Poetry Northwest is featuring “Backstory” in their Cinema Poetry NW series. Watch it here or here.

The poem first appeared (in print) in Poetry Northwest, Winter & Spring 2015 Issue. I wrote it while collaborating with visual artist Leo Saul Berk on a public art project that included a series of linked, looping palindromic story-poems about the Willamette River in Portland, OR. I shot this video in Seattle early one morning out walking my dog, Smudge, along Lake Washington.