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2409 Jefferson Street
Port Townsend, WA
360-379-1086

David Romtvedt

Poet David Romtvedt will present a reading at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 26 at Northwind Arts Center, 2409 Jefferson St.

Romtvedt is the author of Windmill: Essays from Four Mile Ranch, two books of fiction—Crossing Wyoming and Free and Compulsory for All—and of several books of poetry including Certainty, How Many Horses, Moon, and the National Poetry Series selection A Flower Whose Name I Do Not Know.  His newest collection of poetry, Some Church, appeared from Milkweed Editions in fall 2005.

A recipient of the Wyoming Governor’s Arts Award, an NEA fellowship in poetry, the Pushcart Prize, and an NEA international exchange fellowship in poetry and music, Romtvedt now serves as the poet laureate of the state of Wyoming.

Romtvedt was born in Portland, Oregon and raised in southern Arizona.  He returned to the Pacific Northwest to attend Reed College, graduating in 1972 with a BA in American Studies.  He received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and was a graduate fellow in Folklore and Ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin. 

Before beginning to work at the University of Wyoming in 1995, Romtvedt served in the artists in schools programs of Alaska, Montana, Washington, Nevada, and Wyoming, taught music for street children in Mexico City, and maintained windmills on his father-in-law's ranch.  

An accomplished button accordionist, he plays dance music of the Americas with The Fireants, which has produced two recordings: Bury My Clothes and Ants On Ice.  Their music is influenced by Cajun and Creole music of Louisiana, by Conjunto music of Texas, by the African-American string band tradition of the North Carolina Piedmont, and by the coastal musics of northern Colombia.  The Fireants have performed throughout the Rocky Mountain states as well as in Mexico.

Romtvedt has served as a past manager of the Centrum Foundation’s International Folk Dance and Music Festival and Festival of American Fiddle Tunes.  He is currently teaching a course called Many Musics, Many Americas at the University of Wyoming, and has recently completed a four part radio series on traditional musics of the American Southwest for Wyoming and Montana National Public Radio. 

The reading is free and open to the public.  Call 379-1086 or visit www.northwindarts.org