Let the sea carry my name
to shores that forgot my people,
and let the wind whisper:
she fed love when bread was gone.

— If I Must Starve, by Palestinian poet Nour Abdel Latif

If there is anything poets do particularly well, it’s hold onto hope, even in the midst of hopelessness. Especially for those living and working on the margins, poetry has the power to bring people together, to keep a record of shared memories, and to amplify the voices of those who have been silenced. 

Though not explicitly, this seemed to be the de facto theme of the first Portland Poetry Confluence, an independent festival held Oct. 3 and 4 that brought together more than 50 participating poets and readers, seven local reading series and small-press publishers, and more than a hundred attendees. The buzz of the festival’s book fair echoed through the halls of Southeast Portland’s Atrium Movement & Events, along with readings, workshops, and panels on topics such as nontraditional methods of generating poetry and growing a writing community.

“It was important to us to center poetry, and independent and small presses, in order to bring attention to the experimentation, community, and nuanced conversations that we knew were happening around poetry on the margins,” said Dao Strom, a member of the Portland Poetry Confluence Organizing Committee. “We each have different creative circles we are connected to, so in many ways the [Portland Poetry Confluence] taps into something — our poetry communities — that is already so special and strong in Portland.”

As an attendee, I found some of the best moments happened in between the festival’s events, when friends, old and new, shook hands, hugged, and laughed. For a city whose arts community has suffered due to local and federal funding cuts, the Portland Poetry Confluence felt as much like a family reunion as a radical kind of assembly — beneath the surface, there seemed to be a broad agreement that, as poets, educators, organizers, and activists, we are always stronger together than apart. 

In a conversation after the festival, committee members John Beer, David Abel, and Karolinn Fiscaletti explained that their experiences with the New Orleans Poetry Festival offered a model for what they wanted to replicate in Portland.

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“What began as just an idea, a conversation between John and I in the summer of 2023, became something with a life of its own, a sort of rhizomatic network among communities,” said Abel, who owns Passages Bookshop in Northwest Portland.

Beer added, “We all were really delighted by the energetic response we got from everyone, and by how smoothly all these events took place.”

Things went so well, said committee member Rachel Berrington, that the organizing committee plans to repeat the event next year.

The festival moments that continue to ripple through my mind are the reflections that many of the panelists and readers offered on the topic of despair. At the close of the event’s first evening reading, local poet Anis Mojgani read a powerful poem on anti-fascism that stirred the room, in which he advocated for writing as a form of resistance. Throughout the confluence, many panelists and readers returned to the idea of poetry’s ability to imagine new paths toward  liberation, in the face of cruelty and dehumanization. 

During a panel titled “At the Confluence: Writers Confronting the Present,” each panelist foregrounded a writer whose work felt particularly resonant in responding to the catastrophes that mark our moment. Poet m. mick powell offered a reflection on the work of June Jordan, a poet whose work professed a vision of liberation for all people. Oregon Book Award-winning poet Charity E. Yoro explored the work of Palestinian poet Hala Alyan, whose work offered powerful insight into the trauma of the ongoing war in Gaza.

Portland poet Judy Nahum said afterward: “Days later, I am still hearing the powerful words of Hala Alyan: ‘I watch a woman and the watching is a crime … I’d rather be alive than holy.’ It was incredible attending a literary event that featured poets who weren’t afraid to speak with honesty and grace about the violence of our political moment.”

In times like these, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Following the Camp David Accords in 1978 — a series of normalization agreements signed by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin following secret negotiations — Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous lamented, “Television, radio, newspapers, speeches, all conspire, feverishly, to wash citizens’ brains and scrub their minds.… From the hills of conferences and summits, I have harvested nothing but vertigo and mirages of declarations.”

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Wannous believed, however, that the work of writers and poets is to reclaim language in the silence of defeat and, ultimately, vitalize liberation struggles around the world. Though wars rage on around the globe, events like the Portland Poetry Confluence offer a glimmer of hope, as well as an important reminder that resistance is something bigger than ourselves. As Mojgani wrote in his 2024 poem, Because, “it is here inside of us / at the edge of ourselves that the edge of something else begins.”