Forever on Our Mind: Fisherpoet's Gathering
Celebrating the annual Fisherpoets Gathering in Astoria, Oregon
01. History and Heartbreak at the Fisherpoets Gathering
February 2016:
I squeeze onto the last stool at the bar in Astoria’s Voodoo Room, a New Orleans-themed dive so dark that a cell phone’s glare might give you a sunburn. I order a local IPA and turn around to watch a man at the other end of the room read poetry about life at sea. "There's a hangman's noose above me, and above all of us here,” he says from under a horned Viking helmet.
Sure enough, a noose hangs just above the stage.
Usually, my time at the Voodoo Room is spent trying to get drunk—or seeing which slices of pizza remain at the end of the night in a misguided attempt to stop tomorrow’s hangover. But I’m here today to experience my first-ever Fisherpoets Gathering, something of an Astoria institution that couldn’t happen anywhere else on Earth.
Since 1998, anglers from all over North America have descended on Astoria at the end of every February to read poetry (much of it written at sea), tell stories, perform music, catch up with old friends, and celebrate the industry that has rocked so many of their lives like a gale-force wind. Readings, conversations, and concerts take place all over town—from art galleries to dive bars, like where I’m at now.
The final set of the hour ends, and I’m not sure whether I’m buzzed from the beer or the performances. There is no “Deadliest Catch” sense of manicured reality in these stories; each piece is soaked with the power of a midwinter rainstorm, the humor of a thieving gull, the strength of a gillnet hauling in the day’s catch, the heart of a sunset on the fisher’s sixth night at sea.
It’s an unusually warm and sunny afternoon in Astoria, but I spend my time darting in and out of venues around town. I catch a documentary in the movie theater next to the Voodoo Room, watch flannel-clad fishermen describe their loneliness with an aching vulnerability at one of the city’s breweries, and slide into a restaurant booth to hear about a trade I’ll never ply—the anticipation of a new season, the anxiety of leaving the dock, the company of nighttime stars, the relief at another successful haul, the lonely nights away from distant lovers. I may be little more than a hipster landlubber to these grizzled anglers, but their stories teem with humanity to which anyone can relate.
All over town, poets toss off lines that revel in happiness and heartbreak. “The Pacific Ocean is an ocean, the Atlantic Ocean is a pawn,” says one man at the Voodoo Room. “She likes an Irish Coffee before dialysis,” remarks another at Astoria Brewing Company’s Wet Dog Cafe. “The ocean is not my home, yet I am homesick for her,” pines another at the Liberty Theatre.
At one point, a bearded poet from Massachusetts says of Astoria: “This is a small drinking village with a poetry problem.”
Another comments, “Without the gray, we would just be L.A.” Astoria’s population sits at just 10,000, and dozens of small-town residents chuckle and nod.
Even if the poems are based in Alaska or the songs pay tribute to the Pacific Ocean, in a sense, they’re really all about Astoria—where fishing gave rise to a new industry near the mouth of the Columbia River in the 1800s, where the state-of-the-art Columbia River Maritime Museum pays tribute to the community’s sea-worthy history, and where trash cans in downtown are painted today to resemble cans of salmon and tuna. Astoria’s most famous restaurant—Bowpicker Fish & Chips—serves fried albacore out of a converted fishing boat.
Right around sunset and after an afternoon of venue-hopping, I find a chair in the back row of the Lovell Showroom at Fort George Brewery—where rows of wooden kegs obscure the foggy windows.
Over the course of three hours, I enjoy a steady diet of grizzled poets and wide-eyed 20-somethings. During one set, an earnest duo leads a bluegrass-inspired cover of "Let Your Light Shine on Me” while playing the harmonica and strumming a mandolin.
As the night winds down, the emcee welcomes Lorrie Haight to the stage. She receives a warm welcome, settles into a plastic chair at the front of the room, briefly tunes the mandolin resting on her lap, and launches into a song.
"When I went up to Alaska to catch some fish, I signed on with an old sourdough to fulfill my wish.” Her sing-song voice fills the room.
His name is Smitty; "my soulmate I finally found,” she says of her new beau. They fish together, break up, reconnect in Seattle, give it another shot, and it all works out. They see the world together. It’s a love song. She mentions New Zealand, Mexico, and other exotic destinations. A blissful life at sea follows.
But when the constant heat and steady diet of coconuts gets old, Lorrie and Smitty see the United States from atop their Harley Davidsons. They eventually settle down in the small town of Long Beach, roughly a half-hour from Astoria, and live happily ever after. "Life on land was good for us, not much more to tell,” she sings.
I’m smiling from ear to ear, but the song isn’t over; that line isn’t finished. “Then came a kid in a pick-up truck, into Smitty he crashed,” she laments in that same sing-song rhythm, rising and falling like the sea.
She stops playing, takes a deep breath, and in that split second a tidal wave crashes over the room.
The windows are painted in fog with the brush of a hundred held breaths. She sings about spending seven difficult years as Smitty’s caregiver, eventually checking him into a nursing home shortly before his death.
"The best man I ever did love died and left me all alone,” she sings. The word “alone” hangs in the air just long enough to fall like a boat anchor.
She plays a few more notes and sings a couple more lines, but I can’t hear it over the sound of my heart breaking. Only five minutes earlier, I’d enjoyed Lorrie’s set as I had so many others this weekend. Unprepared for the brutalities that followed “happily ever after,” my heart aching for this woman who built a life worth immortalizing in song, I wipe a few tears from my eyes.
Mercifully, the song ends. We exhale, and we clap.
If you enjoyed this essay and would like to support my work, you can make a one-time or monthly donation at Buy Me a Coffee or via the button below:
And if you’re not a subscriber, you can learn more about “Forever on Our Mind: 1,859 Love Letters to Oregon” and click the button below to subscribe to this weekly email: