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Get Versed in Nature With This Poetry Map of WA State’s Most Inspiring Locations

A new website maps poetry-inspiring locations around the state

By Lena Beck April 1, 2019

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This article originally appeared in the April 2019 issue of Seattle magazine.

This article appears in print in the April 2019 issue. Click here to subscribe.

April is national poetry month, the perfect occasion to check out a new project from a group of University of Washington students. Ecopoetry Washington has created an interactive map of poems inspired by natural places in Washington.

From the map’s easily navigated interface, you’ll find odes inspired by nights spent out on the Olympic Peninsula (“Shi Shi” by Tim McNulty) or fly-fishing trips in the Yakima Valley (“The Yakima” by Jane Culliton). The end result is a collection of poems that the students say is to be “a resource making the enjoyment of poetry accessible and relatable.” Or as Dixie Partridge waxes more eloquently in her poem “In the North Cascades”: “Wherever you’ll be/a sense of the ongoing out of reach/will remain, stories of mountains will/move on/that rim of future knowledge.” 

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