Morocco RPCV and Poety Theatre Founder Don Wilsun dies in Seattle
Read and comment on this story from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on Morocco RPCV Don Wilsun who died this week in Seattle. He was the founder of the Red Sky Poetry Theatre, the longest-running open microphone on the West Coast and perhaps in the country, poetry democracy in action, none of those stuffy academic airs. The Comet Tavern was packed last Saturday afternoon with Mr. Wilsun's friends and acquaintances, some from his labor union, some from demolition work, some from poetry, some from neighboring bar stools through the years. His huge spirit was celebrated, this distinctive Cajun so long settled in the distant Northwest, a conga-playing character few would soon forget. "A lot of us loved him," stressed poet Judith Roche. "Maybe everybody who knew him loved him." Read the story at:
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Don Wilsun: 1946-2003 Poetry Theatre founder leaves legacy of his works
By JOHN MARSHALL SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER BOOK CRITIC
Imagine a poet. Pause and reflect a moment on what comes to mind.
Big Don Wilsun fit no such image, but he was a diligent poet nonetheless. He was a giant bear of a man, a native of Louisiana who did demolition work for many years, taking down old buildings so new buildings could arise in their place, but always carrying a notebook in his lunch bucket for the jottings that he would later wrestle into new poems.
Mr. Wilsun was still writing in that notebook on May 8, said friend Don Glover, but those jottings would never be shaped into poems, would never be performed on stage in that huge voice that was such a vital part of the outsize persona of Big Don. He died alone in bed that night in his place on Capitol Hill, only weeks short of his 57th birthday.
Mr. Wilsun's great legacy to Seattle will live on, just as it has for more than 20 years of Sunday evenings when any poet could get on stage and be heard with sympathetic ears. He was the founder of the Red Sky Poetry Theatre, the longest-running open microphone on the West Coast and perhaps in the country, poetry democracy in action, none of those stuffy academic airs. He even coined the group's name inspired by his days on fishing boats in Alaska ("Red sky at night, sailors' delight").
The founder himself had performed at Red Sky on April 20, reading from his new collection, "Petty Crimes." It was Mr. Wilsun's final Seattle performance, although no one sensed that, maybe not even the poet himself. So much in his life seemed to be going so well, new poems, new romance, new work.
"It was sizzling reading from his new book," recalled friend Elliott Bronstein. "He soared and wailed. It was a helluva gig."
Mr. Wilsun had arrived in Seattle in the late 1960s as a Vista volunteer, later served in the Peace Corps in Morocco. Both experiences marked him far more than his college years at McNeese State University, where he played on the basketball team. He developed a social conscience as big as his presence. He was, friend Paul Hunter said, "a working-class guy."
His poems never brought him any money, other than perhaps a share of the donations at the door. But that did not deter Mr. Wilsun's writing. Nor did the fact that his poems only found small local publishers who produced booklets of his wide-ranging verse. They still came out regularly -- "Orcas Island" (1980), "Sweet Skin" (1993), "Frog's Legs" (1996), "Lynchings" (2002) -- and he would often pass out free copies to compatriots in Capitol Hill's Comet Tavern, which was his alternate living room.
He would take out his pen and personally inscribe a copy, as he did last fall for a friend, with "So often we have to bring justice to get justice," and then sign off with "Big Don."
The Comet Tavern was packed last Saturday afternoon with Mr. Wilsun's friends and acquaintances, some from his labor union, some from demolition work, some from poetry, some from neighboring bar stools through the years. His huge spirit was celebrated, this distinctive Cajun so long settled in the distant Northwest, a conga-playing character few would soon forget.
"A lot of us loved him," stressed poet Judith Roche. "Maybe everybody who knew him loved him."
Mr. Wilsun leaves no survivors, but he leaves many surviving poems. Those poems will be read again at an open-mike memorial at 8 p.m. June 14 at the Freehold Theater, 1525 10th Ave. Everyone will be reading Don Wilsun poems that evening except, of course, their best reader of all with that booming voice. Click on a link below for more stories on PCOL
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