Charles Goodrich

Charles Goodrich grew up in the Midwest and moved to Oregon after college in 1974. Determined to maximize his time outdoors, Charles found work as a groundskeeper, first for a convent, then a residential treatment facility for troubled teens, and finally as the master gardener for the county parks department. Gardening put him on intimate terms with weather, soil, insects, mammals, and birds, who became the characters and coconspirators of his poetry. During these years, Charles and his wife, Kapa, built Knot House, doing much of the framing, plumbing, wiring, and finish work themselves. Their son, Elliot, was born at home in 1993.

            After Charles wore out his knees, he took refuge in the margins of academia, earning an MFA in creative writing at Oregon State University and then working with philosopher and creative writer Kathleen Dean Moore for the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word, an innovative program that brings together scientists, creative writers, and philosophers to reimagine the place of humans in nature.

            Charles is the author of four previous volumes of poetry; a book of narrative essays, The Practice of Home; and a novel, Weave Me a Crooked Basket. He also coedited two anthologies: Forest Under Story: Creative Inquiry in an Old-Growth Forest and In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens. His poems and prose writings have appeared in Catamaran, The Madrona Project, Orion, The Sun, Terrain.org, Zyzzyva, and many other publications.

            Charles continues to live, write, and garden at Knot House, near the confluence of the Marys and Willamette Rivers in the traditional homeland of the Ampinefu Band of the Kalapuya in Corvallis, Oregon. charlesgoodrich.com