By Max Orr
As students at the University of Puget Sound, many of us have found ourselves in a community entirely unfamiliar — Tacoma, Washington. A majority of Puget Sound students are from outside of the state, or are from other cities and towns in Washington. How can we, as newcomers to Tacoma, become more woven into the larger fabric of the city? One way that many people have engaged with the community is through the arts. A recently published poetry anthology, “Voices of Tacoma,” gives those of us who are newly arrived and seeking community an invaluable insight into the city we have chosen to call home.
I recently had the chance to speak with Burl Battersby, the editor of the anthology, to discuss its goals and impacts. There were also release events at multiple libraries around the city. Attendees could participate in crafts, such as black-out poetry and collage poetry. Several poets from across Tacoma read their work, which consisted of poems featured in both the anthology and others. Poems ranged across many themes: from odes to the fall colors of Tacoma, to the community that brought one poet here in the ‘90s and kept him, to the problematic history of Chinese Expulsion that we still reckon with today.
Tacoma has been represented several times in poetry anthologies, the last one, “In the Shadow of Tahoma” by Bill Capinsi and Tammy Robacker, was published in 2009. Battersby and his associates felt it was time for an update so they applied for and received the Tacoma Artists Initiative Grant in 2023. A call was sent out to local poets to submit their work inspired by the city of Tacoma. After receiving over 60 submissions, Battersby and his associates presented their results to members of the Blue Cactus Press and the Tacoma Tree Foundation.
Once submissions were collected, the team realized that 80% of the poets were white. Battersby, with guidance from and in conversation with the Hilltop Urban Garden (a group dedicated to urban gardening in the historically disadvantaged neighborhood of Hilltop in Tacoma), felt that to accurately represent Tacoma’s incredible diversity, the anthology could not predominantly feature white poets. “We had the opportunity to present to the Hilltop Urban Garden, and they were the ones to remind us in very clear terms, that this was not an anthology that should ever be called ‘Voices of Tacoma’ if it was going to be 80% white,” Battersby said. With this understanding, submissions were reopened exclusively for BIPOC poets.
In the end,about 80 poets had submitted their work, and the editorial board was faced with a new conundrum. The original intention was to select the best poets and poems from the pool to feature in the anthology, but after considering their mission of representing the voices and people of Tacoma, they felt excluding any poet would be antithetical to their goal. “The 80 poets represented so much of what we wanted to include in the anthology, from different walks of life and different genders, and all across Tacoma and beyond, and we started to realize that if we started to exclude poets that we would be silencing voices, and we didn’t want to do that,”Battersby said. So, the decision was made that every poet would have at least one of their submissions included in the final anthology. Some were given editorial assistance, but creating a broad and comprehensive representation of the people of Tacoma was the publication’s ultimate goal.
Battersby is very hopeful for a potential second volume of “Voices of Tacoma” in the future. However, it likely won’t become a reality until several years down the line thanks to the slow pace of arts funding. In the meantime, Battersby hopes to publish a pamphlet on how the group organized and made the anthology a reality, perhaps titled “Making Of: The Voices of Tacoma.” He hopes that those from other communities can be inspired by the work here in Tacoma, and make it a reality in their own communities.. Battersby found the process truly inspiring, “The magic of the project was the community we built, and those hundreds of hours of community events, outreach and events that we did over the course of two years was really where the magic happened.”
The “Voices of Tacoma” anthology is a product of a vibrant literary arts community in Tacoma, one that welcomes people from all walks of life, including university students. If students are interested in becoming more involved with this great community in Tacoma, there are a plethora of ways to gain an inroad. There will be an open house with the poets, including readings from “Voices of Tacoma,” on Nov. 22 at Swasey Library, and the annual Arts at the Armory event is scheduled for Dec. 7 and 8, where attendees will have the opportunity to discuss with and learn from local artists.