The Ones Who Came Before
just when you thought you knew everything!
When I moved to Seattle in 1983, I began writing poetry in earnest. I wrote about everything! All the angst from my divorce, my shortcomings, income challenges, relationships, and the like.
As those topics were fueling my poetic leanings at the time, there was another subject that had caught my eye. It was the art of Keith Powell, a scratchboard/multi-media artist in northeastern Washington State.
I first met Keith while I was working at Ravenhouse Gallery, in Friday Harbor, WA. We became good friends and shared many things, mostly his spiritual thoughts and practices, which were reflected with integrity and compassion in his work.
I became entranced with meanings and the artistic process. Many of his friends were also artists and would drop by his studio to chat.
After my move to Seattle, we contacted each other less-and-less, but I never forgot about him or his art and I began to write about the work he created, from prints and original work of his I collected.
The poems I wrote and those I published in my 1988 chapbook, out of my mind…, were of a controversial subject, that of the wrongs the indigenous peoples of the northwest suffered, but served to reflect a broader population, many of whom are still reeling from injustices…
