Seattle Civic Poet Salonshop

oin Seattle City Councilmember Dionne Foster and Seattle Civic Poet Dujie Tahat for a City Salonshop, during which they'll read poems followed by a discussion about policy and civic life. In conversation, they will explore how poetry and policy-making are both vocations of language, requiring deep collaboration and interpretation. Part poetry reading, part civic discourse, entirely irresistible.

CAM will produce a commemorative broadside of Mary Oliver's "When Death Comes" for participants and attendees.

The Salonshops series is a part of a Tahat project as Civic Poet with the Office of Arts and Culture to bring poems into City Hall and the everyday machinery of policymaking. Tahat has hosted Salonshops, one-on-one and small group gatherings with civic and elected leaders, citizen boards and commissions, everyday community members, and other artists. Through the transformative act of reading poems together, Tahat will create opportunities to confront truths, discomfort, and offer language to reconcile experiences, bringing civic leaders closer to a shared understanding as the pretext to critical policy discussions.