation
& a vortex of higher vibration
talk to your water body
tune into your fusion of solution
feed it words of courage & encouragement
pour delight & promise into your ocean
swim in the flow & blood & flood
of love to hug & be hugged
to hug & be hugged
honor mother water inside & out
breathe & receive ocean inside & out
breathe & receive breathe & receive
take care of your water vessel
take care of mother ocean
mother sky mother air
take care take care
because all the water on earth
is all the water that ever was on earth
& all the water on planet earth
is all the water
that will ever be
all the water that will ever be
Stephen Roxborough is editor/creative director for NeoPoiesis Press, author of 6 poetry collections, and 2 CDs. Most recently, Rox released Songs of a Psychic Seahorse. Last year, a recorded collaboration with indie legend Karl Blau titled Poetica Dystopia hit the airwaves. Rox currently lives on Whidbey Island where he makes photos and poetry about sky, shadows, water, dreams, rust, music, love, and death. “Ode to the Waterlode” is the title poem for an unpublished collection about the history, ecology, and importance of water to our existence.
Remembering the Salish Sea
by Sandra King
Walking along Tacoma’s waterfront,
I don’t know if I’ve had a more delightfully disarming experience
than meeting the curious, deep dark, wide-eyed,
innocent gaze of a sea lion pup
resting on a dock
with their momma,
thick, sand colored coat
gloriously fluffed in the sunshine,
whiskers looking ridiculously long
dangling from a wee baby snoot.
I still smile, remembering.
In all of nature,
I am sure I have never witnessed anything more astonishingly devastating
as momma orca Tahlequah swimming at least 1,000 miles
over the course of seventeen days
while keeping her dead calf afloat,
like an aquatic, grieving prophet,
shamelessly showing us
the consequences of humanity’s recklessness,
not allowing her baby to sink to the bottom of
our consciousness,
in hopes we will never forget.
Sandra K. King (she/her) moved from Central Wisconsin to Tacoma in 1989. She enjoys writing poetry, short stories, and an occasional essay, and wearing out her welcome at Creative Colloquy open mic moments. She has been published in local and regional literary publications and participated in live readings at various Tacoma arts events.
Salt of the earth
by Burl Battersby
Under ancient firs reaching toward the light
Blackberry vines cloak the verdant expanse
Marking out the spot where cultures ignite
In the shadow of Tahoma, we dance
The earth keeps pulling the sun
Drawing out summer so wide
Skies measuring each thunder cloud
Piling up on the mountain’s side
Silent yet soon to be loud
The Puyallup River pours milky pearl
Into Commencement Bay’s ink-darkened spread
Run-off from storms upstream, a patterned swirl
Mountain’s silt gathered in her watershed
B. Eugene B. (he/him) is a poet living in the South End of Tacoma. Currently the Executive Editor of "Voices of Tacoma: A Gathering of Poets", he is also the Director of Green River College, Kent Campus. In his free time he is busy making ink, drawing, walking dogs, and being a husband and a dad. You can find him at beeugenebecreative.com.
