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2004 Writers' Forum
Stephen Thomas
Stephen Thomas was born and raised in Auburn, Washington. He studied at St. Edward's Seminary, Marquette University, Cornell and the University of Washington. He has worked in a wide variety of trades: farming, road work, carpentry, restaurants, advertising, and most recently teaching. His Cabaret Hegel was, briefly, a hotbed of performance art in the mid-80s. His poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Exquisite Corpse, The Temple, The Seattle Times, The Seattle Weekly, West Branch, and many other publications.
photo credit: dean wong
Listen to an excerpt of Stephen's reading (MP3)
2:15 / 1.4 MB
Interview with 2004 Curator Belle Randall
In this interview, recorded March 9, 2004, Stephen and Belle discuss form, performance, metaphor, memorization, sound sense, youth writing, and more.
September-Cedar Park

The world is busy now.
The chill night air has triggered
in the small, somatic minds of spiders
an idea, Providence.

Maybe they aren't thinking,
but I think they are.
Their thoughts run out along their limbs
and on the limbs of trees.

I follow them in mind
watching as they string their catchers
and their caches in the shadows.

Little builders, how can I dismiss you
as beneath me when I know
beneath us all there's nothing. Look.

It is late afternoon. The low sun
finds some apertures among the boughs
and in the shadows, gleaming
like the bright dark images of Hubble
and of Palomar, the canted panes of galaxies

poise crazily. And in the center of each milky grid
a single, hungry star.
To read more work from the 2004 Jack Straw Writers Program, contact Jack Straw Productions to purchase a copy of Volume 8 of The Jack Straw Writers Anthology.
Jump to Stephen Thomas's Interview with 2004 Curator Belle Randall
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