Two of Centrum's most popular workshop leaders over the past thirty-seven years will be stopping by over the next couple of months.

Poet Joe Stroud, one of the most renowned teachers that the Port Townsend Writers' Conference has ever had, will be giving a free reading at the Northwind Arts Gallery this Saturday, February 28, at 7 pm. Stroud will be reading with three former workshop students, all of whom are publishing poets in their own right.

Stroud has published five collections of poetry, most recently "Of This World; New and Selected Poems" (Copper Canyon Press, 2008) and "Country of Light" (Copper Canyon Press, 2004). He divides his time between his home in Santa Cruz on the California coast and a cabin in the Sierra Nevada. Varied in subject and form, Stroud’s poems include six-line lyrics, narrative prose poems, odes, homages, sustained contemplations, suites, and brief epigrammatic offerings.

Then, May 9, poet Carolyn Forché will give a free public reading at the Joseph F. Wheeler Theater at Fort Worden as part of a workshop that she will be leading here over the long weekend. Entitled "The Literature of Witness," this sold-out workshop is the last one that Carolyn will be giving anywhere until 2010. A waiting list has been started. The reading takes place at 7:30.