Caleb Barber. Courtesy photo

Caleb Barber. Courtesy photo

In the burgeoning Bellingham poetry scene, poets can be found reading their prose at Anker Cafe’s Poetry Night every Monday night, week after week. One such poet, Caleb Barber, is releasing his first book, titled “Beasts and Violins.” He’s also been published in such papers as New Orleans Review, Naugatuck River Review, Los Angeles Review, Poet Lore, High Desert Journal, Other Poetry, and Plain Spoke, among others.

April being National Poetry Month, we caught up with Caleb just before he headed to New York.

Brent Cole: Tell me about when you first began to write poetry. What was your first poem about?

Caleb Barber: I started writing poetry pretty young, for school assignments and things like that, and the teachers always thought it was something special, but my dad had been reading me “real” poetry since I was a kid, so I think I always knew it was crap. I was measuring myself against Theodore Roethke even as an elementary school student. But you have to start somewhere. I wrote a poem for my grandma when I was six or seven that was about the color blue. That was one on the wall at her house for a long time. In middle school I wrote a poem about a crow I raised that eventually flew off. That was up in a hall at Shuksan Middle School for a few months.

BC: Most folks, at least artistic people, have attempted poetry at some point or time. When did you realize it was more than just a hobby, but something you wanted to pursue more enthusiastically?

CB: Yeah, poetry can be a difficult art to exist in since everyone has their own idea about it because it’s so accessible. I made it into Best American Poetry 2009 and I constantly fear people will think it’s one of those big, hardbound books you pay $75 to get a copy of. You know–a scam poetry thing. But it’s the real deal. I guess it’s just like anything.

There’s the sort of start-up poetry a lot of people do great in (local readings and Kinko’s chapbooks), and I really admire that. Those people are my friends. But I have an ego to maintain, so I like the journals and independent presses. Bound books. I went for that. I’m a pretty average musician and there are a lot of pretty average musicians, and I felt I could standout in poetry, so that’s where I put my concerned effort. It comes more naturally.

BC: How long have you been writing?

CB: I got my BA in English/Creative Writing from WWU in 2003. I did some okay writing there. Mostly short stuff, but I was starting to get curious. I was only 19 when I graduated, and I had some time to kill before I felt like I had to do anything of note. So I worked in Alaska, moved to Arizona, moved to Montana, took a trip to Europe. So it goes, I got my heart beat up a little during all of that, and that gave me the need to dig into the art. Try to come up with something meaningful out of myself. So I feel like I’ve only really been writing since I was 22 or so. That’s the stuff in my book.

BC: When was the first time you read poetry in public? How did it go?

CB: I read once with my Aunt Tess Gallagher at Village Books when I was a young kid. She’s a well-known poet and she asked me to read one of her late husband Ray Carver’s poems in celebration of his birthday or something like that. The audience was very kind. It was a poem about the family dog getting killed by a car and being sort of happy about it. I have read a lot down at Poetry Night over the years and Robert does a great thing down there. Everyone should go.

BC: When not writing poetry, what do you do? What’s your day job?

CB: I work up at Pro CNC near Cordata. It’s a machine shop and I am in charge of most of the assembly work. I’m the “Lead Assembly Process Technician”, but nobody else typically works with me. I’ve been there four years making aircraft and medical stuff mainly. The repetition of putting in bolts and screws can free up your mind for other things, so I’ve made the most of it. A lot of the poems in the book I wrote while driving parts down south.

BC: Have you been published before?

CB: “Beasts and Violins” is my first book, but I’ve been in a lot of literary magazines. Getting in places that end in “Review” are my favorite because they sound very official, but I’ve been getting a kick out of journals in other countries lately. I’m in a journal out of Edmonton called Alien Sloth Sex. I was in another one from back east called Makeout Creek. Often I send to places because of the name.

BC: Can you tell me about getting your book published?

CB: I met one of the main editors from Red Hen Press, Kate Gale, because she was a guest speaker for my grad school. I’m pretty steady in my machine shop trade, so I did a low-residency MFA program based off of Whidbey Island called The Northwest Institute of Literary Arts. They have 10-day residencies twice a year where it’s just concentrated writing and lectures for about 12 hours a day. I met Kate there two different times and we hit it off. She asked for my manuscript and ended up offering to publish it. I had it easy. It’s typically much more difficult. My girlfriend Rachel Mehl has to send to prizes and query and do all the real work of a poet.

BC: What’s the writing process like? Did you collect poetry you had before, or write with a specific theme in mind?

CB: I wrote an unpublished chapbook called “The Dammed River,” which was a bunch of poems I wrote camped out at Baker Lake in the back of my truck with my dogs in the off-season. I liked the bleak, cold mood of that book, but really it was a bit dark. So I took the best parts of that and wrote some funnier, more light-hearted poems and ended up with something much more representative of myself. That became “Beasts and Violins”, which was my master’s thesis. The theme of it presented itself when I was putting it all together. I had a good time ordering it and found many threads to connect.

BC: Speaking of which, where do you draw your inspiration from?

CB:I draw my inspiration mainly from the day-to-day. Nothing spectacular really happens in my poetry. It’s mostly small moments and conversations. I’ve had the pleasure of having one best friend for over 25 years. Just watching him perched on a stool smoking cigarettes can get poems happening. Cool observation is something I find very meaningful.

BC: Do you find yourself writing about a specific subject? What do you write about?

CB: I write a lot about places I’ve been. Traveling around in the Western States really made this book. Going from Arizona to Montana is like rolling in the snow after a sauna. That sort of jolting adventure keeps you sharp. I’ve been pretty stable in Bellingham for a while now. I grew up here. It’s the perfect place to edit and refine the work. I just bought a house in town. Now I’ll be traveling for the book and I’ll get back into the creative side of art, which I’m looking forward to.

BC: When writing, do you write quickly, or labor over every word?

CB: I write pretty quickly, typically on scraps of paper right after something’s happened. I was on part-time for a couple of months last summer because of the recession, and I was having these fantastic afternoons riding my bike around and going swimming with my dogs. One time, I ended up racing a couple of hobos back and forth across the Nooksack River, up near Marietta. I wrote a poem about that right there on an old receipt from my truck’s glove box and didn’t edit it much at all. I believe we only have limited engagement with the muse.

BC: How many poems do you think you’ve written?

CB: Maybe 400?

BC: What’s next for you? Did you say you’ll be doing a book tour?

CB: Yes, Rachel and I are leaving for New York, then hitting AWP in Denver on the way back. AWP is the big Associate Writing Programs literary conference that all the presses go to. It’s in a different city every year. I’ve never been to either of those places, so I’m very excited for the whole thing.

BC: After doing the book tour, what are your plans? Working on another book?

CB: I’ll be doing as many readings as I can locally and I’m about 35 percent into the next book, which I’m thinking of calling “The Sudden Rooster.”

Catch Caleb Barber at Village Books on April 29. For more about him, check out calebbarber.com.

Jessica Lohafer. Photo by Matthew Curtis

Jessica Lohafer. Photo by Matthew Curtis

It’s one of many provoking lines that appear in this rich collection of 17 poems released by the 23-year old Bellingham-based poet. But Lohafer sees it as the central theme that drove the book to completion and is driving her still.

“The most important thing we can put effort to in our lives is the attempt, not necessarily the result,” she says. “I’m still young, not settled with an outcome. All I’m doing is trying. That’s what the book revolves around an effort.”

And yet results are clearly emerging for the Ferndale-raised Lohafer, who has been writing since she was 10 years old and falling in love with poetry ever since.

At the age of 17, Lohafer attended her first live poetry reading at Stuart’s Coffeehouse. The experience of hearing spoken word changed her life forever.

“I had only been writing for myself, and I heard of this open mic in Bellingham called poetrynight,” Lohafer recalls. “It just blew my mind. Suddenly I wasn’t just writing for myself, but I had an audience to think about.”

A natural performer (she calls herself a drama kid at heart), Lohafer soon became a weekly regular. With steady feedback, her work grew and developed. She began to write poems from perspectives other than her own. She began to hone her work, inviting feedback from fellow poets. And she began to perform in front of a microphone.

Over the years, the effort bore fruit. Lohafer released a self-published chapbook in 2006 called “Good Posture,” and a spoken word CD called One Thing We Are Sure Of in 2009.

“What’s Left to be Done” was released through Bellingham-based Radical Lunchbox Press (run by Melissa Queen and Robert Huston) and is Lohafer’s first published book an exciting achievement for a young writer.

Lohafer is eager to give back some of the credit to the Poetry Night community.

“If I never found them, I would probably still be writing poems about boys that had broken my heart, and reading them to myself, and thinking they were really good,” Lohafer says.

In addition to writing and performing poetry, Lohafer labors to share her love of literature with others. She currently serves as the director of Poetry in Public Education, a program that works to bring local poets to public schools.

An undergraduate at WWU, Lohafer also plans to become an English teacher. She seems to have a gift in sparking interest in literature for others, and encouraging them to write.

“For me the point of poetry or writing has always been to try to relate to other people,” Lohafer says. “It’s a way for me to say, ‘Look at how we’ve had the same experience, even though we are so different.’”

While Lohafer is already birthing new poems in the New Year (she is writing 31 poems in 31 days this month), her primary focus is promoting her book. She will be performing her poetry at the Jinx Artspace on Flora Street on Friday, Jan. 15, when she opens for Robbie Q. Telfer’s tour, “Spiking the Sucker Punch.” The cost for the 8 p.m. show is $6; doors open at 7:30.

And you can catch her performing almost every week at poetrynight, held Monday nights at 8:30 p.m. at the Anker Caf on Cornwall Avenue.

For those who may claim that poetry isn’t their thing, Lohafer offers this final thought: “Literature is always only what we are doing. If you’re a human, you are literature. You can’t be bad at it.”

To obtain a copy of “What’s Left to be Done,” contact Lohafer via MySpace at myspace.com/jessicalohafer

Both Teo (guitar/vocals) and Tom (drums/vocals) pack a lot of punch with such a small set-up. Their indie pop sound is reminiscent of Pinback with its ethereal guitar and the vocals remind me of a pop-punk Radiohead; alt-crooning with a little edge. Plus, the coffee shop definitely granted a more intimate performance. You could notice all of the band’s subtleties from the small size of the venue. I could see Candysound becoming even more successful… and soon.

The duo is young, both are under 21. This qualified them for a slot in EMP’s Sound Off! competition, which will take place at the EMP Skychurch on Feb. 13. It’s an accomplishment shared by Bellingham’s Pan Pan as well.

Maple Nightingale came next. She had a real delicate manner about her, which was emphasized by her lighter-than-air voice. Playing a strictly acoustic show, Maple did a couple gorgeous covers which included a Regina Spektor song and Karen O and the Kids’ “All Is Love” off the “Where The Wild Things Are” soundtrack.

As I was leaving the Anker Cafe, I let Teo and Tom know that they played a great show. But before I left, Teo stopped me. “I want you to put in the magazine that Maple has the best voice ever,” said Teo, “actually, put ‘in the universe.’”

Second act Hoot Hoot featured two members of the Free Choir who admitted to never playing outside of their living room. With short, simple and sweet folk/pop songs about summer living, giving each other scabies and making babies, these ladies made me feel as though I had stumbled into their home and was watching an impromptu set they graciously shared. It was refreshing.

Main act Cumulus floored the crowd, lightly strumming and softly singing. Simplicity was her strong suit this night, playing stripped down solo acoustic without the backing band. Slow songs about being young and in (or out) of love never seemed so beautiful. She is a true performer. Her stunning voice silenced even the baristas, who respectfully steamed milk between songs.Every time I see Cumulus live, I realize how lucky Bellingham is to claim her as our own.