The historic and newly refurbished Postmark Center for the Arts at 20 Auburn Avenue now provides a home for Auburn’s formerly itinerant artists.

No more shuffling from place to place when someone else needs the space they’ve been using. That includes local poets.

First Wednesday Poetry Night on April 3 features Patrick Dixon, writer, retired educator, and commercial fisherman. Doors open at 6 p.m. poetry starts at 6:30 p.m. The event is hosted by the City of Auburn. Parking is available behind the Postmark.

Share a poem during the open mic, but arrive early to check out the collection of artwork by local artists from the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, now on display in the Postmark. A poetry book exchange at this event allows people to bring a poetry book to swap for another poetry book.

Dixon is a retired educator and commercial fisherman living in Olympia, Washington, whose work has been published in Cirque Literary Journal, Panoplyzine, Raven Chronicles, National Fisherman magazine, The Smithsonian and the anthologies FISH 2015, WA129 (2017), and I Sing the Salmon Home (2022). He was included in the Washington State Book Award anthology, Take a Stand: Art Against Hate (2020). Dixon is on the Board of Directors of the Olympia Poetry Network.

He is a past poetry editor of National Fisherman magazine’s quarterly, North Pacific Focus (2010-2019). He received an Artist Trust Grant for Artists to edit Anchored in Deep Water: The FisherPoets Anthology (2014). His poetry chapbook Arc of Visibility won the 2015 Alabama State Poetry Morris Memorial Award. In June of 2023 he won the Cirque Poetry of Place competition. His memoir, Waiting to Deliver, about his 20 years fishing for salmon on Cook Inlet, Alaska, was published in 2022.

Patrick Dixon’s website is at patrickdixon.net.