Oregon Wildflower Poetry Reading by Pepper Trail

Awarding-winning poet and photographer Pepper Trail will read selections from his new collection Wild/Flower: Poems of the Oregon Flora, illustrated with his photographs of Oregon’s beautiful wildflowers. “In this rewarding collection, the ecopoet Pepper Trail honors Oregon plant life with one finely-crafted poem after another, praising the very existence of a large, varied flora that includes mugwort and larkspur and oak, trillium, and ponderosa and beargrass. Even non-native weeds garner tribute from him, as he recognizes that thse are the plants intrepid enough to “carry life on/Into the warming years, into the melting north? And back into the burning forests.” When this naturalist turns his poetic attention to the Oregon flora, we are the beneficiaries: “our vision is held/quiet and still, tranquilized by beauty.” Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita