Stephen Thomas 7.1.2023Before moving to Europe, Auburn, Washington native Stephen Thomas was quite active in the Seattle literary scene. He came back to Seattle (& other parts of the U.S.) to read from his new book What Is Between Us published by Hand to Mouth Books of Walla Walla. We sat on the deck of the Casa del Colibrí in Rainier Beach and had our chat about his poetry influences, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, the Cabaret Hegel, the arts venue he created and about the new book. The recording of his July 1, 2023, reading at The Booktree in Kirkland can be heard here. My intro went like this:
Stephen Thomas was born into a working class Catholic family in Auburn, Washington in 1950. At 12 a teacher played a recording of Emily Dickinson’s poems and he says “his fate was sealed.” A pillar of the Seattle poetry scene of the 80s, 90s and 2000s, he founded the Cabaret Hegel in an abandoned factory and presented with many notable performers such as Steven Jesse Bernstein. Stephen Thomas has published work in Exquisite Corpse, Poetry Northwest, the Malahat review and other publications and he currently lives in Germany’s Black Forest where he co-founded Gemeinschaft Sonnenwald, a sustainable agriculture community.