For the Reporter
Poetry at the Rainbow Café presents the works of Sharon Cumberland and Raúl Sánchez on Monday, June 4.
The program is from 7 to 9 p.m. at the café, 112 E. Main St.
Coffee and conversation follow readings. It is an open mic opportunity. The public is invited.
About the poets
Cumberland’s poems have been published in many literary journals, including Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Image, and Beloit Poetry Journal. She has been awarded Kalliope’s Sue Saniel Elkind Award, The Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association’s Zola Award for Poetry (2007, 2013), and the Writers Haven Press Bright Side Award. Peculiar Honors, a full-length collection of poems, was published by Black Heron Press in 2012.
Her most recent collection, “Strange with Age,” was published by Black Heron Press in 2017. Her chapbooks are “The Arithmetic of Mourning” from Green Rock Press, and “Greatest Hits 1985-2000,” from Pudding House Press.
She has been a resident artist at Yaddo, in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., the Jack Straw Foundation in Seattle, and the Grünewald Guild, in Plain, Wash. She was the Poet-in-Residence at The Seasons Music Festival in Yakima, and has given poetry meditations at churches throughout the region. A lifelong Episcopalian, she spent two years as a member of the Order of St. Helena, and one year at the Catholic Worker in New York City. She directed the Creative Writing program at Seattle University for six years, and is now a Professor of English, emeritus, at Seattle University.
Sánchez is a Seattle bio-technician, translator and occasional DJ at KBCS 91.3 FM community radio. He was featured in the 2011 Burning WordPoetry Festival in Leavenworth.
Sánchez’s inaugural collection “All Our Brown-Skinned Angels” was nominated for the 2013 Washington State Book Award in poetry. He was a 2014 Jack Straw Fellow, mentor and judge for the 2014 Poetry on Buses, and TEDx participant in Yakima.
His work appeared online in The Sylvan Echo; Flurry; Gazoobitales; Pirene’s Fountain; on bookmarks by the Seattle Public Library 2007 Poetic Art Project; in the 2008 Floating Bridge Review Volume 1 “Poetry from the left corner”; the 2010 winter issue of toddbosspoet.com/Flurry Vol. 3; in the second Anthology by The Miracle Theatre Viva la Word!; Latino Cultural Magazine; Real Change; in the Anthology Speaking Desde las Heridas (Publisher: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México); in the Raven Chronicles; Clover; Ghost Town Poetry; Randomly Accessed Poetics; Lowriting; The Smoking Poet; Poetry of Resistance; and Shake the Tree.
He teaches a yearly workshop on The Day of the Dead. He is working on a memoir in Free Verse. This year he will join the PONGO team mentoring youth in detention.
The Rainbow Cafe, Striped Water Poets, the NorthWest Renaissance, Auburn Arts Commission, City of Auburn, and King County 4Culture make the program possible.
