~~ DONATE TODAY ~~
Giving Tuesday 2025 was December 2 – if you missed it, don’t worry. You can still make your gift to the Skagit River Poetry Foundation!
Give to our small nonprofit this holiday season and encourage your friends, family, and networks to do the same so we can continue to thrive and be an integral part of (y)our community. We touch lives through the opportunity to create poetry and be exposed to a diverse range of poetry and poets. The number one thing on your wish list this year? – for your circle to give to our mission of strengthening literacy and building community through the power of poetry.
Join us…
Together we can make a difference in the community through the astonishment of poetry.
“Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” – Mary Oliver
Help us spread the word – YOU can help sustain OUR future.
Share our social media posts – follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @SkagitRiverPoetry
Directly Support What We Do!
⇒ Help support a 1-week poet residency in our local schools: $1,600
⇒ Help us bring local and regional poets to our Skagit River Poetry Festival: Travel/lodging Costs: $2,000
⇒ Help us bring speakers to our events and poetry readings: $500
How Can I Donate?
Donate Online by visiting our donation page on our website.
Donate by Mail:
Send your check or money order to:
Skagit River Poetry Foundation
PO Box 238
La Conner, WA 98257
Make a note on your check for “Giving Tuesday/Holiday Giving”
We are accepting donations for this campaign through the end of the year! Please take part and join our community of supporters. **But, anytime of year your donations are welcome and appreciated.**
Why Does Poetry Matter? It Improves Mental Wellbeing
Writing, reading, and sharing poetry can be beneficial to your mental health and can provide a creative outlet to relieve stress and anxiety in this busy and uncertain world. It can lift your mood and lower your heart rate.
Here are a few articles about the positive effects of poetry on your mental health:
How Reading a Poem Might Improve Your Wellbeing (The Poetry Society).
The Therapeutic Power of Poetry: What’s the Evidence? (The Medium)
How We Strengthen Our Community?
We create opportunities for students K-14 and the broader community to be exposed to a broad range of poetic styles and a diverse group of local and regional poets. We do this by placing teaching poets in local school districts through our Poets in Schools Program. We also host a unique festival every other year, the Skagit River Poetry Festival (the next festival is October 2026) – where community is created through discussing critical cultural and social issues and sharing lived experiences through the lens of poetry. We also host opportunities throughout the year for the community to gather during open mics and readings.
However, all this costs money.
It’s donations from YOU – our community members – that help us stay strong in accomplishing our mission to build literacy and nourish creative expression in our youth and all of our Skagit and Pacific Northwest community.
How Will My Donation Be Used to Change Lives?
Your donation will support our:
Poets in Schools Program
Our Poets in Schools Program places professional poets in school districts in Skagit, Island, and Whatcom counties for one week residencies throughout the school year where poets explore and write poetry with students.
Help pay for part of a teaching poets stipend: $1,600
A teaching poet allows the space for student’s to play with imagination, words, and then create poetry. Concrete Elementary School. March 2024
Testimonials of Impact
Anacortes Elementary teachers:
“….Every voice gets space and time, and every voice is affirmed. There is never enough time at the end of each session for students to share their work because everyone wants to share! It is a remarkably positive and healing experience, and one I’m so grateful to experience each year.”
“Ms. JJ, as the kids called her, was wonderful! My students fell in love with poetry. She did a great job of giving specific, tangible ideas for the kids to build upon. IE. color, senses, etc…I loved how she engaged young learners with lizard, lipstick, and asking ‘who needs some words’. The class grew so much in a short time!”
Concrete Elementary School teacher:
“Today was our second day with Jeffrey Morgan, who is working with Skagit River Poetry Foundation‘s poet-in-residency program. I can not say enough good things about him. The kids love working with him. He makes them feel heard and shows them that he values their ideas. It is so fun sitting back as the classroom teacher and watching them be excited about their writing. Thank you SRPF!”
Student Poetry Anthology 2023-24
Click Here to Download the PDF
Our student anthology is a collection of poetry written in classrooms this past school year, 2023-24. Check out student’s amazing creativity inspired by having a poet in their classroom for a week! Donate today to keep our Poets in Schools Program going strong!
Concrete Elementary students that had poems featured in the anthology proudly hold up their copies of the book! Thank you, Students, for your superb work! Photo by Lisa Dills.
Your donation will support our:
Skagit River Poetry Festival
Our Skagit River Poetry Festival is held every other year in La Conner, WA. You can help us bring poets from all over the nation to the festival as they host workshop and conference sessions for the public and area K-14 students. The 2024 featured poets included Tony Curtis, Ellen Bass, Claudia Castro Luna and 33 others from across the nation and the NW. Sessions covered an array of topics, a few examples were: Laughing Out Loud: Poetry with a Comedic Edge, Poetry & Privilege: Writing Inside & Outside the Margins, Northwest Pastoral: Poetry of Place, Endangered: Disappearing Nature, Voices From the Past: How They Inform Poetry in the Present, Consequences of Silence: Poems That Speak UP/ Speak OUT
Help pay for a festival poet lodging and travel expenses: $2,000
Area students fill Maple Hall in La Conner for poetry festival programming in early October 2024.
Students pose at the Skagit River Poetry Festival. October 2024
Susan Rich and Claudia Castro Luna catch up in Maple Hall
Dublin poet, Tony Curtis, shares from a book at a session called Three Poets Walk into a Bar, comedy in poetry.
Gary Copeland Lilley plays guitar at the session, The Lyre and the Pen: How Music and Poetry Intertwine.
Rio Cortez, Paul Hlava Ceballos, and Samar Abdulhassan ready to present at all-student-day, Pushpins on the Map: Poems Across Borders
Arthur Sze reads to a packed house in Maple Hall at a Poetry Sampler on the last evening of the festival.
Posters inspire attendees. Amanda Gorman’s words: “For there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it / if only we are brave enough to be it.”
Your donation will support our poetry and cultural related events:
We also host events to enrich our community:
- Poetry Reading with Tony Curtis, Sally and Samuel Green (October 2025)
- in partnership with the Spirit of Guemes Center
- Poetry in Flight: Open Mic, Concrete Old Fashioned Fly-In (July 2025)
- Cascading Peaks: A Poetry Workshop with Saul Weisberg (April 2025)
- in partnership with the Mountain Festival, Concrete Chamber of Commerce
- Poetry Reading with Lorraine Healy
- hosted by Skagit Valley College Spring Poetry Series
- Skagit River Wonder: Poetry, Stories, and Open Mic (February 2025)
- reading by local poets and writers and public open mic
- in partnership with the Skagit River Bald Eagle Interpretive Center
- Poet/Teacher Workshops – Poets in Schools Program
- Memoir Writing Workshop
- Ekphrastic Poetry Workshops
- We host the Poetry Out Loud NW Regionals for high school students each year
- Previous events include: Speaking Our Truth: LGBTQ+ Students and Allies, The Healing Heart of the Lushootseed film showing at the Lincoln Theatre, Valentine’s Poetry Workshop, Celtic Storytelling, plus poetry open mic opportunities
- Partnerships with area arts organizations like Skagit Symphony/McIntyre Hall and the Lincoln Theatre
The 2024 Poetry Out Loud NW Regional Competition for high school students was held at Burlington Public Library in February. Our two finalists, Selah Burrows from Lincoln High School in Seattle and Greg Chvany from Mercer Island High School moved on to compete at the state level.