The Poet and The Timber Baron

1. What can a single poem inspire? What can one verse induce? One poem can offer an outlet for healing. A distinct lyric can allow connection to occur. One poem can lead to the most unlikely friendship. A single stanza can change the fate of a forest.

2. I’m Jacqueline Suskin. The past four years I’ve performed Poem Store: a public project that consists of exchanging on-demand poetry about any subject, composed on a manual typewriter, in trade for any donation. I’ve done most of my work in Arcata at the Saturday Farmers Market. I’ve lived in and around this northern California coastal town for three years. The community embraced me and treated me as their unofficial town poet. I think of this place as the throne of the earth. Where I go to wander through ancient forests, stroll the edge of the continent and kneel along the lip of clear cold rivers.

3. Here I learned the language of landscape. Here I became