Mark Anderson was appointed Spokane Poet Laureate in October 2017 and will serve for two years. Anderson is the city’ s third poet laureate, following Thom Caraway and Laura Read. In 2016, he won“ Best Slam Poet” at the Bartlett Awards and was awarded the 2016 Spokane Arts Award in Leadership.
THE ELVES AND THE SHOEMAKER AT MICA CEMETERY
What are you most excited about as you begin your term? It’ s a huge honor to be selected as poet laureate. I hope I can live up to it. I want to reach out to people who haven’ t been approached and invite them in. We are starting to be known as an up-and-coming city for arts, but many in Spokane don’ t realize it. I go to other cities and hear Spokane is on the radar as a place to be, then I come home and people say,“ Well, if Spokane’ s so great why didn’ t I get the memo”? I want to give everyone the memo.
What would you like to accomplish? I’ d like to widen the audience and inspire people to try out writing. It would be great if reading something you wrote at an open mic became a bucket list item, like The Bloomsday Run. Everyone knows you have to run Bloomsday at least once if you live here— you’ ve got to at least give it a go. Getting up to a microphone and sharing something you’ ve written can be a terrifying experience, but it’ s incredibly empowering. It’ s a pivotal experience, having the tangible sensation of being listened to and expressing deeply something important. Not everyone can get a degree in the arts( though I definitely don’ t discourage that) but everyone can learn to write a poem that connects them to what it means to live their life.
How will you be engaging Spokane? I want to teach people who are just getting into writing and people who want to deepen their poetry skill sets. I plan to teach workshops on performance for those who want to bring their poems to life on stage. I plan to create events that let people try out poetry in a safe, stress-free environment, and events that push more experienced writers to grow in their careers.
What brought you to poetry? I’ ve been interested in poetry since I was very little. Even before I knew how to write I’ d dictate stories to family members, then they would write them down. I’ d illustrate them and bind them with yarn into books. The stories revolved around giant monsters, inspired by Godzilla. When I had a hamster, I made up a super hero called Super Hamster. Then I got a gerbil. I’ ll let you guess what the next hero was. I believe there was a horror story about a monster with horns that chased me across the world. That one was inspired by Goosebumps and a scary dream I had. Then in second grade, once I’ d learned to write by myself, I wrote poems inspired by Shel Silverstein. I remember trying to decide what made something a“ poem,” and deciding it had to do with patterns. I knew it didn’ t have to rhyme but I thought there had to be some underlying pattern to the lines that tied them together. And now, when I’ m stuck on a poem, I still look for the pattern. If there’ s not something tying it together into a unified whole, I’ ll abandon it. It won’ t feel right to me. I was interested in poetry, and every two or three years I’ d revisit it, but then when I was about eighteen I came to a poetry open mic at a cafe called Empyrean.
It is difficult to make a living as a shoemaker in the Mica Cemetery.
No one has been buried here for forty years. But everyone knows elves make the best cobblers
and there are plenty of those. Plenty to service these little, red bricks
almost covered by wild grasses: no letters on them. A mother walking with her son frowns
before the markers as the boy asks what they are. The elves
below are single celled organisms called paramecium or“ tiny slippers,” hammering away at first pairs
of shoes for lost children. Times were hard, the mother explains.
Children died so often. Parents couldn’ t afford headstones. The spring sun will be setting soon, burying
the yellow sky behind wiry branches, a fairy circle almost ready
to blossom. She looks homeward, but it’ s better now. They walk off home as elves continue the tired shoemaker’ s job.
He will arrive in the morning, amazed. His job is nearly done. Soon, even the nameless
will walk out from this place in peace.
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