Port Townsend names second poet laureate

PORT TOWNSEND — Rufina C. Garay has been selected as Port Townsend’s second Poet Laureate.

“My poetry invites inclusion,” Garay said in a city news release. “I will offer hospitality through poetry by welcoming people to public dedications and meetings, ground them in our collective humanity and hope in uncertain times, provide opportunities for civic engagement and empathic and civil dialogue on current issues, and collaborate with partner community organizations to make literary arts accessible to all.”

Garay is an interdisciplinary poet and artist and the founder of Shattering Glass, which curates poetry from established and emerging poets of the Olympic Peninsula, with a focus on social and environmental justice.

She is a practitioner of the taoist meditative arts, which hold poetry