City of Port Townsend Poet Laureate

Conner Bouchard-Roberts is Port Townsend’s first Poet Laureate, 2024-2025. The Poet Laureate Program is a program of the Port Townsend Arts Commission (PTAC), in partnership with the Port Townsend Public Library. Bouchard-Roberts is a local poet and publisher (Winter Texts) who collaborates with many other literary artists, and works closely with community partners to amplify literary arts in Port Townsend and bring poetry to the civic space.

Connect to a city of literature in Port Townsend.

"Port Townsend is a literary town of great bookstores, used, new, and otherwise. Imprint and William James in downtown. Winter texts and the Library Bookshop in Uptown. Each with a unique selection and an eddy in the flow of writing. As well, our truly wonderful City Library is the real center of free public literature in town. No town can really be called a town without a public library. And woven throughout and around those physical collections are regular events being hosted by Kathryn Hunt with “Poetry on the Salish Sea,” Carl Youngman and Bill Mawhinney with “Poetry at the Meeting House,” Holly Hughes and John Pierce with Empty Bowl Press…and my own nebulous gatherings I host roughly once a month. Oh, and the poetry shrine “Memory’s Vault” is well worth a visit: just think how many incredible authors have walked up that wooded hill.

The best way to engage with the Poet Laureate Program is to pick up a poem and read it and go for a long walk to see how it changes your view of town. Or give a poem to a dear friend. The second-best way is to regularly attend City Council business meetings where myself and others will be reading poems from time to time to our City Councilmembers. Otherwise? Keep your eyes open, plenty of happenings yet to be imagined or advertised."
 
- Conner Bouchard-Roberts

A Victorian Seaport and Arts Community

Hard to say
where memory and
story of memory
lay along the shore

this is of course
the gull’s call and echo
down streets
down bluffs

the stone’s weight
of time and present
in one hand,
in the other, bills

eroding cliffs
rising sea
a long walk
to think this over

this all got going
as waves, wind, and roots—
long before she was born
Victoria’s hands were sea-water

walking the valley
again, lost names
accruing silt
and translations

forward and back
in time
Water Street
holds its name