Art Chowder November | December 2016, Issue 6 | Page 41

Ellen Welker | Washington Poet

Karen Mobley

This year at the Poetry Picnic at the Moran Prairie
Library, poetry aficionados watched the dragon
flies darting to and fro in the evening sun. A small
crowd gathered along with one neighborhood dog,
to hear writers hosted by Scablands Lit, a series of
events hosted by Sharma Shields and Ellen Welker.
The audience was there because they needed to
listen. Ellen was there to share her deep love for
writing and the poets presenting - Don Mee Choi,
Sarah Mangold, Melanie Noel, and Rob Schlegel.
A Spokane poet, Ellen is low-key, quiet, gentle, but
her passion for writing and the other writers is evident. She has published poems in a variety of literary magazines including two poems in the August
issue of Pinweel. Her second full-length collection,
RAM HANDS, is forthcoming in fall 2016 or early
2017 from Scablands Books. She has poems collected in the chapbooks Mouth That Tastes of Gasoline (alice blue, 2014) and The Urban Lightwing
Professionals (H_NGM_N, 2011), and a book called
The Botanical Garden (astrophil press, 2010).
Ellen said, “I wanted to be a fiction writer, but I never had any answers. I never had a moral to the story. I still don’t have any morals (yes I do, Mom). I
mean, now I know that fiction writers can be every
bit as questioning as poets, but when I began writing, it was because I had so many questions and no
answers. And poetry is perfect for that. It is art as
inquiry. I’ve been writing seriously for about nine
years. And we have grown together, poetry and me,
because now I have even more questions and even
fewer answers. I take that to mean I am growing as
an artist.”

When did you get started in Poetry?

“I most love poetry as an internal
communion between my mind and the
mind of another – so, reading a book.
It’s a great social experience to have as
well--go to a reading or take a workshop – or utilize the magic of the Internet to bring poets live into your ears!”

“Don Mee Choi, Raul Zurita, Ocean Vuong, CD
Wright are all poets I admire and have been reading lately. We have the incredible good fortune of
having super bad-ass poets Tod Marshall & Laura
Read as our state and city laureates. I love Verbatim
(pairing visual artists with writers to create unique
works of art and performance pieces) and the Railroad Almanac anthologies of poetry and prose.
Terrain’s Uncharted is an incredible collaboration
between artists of all genres and the Spokane Symphony—although I am still somewhat mortified to
say I failed on the stage to give the performance I
hoped to give, the experience of working together
with all of those artists was absolutely unforgettable, and I am endlessly admiring of their all-doorsopen approach to creating and sustaining a vibrant,
interconnected arts scene”
She participated in the Montana Festival of the
Book in the Lorca Panel and in a panel discussing
Four Inland NW Presses in Missoula, Montana in
September.
Other Scablands Lit events are coming up including
a Silent Writing Party, a Silent Reading Party, Pajama Storytime with Local Authors for the preschool
set, a poetry workshop with Portland poet Zachary
Schomburg in November, a fiction workshop with
celebrated young adult author Kris Dinnison in October, and a series of beginning writing workshops
in December with local writer-yogi Diane Sherman.
All of these are open to the public. http://www.
scablands-lit.org/

Getting to Know Ellen Welker

Ellen is the Coordinator for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry. “This a nonprofit that provides leading poets with the opportunity to explore
in-depth their own thinking on the subject of poetry and poetics, and through financial and logistical
support, to arrange for the delivery of lectures that
result from these investigations. Lectures are delivered publicly in Seattle (as the Seattle Series)
in partnership with Hugo House and several other
host organizations, and nationally, in partnership
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