Joe Concannon

Procession

Bio: Joe Concannon is a teacher and writer based in Seattle, Salish Country. His poetry, published by small presses (PROOF and CLAP), seeks to help people live with difficult questions. His work with students in English classes has been written about in Seattle Times, Community Writing Journal, and a dissertation. During the school year, he teaches University of Washington and South Seattle College students, while over the summer he teaches Upward Bound high school students and, occasionally, Monroe State Prison students.  Alongside academic work, he has worked with community literacy and aid nonprofits, including 826 Seattle, Campfire Columbia, and Seattle Goodwill. He received a BA in Religion from Carleton College and a PhD in English from University of Washington.

Statement:  I am honored to support the vision of Jim Vecchi and Lucia Lilikoi with this poem. The slow time of this video and its musical accompaniment put my attention not only on sounds, but on sound. The kraaks (a technical term in corvid studies) and synth chords seem to correspond in ways that betray language. But not sound. 

Sounds travel in compression waves. The soundings of crows and the accentual verses of poets move on the same roads of diminishing but persisting patterns of displaced particles. Poetry works in sound, a fact that is betrayed or improved by the page.  

What if we ground communication in a hopeful understanding of energy? With this view, it isn’t the permanence but the impermanence of sounds that becomes illusory. This poem asks you to take part in this hopeful view, that has perhaps existed for longer than any of our words.