Poerty Reading: Chris Anderson and David Oates

About Love Calls Us Here: The divine meets us in the real world and nowhere else, Anderson suggests in these poems, coming without fanfare and often startling us with its presence. When and where should we look for these encounters? Here and now. In our ordinary lives. In those everyday moments, now and then, when something suddenly stirs within us, a reality we can't quite put into words. The quiet poems of this collection, through their clarity and craft, invite us to enter this mystery, offering us glimpses of a beauty we never expected, a wordless radiance rising in the dark. In Anderson's poetry, hope takes shape in the ordinary; wisdom lingers between the lines. In each of the poems collected here, Anderson helps us taste the mystery hidden in our lives and invites us to trust it-to dare joy and risk hope in these difficult times. "One by one, the poems in Love Calls Us Here gift us with something small and bright. Nothing fancy, nothing explained, belabored, nothing but an episode of what I have to call grace. There is no other word. Just enough." ––Kim Stafford, author of As the Sky Begins to Change Chris Anderson is a Catholic deacon, poet, and retired professor of English living in Corvallis, Oregon. He grew up in Spokane, Washington, went to college at Gonzaga University, and attended graduate school at the University of Washington. After receiving a Ph.D. in English in 1983, he taught literature and writing for 38 years, 34 of them at Oregon State University. He retired in 2020. In 1997 he completed a Masters in Theology at Mount Angel Seminary and was ordained a deacon. Since then, he has served at St. Mary’s in Corvallis, as well as leading retreats and offering spiritual direction. He has written, co-written, or edited 14 previous books, including three books of creative nonfiction and three books of poetry. In 2016 Eerdman’s published a book drawn from his homilies and poems, Light When It Comes: Trusting Joy, Facing Darkness, and Seeing God in Everything. He and his wife, Barb, a retired pastoral associate, have lived for many years on the edge of the forest north of Corvallis. They have three children, four grandchildren, and two dogs. David Oates writes about nature and culture from Portland, Oregon. Recent poems have appeared in Rattle and Orion. His second book of poetry, The Heron Place, won the 2015 Poetry Award and publication from Swan Scythe Press (San Francisco). He won the Badonnah poetry award from Bitterroot (NY), and has been a finalist for the Lascaux Prize, Inlandia Gravendyk Prize, Nimrod's Pablo Neruda Award, and the 2018 Ars Poetica Prize from Riddled With Arrows, among others. He is also author of seven books of nonfiction. His memoir The Mountains of Paris: How Awe and Wonder Rewrote My Life won the Eric Hoffer Award and was finalist for the Oregon Book Award. His essays have appeared widely, including in Georgia Review, Creative Nonfiction, Ecotone, ISLE, monthly in the online journal 3QuarksDaily, and in syndication via Writers in the West. For six years he collaborated in creative exchanges appearing in the German literary journal Wortschau.

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