I'm Kim Stafford, a writer in Oregon with the good fortune to be a resident artist at the Sitka Center for Art & Ecology, a magic refuge on the coast.
In this blog, I want to share texts and images that develop while I'm here, and to interact with fellow resident artists and seekers everywhere.
I'll start with a manifesto I wrote several years ago, the notion of attending to quiet words in a world filled with shouting. This manifesto appeared as a small broadside from lone goose press in Eugene, and I circle back to it to articulate my project at Sitka: to listen here for what wants to be said, through me, now.
Friend, Download This Free Proclamation
for Local Use
Whereas the world is a house on fire;
Whereas the nations are filled with shouting;
Whereas hope seems small, sometimes
a single bird on a wire left by migration behind;
Whereas kindness is seldom in the news
and peace an abstraction while war is real;
Whereas words are all I have;
Whereas my life is short, whereas I am afraid;
Whereas I am free--despite all fire and anger and fear;
Be it therefore resolved a song shall be my calling--
a song not yet made shall be vocation,
and peaceful words the work of my remaining days.
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This is the beginning.
Kim
