Hi there,

Thanks for visiting my blog. This Red Room site is amazing, isn't it? I invite you to visit my writing blog/site at http://goldenwordsmith.com. There you'll find links to my writing, class schedules, news, and resources, especially for the Pacific Northwest, the place I live and write. At the moment I'm working on several different poetry collections, each small, but a few of them may go together. I am also writing about health, most notably breast cancer, and I am fascinated with Matt Mullenweg and the blogging empire he has created, so I am planning some articles around Matt, Wordpress, and how blogging is changing the world. 

I host and co-produce a literary radio show called The Literary Cafe' on the coast of Oregon and am getting ready to launch a new, national show called The Literary Village. The Literary Village will also have author events, but I'll be starting small at first. I write a weekly literary blog/column for LivePDX called Portland Lit Club. I also travel, teaching workshops in both writing and meditation. When I travel, I love to do interviews. You can email me at kerri@kerribuckley.com

My latest interview for The Literary Cafe' was with Poetry Northwest's editor David Biespiel. Poetry Northwest is a unique poetry journal here in the Pacific Northwest, that is strictly about poetry. Poetry Northwest puts on an event every year. Last year it was with Robert Pinsky - this year it's with National Book Award Finalist Stanley Plumly appearing at Powell's on S.E. Hawthorne Blvd on Sunday, September 28 at 4 pm, and a sort of poetic festival called The Week of the Odes, featuring the works of John Keats. I have to admit that Biespiel's enthusiasm for Keats made me get out my old book, dust if off, and open it up. David Biespiel said that John Keats' poetry "is sincere and epitomizes what poetry can be." He's right, and the interview was a mini-lesson on the work of Keats, to be continued by Stanley Plumly, whose book Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography, a work in progress for twenty years, is just released this month (W.W. Norton - September 2008) You don't have to be in Portland to participate, though, Keats lovers. Just log on to Poetry Northwest, sign up for their newsletter, and you can post an ode of your own, receive an ode a day for a week, from September 26 through October 4, and subscribe to the magazine. It's the most worthwhile literary cause in print I know of, but it's from Portland, and I may be a bit biased.

The magazine has a past, with roots in Seattle, but closed its doors in 2002. Biespiel and others revived it, moved it to Portland, and have been offering new and experimental, as well as traditional publishings of poetry, with various themes like music, politics, photography and imagery, and more. Portland is a great place to live if you love poetry, the next issue features poetry by some of my favorite authors and poets - David Guterson, for example has a poem coming out in that next issue, and Kevin Young, too. I could get carried away with this blog and poetry -  it is a field you can never learn everything about, that's only one reason I love it so much. Another reason is I think you can learn everything - from poetry. Think about that. Thanks for reading!

Warm wishes,

Kerri Buckley