“There are a lot more closet poets in the fishing industry than you might imagine.”
--Jon Van Amerongen, former editor of the Alaska Fisherman's Journal

Flipping open Smithsonian magazine, I ran across an article about the Fisher Poets. Then I heard a clip on National Public Radio. Next, National Fisherman featured an editorial that mentioned the event. In February of 2007, I finally took the bait, and attended my first Fisher Poets Gathering.

As a seasonal commercial fisherman, I have a soft spot for all the crazy people who do this work. Four summers of deck-handing on a small Alaskan fishing boat on Bristol Bay have taught me that fishing can be miserable, lonely, claustrophobic, boring and panic-inducing. But every year, when we pull the boat out of the water, I know I will be back again.

I also know that whether at the bar, at the dinner table (or apparently on stage) there is nothing fishermen love more than talking about fishing. With four months until salmon season, I was ready for some fish talk, and I was curious how fish talk turns to poetry in the mind of a fisher poet. So, on the last weekend in February I drove west from Portland to Astoria.

Since 1998, the Fisher Poets Gathering has been held in Astoria, Oregon, where the massive Columbia River, which divides Oregon and Washington, dumps into the Pacific Ocean. Almost as soon as European-Americans began navigating it in ships, the mouth of the Columbia was dubbed the “graveyard of the pacific.” Astoria was the heart of an incredibly productive salmon fishery, from the 1870s until hydropower dams appeared in the 1930s, and commercial fishing remains culturally and economically relevant in the area.

As I approached town, I scanned the radio and found the local station that was carrying a live broadcast from the Wet Dog Café. It was Saturday night, and the readings would be over in a few hours, so I wanted to listen while I could. On the radio, a woman recounted her experiences fishing in Prince William Sound and read a few poems. I was encouraged by her relaxed, unaffected style.

Once downtown, I bought my $10 button at the Columbian Theater box office so I could wander freely among the three venues hosting the event. I started at the Wet Dog Café, where I found one of the last empty seats at the bar. The room was stuffed to the gills with people eating, drinking, chatting and listening.

After a beer at the Wet Dog, I made my way to the Columbian theatre, which was also packed. Fishermen from the Atlantic, the Pacific, the North, the South, and everywhere in between joined locals, nomads, tugboat operators, cannery workers, wives, husbands, children, and fans.

Over the course of the night, I watched a few people read who I knew by reputation, but had never before seen. The Bristol Bay fishing crowd introduced me to the zine Xtra Tuf, created by fisher-writer Moe Bowstern, who got her start in commercial fishing in Kodiak, Alaska. Bowstern, a Northwestern University graduate with a degree in literature, had a dazzling stage presence. She entertained with gusto, mixing song, poems, stories, and heart-felt enthusiasm for the event and the community it has created.

Bowstern’s zine explores the challenges of being a woman in a male-dominated industry while expressing unbridled enthusiasm for the life she’s chosen. A regular featured poet at FPG and Connecticut’s Mystic Seaport, Bowstern’s zine has also been featured in the Utne Reader and the Women’s Review of Books. In one story about her first day on a fishing boat, Bowstern remembers pulling in a halibut as big as she was. "I'm straddling this huge fish—they can weigh 300 pounds—and it's bucking under me. I felt like I was on a bronco." Later in her narrative, she examines her reasons for becoming a fisherman in the first place. "I arrived with a college degree, a smart mouth and a thirst for alcohol. I quit drinking cold turkey after that first summer…[and] replaced that demon alcohol with this fishing.”

Towards the end of the evening, I caught one of the best-known fisher poets, Geno Leech of Washington State (he has been featured on NPR and Smithsonian Magazine). Like Bowstern, Leech also possessed an amazing stage presence, seemingly entering a trance as he sang his poems, rhythmically beating his hand against his chest. Here, Leech, who now owns several seafood restaurants, reflects on what he doesn’t miss about fishing life:

Well, I don't miss the border crossings and backbreaking toils, the ice forks and shovels and saltwater boils.

There are diesel-fouled forecastles with ironing board bunks, the stink, the sweat, the gurry and the munk.
I don't miss the buck, the bang and the roll, kidney-punching nor'westers and nut numbing cold.

…Well, sometimes at night in a tea-cozy warm bed, I think of the years that I stood on my head, draggin', crabbin' and albacore gigging. Yeah, I miss a fish but I don't miss a-fishing.

After the poetry readings were over, I stayed for a historic Bristol Bay slide show by Whit Deschner (who had already done several readings and competed in the onsite poetry competition). Deschner has published several humorous novels and guides about commercial fishing and recreational kayaking including Burning the Iceberg, Does the Wet Suit You? Confessions of a Kayak Bum, and How to be a Jerk on Bristol Bay.

The last presentation was a showing of “Fisher Poets,” a documentary about the Gathering by New York filmmaker Jen Winston, but by this point it was midnight and I was wiped out. On the way out I stopped at the merchandise tables to buy a few of the CDs and books for sale by fishermen authors and musicians. They ranged from self-published pamphlets and CDs to novels available in any chain bookstore. I checked into my motel room that night reminiscing about my recent summers on the water—transported back to the boat by the words of the Fisher Poets.

People outside the fishing industry might have a hard time believing that crusty, gruff, hardcore fishermen would or could write poetry. But anyone who’s worked on a fishing boat can tell you that, at worst, fishermen like to get drunk and tell long, pointless, vulgar stories—and at best, they are resourceful, humorous, expressive, philosophical women and men who spend a lot of time at sea contemplating existence…The sea seems to have that effect on people.

Then there’s the heartache that comes from working in an industry where the stakes are high and, in many cases, an industry that is dead or dying. Even in Bristol Bay, which is often cited as one of the best managed fisheries in the world, there are very real threats to this way of life; for example, the proposed Pebble Mine, an enormous copper and gold pit mine, has the potential to devastate the fishery through pollution and development.

John Van Amerongan, former editor of the Seattle-based Alaska Fisherman's Journal, offered insights into fisher poetry on National Public Radio in March 2005: “I think just the fact that people are out there by themselves experiencing nature in its rawest form and also dealing with their emotions in their rawest form leads them to somehow pick up a pen and write on the galley table.” Fisher Poet Geno Leech told NPR that he believed fisher poetry was so vital because “people are […] dying for something real. They can almost, you know, eat it like a steak, you know? Put it in a to-go box and take it home. You know, I think people kind of hunger for that.”

The poems I heard at the FPG ranged from silly haiku to epic-not-quite-rhyming sea chanteys, to the found poetry of marine VHF radio banter. What held it all together was that, from amateurs to published novelists, poets to non-fiction writers, the Fisher Poets were there to communicate their personal relationship to the sea, and the age-old quest for fish.

Fisher Poets share a contagious enthusiasm for what they do—though what they do can be gross, heartbreaking, miserable and lonely. They want to take you out on the water, and show you that once you start fishing, it can be hard to stop.

Photographs courtesy of Sonja Lapinski

Sonja Lapinski, a Portland, Oregon native, is currently a first-year veterinary student at Oregon State University looking forward to a fifth salmon season on Bristol Bay.

Resources:
Official Homepage of Fisher Poets Gathering
Smithsonian Article about Fisher Poets
Jennifer Brett Winston’s Film homepage
Fisher Poets on NPR
Press Release from Astoria-Warrenton Chamber of Commerce