On October 9, Northwind Reading Series will feature Bill Siverly and Michael McDowell, co-editors of Windfall: A Journal of Poetry of Place.  The readings will start at 7 pm in the Northwind Arts Center, 2409 Jefferson Street.

Bill Siverly was born and grew up in Lewiston, Idaho, and he has lived in Portland since 1972.  He has published three books of poems:  Parzival (1981), Phoenix Fire (1987), and The Turn (2000).  His book Clearwater Way is forthcoming from Traprock Books in 2009.  Bill taught literature, composition, and creative writing at Portland Community College for twenty-five years.   Since 2002 he has been co-editor with Michael McDowell of Windfall: A Journal of Poetry of Place.

Michael McDowell has published fiction, poetry, and nonfiction in such publications as Penny Dreadful, Pawn Review, South Carolina Review, and Confluences. He currently writes prose mostly about nature and landscape writing and poetry mostly about “a sense of place.” Some of the prose appears in the anthologies The Ecocriticism Reader (Univ. of Georgia Press, 1996), Reading the Earth (Univ. of Idaho Press, 1998), and Fifty Key Thinkers on the Environment (Routlege 2001). Some of the poetry appears in Windfall: A Journal of Poetry of Place, which he co-founded and co-edits with Bill Siverly. He teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at Portland Community College.

To explain their editorial focus, Bill and Michael write: “Against the current tide of globalization, we posit its opposite, ‘localization.’  Our identity is tied to place: We don’t know who we are unless we know where we are.  A poetry of place is a poetry which values locales, which sees and lets the reader experience what makes a place unique among places.  In its fullest sense, the term “place” in poetry includes not only the geographical location and natural environment, but the history of human presence and before.  We hope to encounter again a poetry that finds pure delight in being alive in the here and now.”