Timber Curtain

Two readings, one in Seattle and one in greater King County, will be sponsored by the Office of Arts and Culture, which gave McCue a grant to write the poems. McCue has already read selections from the manuscript at the Ogden Inspired Writing Series and the next-to-last event at Hugo House, the literary center that inspired and informs the book. McCue will call on the makers of the accompanying documentary to assemble a professional-grade book trailer, including footage from the next-to-last event at the original Hugo House, during which the building flooded and McCue was backed by live cello music. McCue is originally from the Northeast, so we plan a bi-coastal slate of events. The documentary will be touring major festivals over the 2017-18 cycle before being released to public distribution. We anticipate a second “launch” for the book with the resulting publicity.

Haunt the halls of a demolished writers’ house. Punch through the “timber curtains” that cover clear-cuts, gentrification, and bereavement.

Timber Curtain occupies a space between ramshackle and remodel. It starts with the demolition of a house—Richard Hugo House, the Seattle literary center where Frances McCue worked, lived, and mourned her husband. From there, McCue’s poems spiral out to encompass icebergs, exorcisms, the refugee crisis, and the ethics of the place-myths we create for ourselves. The speaker is plainspoken, oracular, wry, indicting, and hopeful. Like the Seattle skyline, poems erase and recombine into a landscape forever saturated with ghosts. Several poems will be central in McCue’s upcoming (2018) documentary Where the House Was.

From “The Wind Up”:

The city erasing itself and the building
where I find you, if I could find you,
comes into focus, then out. I’m pointing
to the site where you worked, the once-was
place. In that gesture, a person could
feel local. I could stand outside that shop
and look up to where we loved each other.

Frances McCue is a poet, writer, teacher, and arts instigator. From 1996–2006, she was the founding director of Richard Hugo House in Seattle and is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Washington. She has published four books, two of which have been finalists for the Washington State Book Award in History/General Nonfiction, and another of which won the 2011 Washington State Book Award in Poetry. Currently, McCue is producing Where the House Was, a documentary film about the demolition of the Richard Hugo House building in Seattle.