Solstice asleep
By Barry Vitcov
January 2026 Local Poetry Events
William Stafford Biographer to Present at Stafford Birthday Celebration
The Friends of the Hannon Library will host the 31st William Stafford Poetry Celebration from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 8, in the Meese Room of Southern Oregon University’s Hannon Library, organizers have announced.
Stafford, a nationally renowned Oregon poet who served as the Oregon Poet Laureate from 1975 to 1990, died in 1993. His collection “Traveling Through the Dark” won the 1963 National Book Award for Poetry. In 1970, he was named Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, an honor now known as the U.S. Poet Laureate. In 1992, he won the Western States Book Award for lifetime achievement in poetry.
The event will feature several local poets and includes special guests Steve Paul and Vince Wixon. Steve Paul, a veteran Kansas City writer and journalist, is the author the books are Hemingway at Eighteen: The Pivotal Year that Launched an American Legend (2017) and Architecture A to Z: An Elemental, Alphabetical Guide to Kansas City’s Built Environment (2011). His book The Shadow Poet: A Life of William Stafford will be published by Oregon State University Press in 2026. Vince Wixon is a Stafford scholar and the dean of Ashland poets, who is the coeditor of Sound of the Ax: Aphorisms and Poems by William Stafford.
Featured poets will be Bill Gholson, Lois Schlegel, Perii Owen, and Gary Lark, and the host will be Amy Miller, the poetry editor of the Jefferson Journal. In-person attendees will also be invited to read their favorite William Stafford poem.
Light refreshments will be served, and complimentary parking is available in parking lots 21 and 22. Metered parking is also available in lots 1, 12, 29, 36, 37, and 41.
Anyone needing disability accommodations can contact SOU’s Disability Resources Office at 541-552-6213.
This Friends of Hannon Library event is free and open to the public. It will take place in the Meese Room (room 305) of the library, and a Zoom link will also be available on the Friends website (https://hanlib.sou.edu/friends/lectureseries.html).To view previous lecture series events, see the HannonLibrary YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@SOUHannonLibraryEvents. For more information, contact Hannon Library staff at [email protected].
Poetry Reading with Authors Mark Novak and Barry Vitcov
January 22, 2026 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Bloomsbury Books Ashland
290 East Main Street, Ashland
Mark Novak is a writer who works primarily from the San Francisco/Bay Area. He holds an M.A. in Creative Writing and Poetry from San Francisco State University. His work has been featured in the “Monterey Poetry Review,” “Miserere Review,” “Lothlorien Journal of Poetry,” and “Bards West.” His work, ‘The Vagabond Quothe Shakespeare’ was the 6th place finalist in the Writer’s Digest National Poetry Awards (2017). He is both a voice talent for readings and a contributing writer for the poetry database, Voetica.com. His chapbook, ‘Sonnets For Agnodice’ was recently picked up by Finishing Line Press in their annual 2025 Open Chapbook Contest and is due to be published by their publishing house in May of 2026.
Barry Vitcov lives in Ashland, Oregon with his wife and exceptionally brilliant standard poodle. His poetry and short stories have appeared in a variety of publications, including: “EAP: The Magazine,” “Literary Yard,” “The Scarlet Review,” “Fiction on the Web,” “Labyrinth,” “Mobius Blvd.,” “Black Sheep,” “Dark Horses,” “Jefferson Journal,” and “The Rapids: An Art & Literature Journal of Southern Oregon.” He has previously had four books published by Finishing Line Press, a collection of poetry, “Where I Live Some of the Time” (2021); a collection of short stories, “The Wilbur Stories & More” (2022); a chapbook collection of poems “Structures” (2024); and a novella “The Boy with Six Fingers” (2025). His fifth book, “Boychik Poems,” was just released this month. FLP will also be publishing a collection of short stories “Unknown & Other Stories” in March 2026.
This Week’s Poem
It’s another seasonal change as winter solstice approaches. It’s a time when the world seems to tuck itself in, hibernate, and prepare to emerge with new growth, songs, and spirit. Perhaps a fresh blanket of snow in the mountains and sometimes on our valley floor reminds us to pay closer attention to nature’s music, which always surrounds us but is not always heard. At least, that’s a bit of what I gather from Jill Rothman’s poem. What do you gather?
Arrested and Resting
By Jill Rothman
In the slowing of the breath,
of about to hibernate bears,
in the almost silent descent
of falling feathers,
in the crunch of crisp leaves,
on the shaded path,
a song is composing itself.
I was soft and colorful once.
Now dry, brittle and sharp
are my middle names.
I have three middle names
because one is not enough
to describe this change,
though inside my pokey, parched
and breaky now self,
are seeds of future flowers.
I pine like the pines,
perched by the creek,
already waiting,
for the return of birds,
begun to migrate.
And I must learn to settle,
in the moist must
where worms and roly-polies,
mushrooms and promises grow.
In this dense,
in what seems about to snap,
in the fomenting fertile,
I must practice listening to hear.
For there are sonatas, in the dirges,
about to arias, in the sighs,
operas resting, to be written.
In what is coming,
in what sleeps to later wake,
in what remembers,
all that is yet to be imagined,
there is next, after,
a new,
mere moons away.
And the moon is a songstress.
And the moon is a field.
And the moon is always awake,
while we sleep, deep.
Jill Rothman was born and raised in N.Y.C. She graduated from the H. S. of Music and Art in Manhattan, Antioch in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and has a Masters from Southern Oregon University. She is a poet, a writer, a painter, a creator of a successful greeting card line (onewomansart.com), a singer, a songwriter and more and less than that. Her family, friends and students are her treasures. Jill has had a thrilling and varied teaching career and taught in Ohio; Portland, Oregon; and for many years at Briscoe School in Ashland, Oregon. She sang jazz standards in clubs, performed with the Siskiyou Singers, the SOU Jazz Choir, Rogue World Ensemble and Plain Folk for a total of decades. For nine years, she has been living in Talent, Oregon after 33 years of living and creating in Ashland, Oregon.
Poetry Submissions Welcomed!
You are invited to submit original work to the Poetry Corner. There is only one restriction: Poems ought to show a connection to Ashland and/or Southern Oregon. Your interpretation of that connection is fairly loose and mine is probably even looser! Be sure to include the title of your poem, your name as you would like it to appear, the city or town in which you reside, and, if you wish, your preferred pronouns. Finally, please submit a bio statement of less than 150 words written in the third-person.
To submit poems, send to Barry Vitcov at [email protected].
