“The Unknown Good in Our Enemies:  A Celebration of the Poetry ofWilliam Stafford and Poetry from the Middle East.”   Saturday, January 15, 4-6 p.m., Tsunami Books

Oregon poet William Stafford (1914-1993) was a conscientious objector during the second world war. The author of over 50 books of poems, winner of the National Book Award,  he was Oregon’s beloved poet laureate for many years.

This two-part program will include readings of poems from the forthcoming anthology Before We Have Nowhere to Stand: Israel/Palestine: Poets Respond to the Struggle, as well as poems from Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, and prose from Palestinian writer Mahmoud Darwish’s A journal of an Ordinary Grief, translated and read by Dr. Ibrahim Muhawi of the University of Oregon.  Other local readers include Joan Dobbie, Ingrid Wendt, Ralph Salisbury, Brian Salisbury, Martha Gatchell, Jerry Gatchell, and Quinton Hallett.

The second half of the program will be audience participation: an open mic reading of  favorite Stafford poems and poems written in the spirit of his pacifism.   The program concludes with Stafford’s voice from his CD “The Unknown Good in Our Enemies.”  Contact: Ingrid Wendt idwendt@comcast.net .   Program sponsored by the Third Saturday Reading Series and the nationwide, nonprofit organization Friends of William Stafford.