Fiftieth-Anniversary Interviews

Below you’ll find a series of interviews that Richard Meadows conducted to celebrate Empty Bowl’s fiftieth anniversary. The latest interview we’ve posted is with Finn Wilcox. Interviews with Michael Daley and Tim McNulty are also available. More to come in the next few weeks, including interviews with Red Pine, Bill Ransom, and Andrew Schelling.

Videos on Vimeo

Enjoy the opportunity to watch and listen to Michael Daley and Tim McNulty read from their work.

Michael Daley, “Ground Work”

Michael Daley, “Reluctantly”

Tim McNulty, “Winter Solstice Eve Descending Gray Wolf Valley”

Tim McNulty, “Hoh River Trail”

Finn Wilcox, “The Walk Home”

Finn Wilcox, “Nine Flower Mountain”

Red Pine, “Stonehouse Poems”

Red Pine, “Cold Mountain Poems”

Empty Bowl at Fifty

In the opening essay of Working the Woods, Working the Sea: Dalmo’ma an Anthology of Northwest Writings, edited by Finn Wilcox and Jeremiah Gorsline, Fred Miller writes, “There are words growing in the forest of the Pacific Northwest.” In a series of eight interviews that I conducted for this year’s fiftieth anniversary of Empty Bowl Press, I found this statement to be resonant of all the poets and writers I had the honor of conversing with: Michael Daley, Tim McNulty, Bill Porter (Red Pine), Finn Wilcox, Andrew Schelling, and Bill Ransom.

In addition to these well-seasoned artists, others have passed on but are still present in word and spirit, such as Michael O’Connor, Jerry Gorsline, Tom Jay, and Clemens Starck. Another well-known poet of the Northwest, Robert Sund, put out a call in 1969 for Sullivan Slough Review, stating, “We want to hear from poets who have mud on their shoes.” I can attest that everyone I interviewed has had plenty of mud not only on their shoes but also under their fingernails. These poets have worked the land and the sea, translating these experiences onto the page, and Red Pine and Andrew Schelling have literally translated texts from other cultures. With each interview, I learned more about the intricate web of these writers, their shared histories, the origins of Empty Bowl’s first anthology series—Dalmo’ma—and the fifty years of subsequent publications. There are deep and precious friendships here and a thread that continues to run through their connections. This intricate web is still expanding under the dedicated work of Holly J. Hughes and John Pierce, the current copublishers of Empty Bowl, whose mission is to publish work by writers who “share our founding purpose, literature and responsibility, and its fundamental theme, the love and preservation of human communities in wild places.” I invite you to give these interviews a listen and feel the love of this very special group of writers, their very human community, and the wild place they call the Pacific Northwest. By doing so, you can help us celebrate that their creative work has endured for fifty years—and we hope for many more.

Richard Meadows