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Area universities unite for art and literature forum

‘Our goal is to create a future literary and arts journal for Tacoma and the surrounding area.’ – Kevin Manning, lead fiction editor of ‘Tahoma West’

By Tiffany Richards

Five Tacoma-area colleges and universities hosted a joint event on the evening of May 6 to both discuss art and give participants and spectators the opportunity read aloud some of their works.

Sponsored by the University of Puget Sound (UPS), the University of Washington Tacoma (UWT), Pacific Lutheran University (PLU), Tacoma Community College (TCC) and Pierce College, the event was the first ever gathering of the South Sound’s artists, authors and poets in one setting.

“[We] came up with the idea at the Western Literary Conference,” said Kevin Manning, lead fiction editor of UWT’s arts and literary journal “Tahoma West.” “Our goal is to create a future literary and arts journal for Tacoma and the surrounding area, to create a more united city in a different way. [We want to] give everyone a chance to do something good for Tacoma.”

Located on the bottom floor of the Student Union Building on the UPS campus, next to The Cellar pizza parlor, Club Rendezvous provided the perfect setting for the three-hour event. Many of the participants, representing all five schools, read poetry while others read short stories aloud to the audience.

Drawing their inspiration on everything from their personal lives to humorous scripts and experiments with various styles, each speaker brought a unique perspective of the world around them. And, in reflection of our current situation with the war in Iraq and November’s presidential race, several authors read lines of strong political protest and reflection.

Bill Kupinse, Tacoma’s Poet Laureate and the faculty advisor for UPS’s arts and literary journal “Crosscurrents,” wove the antics of Calvin from the comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes” into a poem that reflected on our nation’s current state, with several lines receiving laughs from the audience.

E. Joseph Sharkey, an associate professor in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences graduate program at UWT, read an excerpt from a short story by a renowned author in literature and lectured briefly on the importance of literature and writing in the world today.

Poet David Horowitz, president of Rose Alley Press in Seattle, reflected on the brutality of the publishing industry and the plight of the poet in various statistics. But each daunting, and often depressing, number was overshadowed by the infinite pleasure authors receive from producing and publishing poetry.

Horowitz also shared how he came to be a participant in the event. “I met the representatives with ‘Tahoma West’ at a book fair sponsored by the Tacoma Area Literary Enthusiasts in November last year. I was then invited to perform at UWT on April 10 of this year. From there, I was invited to this event.”

All in all, the organizers and participants agreed the event was a success. “It’s one of the first of its kind, schools sharing their work. [We hope to] create an ongoing forum in the greater Tacoma community,” said Ian Greenfield, the special events coordinator for “Crosscurrents.”

“I thought it was a lot of fun,” said participant and UPS student Erin Ingle. “It was nice to see representatives from different parts of Tacoma and hearing their writing.”

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