CLATSKANIE, Oregon (STPNS) --     Celebrating its connection to internationally-renowned poet and short story writer Raymond ?Clevie? Carver, Clatskanie will hold its first annual Raymond Carver Writing Festival this weekend, May 25 and 26.

    An after-hours event from 6 to 8 p.m. in the banquet room of Hump?s Restaurant on Friday, May 25, will launch the festival - scheduled in remembrance of Carver?s birth in Clatskanie on May 25, 1938.

    The public is invited to Friday?s gala reception, hosted by the Friends of the Library, the Clatskanie Chamber of Commerce and Hump?s Restaurant. Hors d?oeuvres, rum cake and punch will be served at the reception which will also feature Clatskanie Mayor Diane Pohl officially proclaiming Raymond Carver Day and a program with speakers from the sponsoring organizations and entertainment by the Timberland Theatre Troupe (TTT).



    Then, on Saturday morning at 10 a.m., the community is invited to gather around the Raymond Carver Memorial in the Clatskanie Library mini-park on NE Lillich Street for a ribbon-cutting ceremony presided over by Mayor Pohl as she officially opens the Raymond Carver Writing Festival.

    Clatskanie Cub Scout Pack 241 will be on hand as honor guard, while representatives of the library and chamber present a brief program.  

    At 11 a.m. the writing part of the festival will open at the Community Education Center, 555 SW Bryant Street, for a full day of free workshops and other writing activities, aimed at all ages, and lasting until 4 p.m.

    Children?s poetry and youth and adult short story awards, resulting from Friends of the Library-sponsored contests, will be presented as a lead-in to writing activities at the center.  

    Participants in Saturday?s activities are invited to attend all or any part of the festival activities and free pizza and pop will be served during a 12:30 p.m. lunch break. During lunch an interlude of local history will be dramatized in a vignette by the TTT.

    Workshops tailored for adults will be led by local author Kelley Jacquez, and writing activities for youngsters will be presented by children?s story writer Andrea Renaisse. The Clatskanie Historical Society Museum, also located at the center, will be open throughout the event and used as a setting for additional writing activities.

    Carver?s nephew Caleb Barber from northern Washington state will represent the Carver family during both days? events, sharing personal childhood memories of his uncle that were his own inspiration in becoming a poet. Throughout the festival he and his friend Rachel Mehl, a seasoned creative writing teacher, will assist in the workshops.

The Clatskanie-Carver Connection

    Raymond ?Clevie? Carver was born on May 25, 1938 in what was then known as the ?Clatskanie Hospital,? located upstairs in the brick ?Medical Building? on Nehalem Street in downtown Clatskanie next door to Sterling Saving. The upstairs rooms were once Dr. Wooden?s offices and surgical and obstetrical facilities, and are now apartments.

    Raymond Carver?s parents, C.R. and Ella Carver, were residents of Wauna, located along the Columbia River about 12 miles west of Clatskanie, and his father was employed as a saw filer at the old Wauna Lumber Mill. The Carvers, who had moved to the Northwest from Arkansas, lived in the housing owned by the mill at Wauna. Raymond was still a small child when the family left here for the Yakima area in central Washington where he grew up and received his early education. As a young man he attended California?s Humboldt State University, graduating in 1963. He did graduate work at the University of Iowa.

    Carver taught writing at Syracuse University in New York, resigning in 1983 when he was awarded a stipend which allowed him to concentrate full-time on his writing.

    He was the author of 10 books of short stories and poetry, including: ?Where I?m Calling From: New and Selected Stories,? ?Cathedral,? ?Will You Please Be Quiet, Please,? ?What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,? ?Fire,? ?Where Water Comes Together,? and ?Ultramarine.?

    Carver was the recipient of many writing awards including a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts award, the Mildred and Harold Strauss Livings stipend, and was named to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He is credited as being a major force in the revitalization of the short story in American literature. The film, ?Short Cuts,? directed by Robert Altman in 1993, is based on several of Carver?s stories.

    Carver?s work has been compared to that of Stephen Crane and Ernest Hemingway. While the term ?minimalism? has been used to describe his style of writing, Carver himself did not like the label, because it ?smacks of smallness of vision and execution,? he said in later life.

    Although he invariably listed Clatskanie as his place of birth in biographical information, Carver had not visited here since leaving as a small child, until one day in August of 1984, when he and his wife, the poet Tess Gallagher, stopped here on an impulse as they were driving from the Oregon Shakespearean Festival in Ashland to their home in Port Angeles, Wash.

    That day they stopped at the Clatskanie Library, where he autographed copies of his books; visited the Clatskanie Senior Citizens? Flippin House ?Castle,? where he signed the Dr. Wooden baby book, and had lunch at Hump?s Restaurant, where he granted an interview with Deborah Steele Hazen of The Clatskanie Chief.

    A quiet man, Carver told the reporter that he was touched and pleased by the reception he had received in his home town.

    In a note written to the Chief after he received a copy of the interview story and a copy of his birth announcement in the May 27, 1938 issue of the Chief, Carver wrote: ?It really is an amazing life - I made the front page of the paper in 1938, and then, 46 years later, there I am on the front page once more. I like that kind of circularity. Life is a mystery.?

    Carver died of lung cancer on August 2, 1988 at his home in Port Angeles. He was 50 years old. But, his reputation in literary circles continues to grow around the world.

    A number of students and biographers of Carver have visited Clatskanie specifically to see his birthplace, including an Italian professor of literature, a French biographer, an Austrian national public radio producer, and a team of Australian journalists. Last year, a Japanese magazine, Coyote, printed an article about the Clatskanie-Carver connection, including pictures of the building in which he was born, and the memorial sculpture in the Clatskanie Library park.

    In November of 2003, the Clatskanie Chamber of Commerce with the cooperation of the building?s owner, Phyllis Haas, installed a plaque on the outside of the building, a picture and biography in the building?s foyer, and the Clatskanie Friends of the Library dedicated a sculpture in his honor in the library park across the Lillich Street from the Clatskanie Library.

Raymond Carver Day Proclamation

    Clatskanie Mayor Diane Pohl, with the approval of the city council, issued the following proclamation for Raymond Carver Day:

    ?Whereas, Raymond Carver became a famous creative writer and poet, and is credited with revitalizing the short story in American literature; and

    ?Whereas, despite his death in 1988, his reputation continues to grow, and his works are taught in colleges and universities around the world; and

    ?Whereas, the community wishes to celebrate our status as the birthplace of this internationally-renowned author by holding the first annual Raymond Carver Writing Festival; and

    ?Whereas, Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon on May 25, 1938, at the Clatskanie Medical Clinic; and

    ?Whereas, Raymond Carver grew up and attended school in the Pacific Northwest; and

    ?Now, Therefore, I, Diane Pohl, Mayor of the City of Clatskanie, do hereby proclaim: May 25, 2007 as RAYMOND CARVER DAY and call upon our citizens to recognize Raymond Carver to inspire people of all ages to write creatively.?