Bringing Transboundary to FisherPoets

By Joel Brady-Power
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For the past 19 years, on the last weekend of February, fishermen from all over the country have descended on Astoria, Oregon to tell stories, sing songs and read poetry about life lived on the high seas. The FisherPoets Gathering, started by Bristol Bay setnetter Jon Broderick and Maine lobsterman Jay Speakman, began as a small collection of friends at the Wet Dog Cafe. This year had 95 performers at 6 venues across town. Trollers, trawlers, Bering Sea crabbers, gillnetters, setnetters, seiners, lobstermen, sailors, longshoremen, and even an honorary-FisherPoet cowboy: all sharing a love of the ocean and the satisfaction of hard work and independence. 

My wife, Tele and I attended last month for our fifth FisherPoet Gathering. Honestly, it was FisherPoets that turned me into a poet. Sure, I had stories swimming around in my head long before our first trip to Astoria, but I had never been able to organize them coherently and I certainly didn't have the courage to share them. That all changed the first year we pulled into Astoria. I immediately felt like I had found my people. I was inspired. Many of the other FisherPoets inspired and pushed me, and with their help and support I began writing. Now the end of February feels like a family reunion (only, to quote one of my dearest FisherPoet friends, "with people you actually like!") All kidding aside, this group of writers, storytellers, and musicians have become some of my closest friends. Together we have a powerful voice, sharing with the general public a world that is so often fetishized as a brutal testosterone-driven industry pitting man against nature. (Deadliest Catch, anyone?) But in Astoria, you often see a more thoughtful side, a deeper side, of man working with nature. A place where fish are respected and revered. It is also a place to share concerns about our fisheries with people who could be strong allies. That is where my poem, "Silence" came from. 

Throughout this winter I've been surprised and dismayed at how few of the people I talk to have heard of the mining projects in the British Columbia/Southeast Alaska Transboundary region. Almost everyone has heard of Pebble Mine, but we really need to increase awareness of the Transboundary issue, especially in the lower 48. I wrote this piece wanting to put people in this pristine environment and to show them what was at stake, what was being proposed, and hopefully inspire them to get involved. The number of people who requested more information after hearing this piece in Astoria heartened me; the more we get our message out, the more support we are likely to find.


Silence

I seek silence
find solace in seclusion
but illusions of isolation
cloud judgement
create separation 
where there is none

so I can sit on this river
watch it wriggle and wind its way
down from snow-capped peaks and glaciers
through old growth forests and muskeg
watch its current spill out into fjords 
sweep across bays 
and dissolve into the ocean

I can lose myself
in a raven's song 
the wind's whisper
the water's kiss
I can disappear into this wilderness,
step out of reality
and I can pretend

this moment, this place, this peace
is separate, is safe, is eternal

I can pretend the mines upstream
won't keep coming
I can pretend the tailing ponds
won't keep failing
I can pretend my fishery
won't be affected

From my perch 
I can't see Big Brutus or the hauling trucks
I can't smell the exhaust
can't hear the crunching gravel
or dynamite blasts
I can't taste the bitterness of defeat
but my bones know a storm is brewing

I can tell myself people will continue to care
that their passion will carry beyond Pebble Mine 
to Susitna, Galore Creek, KSM, Red Chris, and Tulsequah Chief
I can tell myself the world cares about wild salmon
I can tell myself we will learn from Mount Polley

I can stand here on this rocky shore
listen to the ripple and roar of salmon
surging upstream, as the shadows grow long
I can feel the sun's warm caress on my face 
and embrace the beauty and serenity of this moment
I can ignore the dark clouds on the horizon
and pretend just being present
is enough

but if I am not willing to leave my tears in this river
and pull myself out of this reverie
If I am not willing to scream my lungs into this pen,
set fire to this page, and rise from the ashes of apathy to action
If I am not willing to stand and fight
for this river, for these salmon, for my own life

then my convictions shrivel to complicity
lost in the sound of my silence

Joel Brady-Power went to sea aboard his parents’ boat as an infant. At 22, he purchased the F/V Nerka from them and direct-markets salmon in Western Washington. The Seattle Times published an Opinion piece from him on March 17, 2016: How BC mining could hurt Northwest fishermen.

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