Rhyme of the modern mariner

Sunday, February 19, 2006

LORI TOBIAS

New York filmmaker Jen Winston knew the moment she heard of the Fisher Poets Gathering that it had all the right ingredients for her next documentary -- rich characters, a fascinating lifestyle and a colorful setting.

So what if the poetry stunk like week-old salmon? She'd find a way to work around that.

Then she arrived in Astoria.

"I was blown away by the poetry," recalls Winston, a freelance filmmaker who got her start with the National Geographic Channel. "It was so deep and so rich. I never expected fishermen to speak so openly, to tell stories in such an eloquent way. They have seen things I'll never see and that most people don't even know about."

Six years later, Winston will take the stage herself at the ninth annual Fisher Poets Gathering this week to introduce her film "Fisher Poets."

Winston has worked on documentaries for CBS, Discovery Channel and A&E Television Network, but made this film on her own time and with her own money, calling it purely a labor of love.

The 42-minute film depicts fishermen and women at sea and on stage spinning tales of loss and loneliness, of miserable weather and relentless chill, of low prices and high costs -- of the passion that keeps them going back.

The artists

There's Geno Leech of Chinook, Wash., who recites his ballads eyes closed, fingers keeping rhythm. "He's like one of those beatnik poets who didn't jump on the bus way back when," Winston says.

And Dave Densmore of Knappa, captain of the Cold Stream, who started writing about 30 years ago, then found himself without words after his son and father drowned at sea on his son's 14th birthday. After five years of writing silence, Densmore suddenly found his voice again.

Today, he writes poetry about fishing to give fishermen back a bit of pride, he says. "I'm trying to record the way it used to be and the way it should be again," he says.

There's Moe Bowstern of Portland, a natural storyteller with a keen wit who once told of searching mud puddles for signs of the tide after she gave up fishing.

And Erin Fristad, deckhand, cook and graduate of Goddard College, a small liberal arts college in rural Vermont. "She is sophisticated, really polished," Winston says. "And she is also out there fishing, using her hands -- I think she is inspired by that. Her poetry is very cleaned up. Very calculated."

As different as they may be, once a year a common bond brings them together to talk about life at sea.

It all began about 10 years ago when Jon Broderick, a Seaside teacher and fisherman, found himself longing for the company of old salts. He invited 40 people to swap stories and verse -- 39 said yes. In 1998, the Fisher Poets Gathering was born.

Today, about 60 poets come to share their work. Another 600 stop by to listen. Organizers take all comers on stage -- as long as they've fished, of course. With the exception of the sound technician, no one is paid, though organizers give out stipends to visiting poets to help offset the cost of travel and lodging.

"It's authentic," Broderick says. "Some of it isn't very eloquent, but all of it is honest" -- though sometimes the nonfishing listener may have trouble following along.

"I had no idea what they were talking about," Winston says. "A lot of the language was new to me. They were really fast with the (terms such as) gill-netting and purse-seining. I had to take notes." But she learned.

Popular at film festival

She visited four years of Fisher Poets Gatherings and shot 70 hours of film. After three months of editing, more than 69 of those hours wound up on the cutting room floor. The minutes that remain were good enough to win a screening at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival earlier this month, where it was among the top 10 most-watched films of the festival during the period it was shown, Winston says.

The film also won a showing in January at a rather unlikely venue -- the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nev. Densmore, Leech, Broderick and fellow fisher poet John Van Amerongen of Vashon, Wash., also were invited to share their words in Elko.

"It was a great experience," Leech says. "It was also nice to hear them. The cowboy poets deliver theirs with a little maple syrup. Mine is more like dragging a chair across a barroom floor."

Six years ago, Winston didn't know anything about fishermen. "I didn't even know there were different species of salmon," she says. Today, she doesn't order salmon without asking where it's from. If it's farmed, she orders something else.

Her idea of poetry has changed, too. "To me poetry was always Shakespeare and Blake. When I went to the Fisher Poets, it was the first time poetry was an accessible medium. I could relate to it; I could understand it," she says.

"I hope my film became in some way a piece of poetry. You can jump in at minute 34 and get a sketch on someone's life, and why it's important to them. In some regard, that's what some poetry does. It's what you take away from it."

Lori Tobias: 541-265-9394; loritobias@aol.com