Seattle Civic Poet Salonshop
ABOUT
Join 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.
Seattle City Councilmember Dionne Foster has spent the last 15 years improving access and outcomes for vulnerable Seattleites. Her career spans the nonprofit, government, and philanthropic sectors, where the common thread has been a commitment to service. Foster holds an undergraduate degree from George Mason University and a Master of Social Work from the University of Washington, where she later served as adjunct faculty. Foster was most recently the Executive Director of Washington Progress Alliance where she invested in research, organizing, and policy to improve outcomes in lgbtq, immigrant and civil rights, housing equity and improving representative governments across Washington state. Councilmember Foster is a proud resident of South Seattle where she is raising her family.
Seattle Civic Poet Dujie Tahat is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection Shibboleth (Fonograf 2027) as well as three poetry chapbooks: Here I Am O My God, selected for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship; Salat, winner of the Tupelo Press Sunken Garden Chapbook Award and longlisted for the 2020 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection; and Balikbayan, finalist for The New Michigan Press / DIAGRAM chapbook contest and the Center for Book Arts honoree. Dujie has earned fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Kundiman, National Book Critics Circle, Hugo House, Jack Straw Writing Program, and the Poetry Foundation. Along with Luther Hughes and Gabrielle Bates, they cohost The Poet Salon podcast. Dujie has served as Critic-at-Large for Poetry Northwest and poetry editor for Moss.