The Fish­er Poets have been on my mind late­ly. Less than two weeks until a per­for­mance at Seat­tle’s Fish Expo (Thurs­day the 29^th, 11:30 — 1:00), and orga­niz­ing’s already under­way for the main event fes­tiv­i­ties in Asto­ria, Ore­gon. (Mark your cal­en­dars: Feb 22 — 24, 2013!) A phone con­ver­sa­tion with fish­er­man writer/photographer Pat Dixon got me all sen­ti­men­tal for the men and women who’ve turned our pro­fes­sion into art. So many of us have picked up pens, gui­tars, paint­brush­es, any­thing to exter­nal­ize our con­flict­ed love/hate/fear/craving for boats and the sea. More of us than you’d think: there’s a tremen­dous wealth of artis­tic tal­ent in the fleet, of every fish­ery and region. Dur­ing night wheel watch­es, while the hal­ibut sets soak, when the fish aren’t bit­ing… We have some excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ties for ven­tur­ing into our cre­ative selves, and are sur­round­ed by a trea­sure trove of characters.

With all this on my mind, last week was the per­fect time to receive an unex­pect­ed email from Rich Bard. A South­east Alaskan troller in the 1980’s and 90’s, Rich stands out in my child­hood mem­o­ries as a kind man who exud­ed thought­ful con­fi­dence, a com­fort with him­self, oth­ers, and going his own path. Rich was also one of my ear­li­est role mod­els of a fish­er­man who sought the grace of writ­ten words. When car­bon monox­ide killed one of our fleet’s most beloved mem­bers, Rich memo­ri­al­ized him with a poem that turned our col­lec­tive grief into some­thing heart­break­ing­ly beau­ti­ful. (My friend Mar­lin and I, teenagers at the time, care­ful­ly cut the poem from the pages of the Alas­ka Fish­er­man’s Jour­nal. Years lat­er, we could still recite it.)

Rich’s boat stood out, too. The Anna was a love­ly for­est green sail­boat, a sleek aft-house ketch rigged as a salmon troller. Though the Anna is still trolling out of Sit­ka, Rich is not. He sold her about ten years ago, leav­ing the troll fish­ery to deliv­er boats through­out the Pacif­ic and Caribbean instead. The troll fleet has some­thing of a revolv­ing door (says she who had her own walk-away peri­od) and I’m always fas­ci­nat­ed to see how folks who’ve left will deal with their new, non-fish­ing life. Appar­ent­ly Hooked has pro­vid­ed Rich both vic­ar­i­ous thrills and mixed feel­ings. In his email, he wrote, “The trolling addic­tion remains strong, and your engag­ing view of the all-encom­pass­ing joys and frus­tra­tions of a lifestyle that’s very hard to repli­cate in any oth­er pro­fes­sion also dan­ger­ous­ly rein­force the ever present urge that I should get back in.”

(You’d be wel­come back on the drag, Rich. Many thanks for the kind words.)

Though we were both at last year’s Fish­er Poets Gath­er­ing, I did­n’t get a chance to thank Rich for his great read­ing — an excerpt from a nov­el he was work­ing on. I’m thrilled to share that he’s fin­ished that nov­el, West of Spencer, and has pub­lished it as an e‑book, avail­able through Ama­zon and Barnes and Noble.

Here’s the overview:

Bo, a salmon troller in Sit­ka, has been drink­ing steadi­ly through the long dark Alas­ka win­ter try­ing to get over a bro­ken heart. The tactic’s not work­ing out too well. Spring and the need to get his boat ready for a new sea­son offer some dis­trac­tion, and Bo’s love for women keeps him above the pover­ty lev­el on that front, but he just can’t put the past behind him. The only time Bo feels real­ly free of regret is when he’s out on the water, whol­ly involved in his work, trolling for salmon. After some rad­i­cal swings of for­tune dur­ing the short spring open­ings, the main king salmon sea­son starts out west, and a weird chain of events puts Bo in jeop­ardy of los­ing everything.

West of Spencer nails the hard-work­ing, hard-play­ing lives of fish­er­men who ply the Gulf of Alas­ka waters. The nov­el doesn’t shrink from the grit of the fish­ing life: in the sting­ing spray and the blood on the deck, we get the true feel of life onboard, from a wild ride in a near-gale to the pen­sive calm of the qui­et coves. The nature of a tight-knit com­mu­ni­ty comes through on the boat radios, on the docks, and at the Quixote Club, a favorite water­ing hole. Through­out, Bo and his friends look, how­ev­er errat­i­cal­ly, for a deep­er under­stand­ing: who is God, really…what are we sup­posed to be doing here…why is love so elusive…and, where the hell have the fish got­ten off to now?

Trollers hap­pi­ly spend every spare moment talk­ing about gear — what we’re run­ning, what we’re catch­ing on, what worked last sea­son but isn’t doing shit this year. That’s the fun part of our obses­sion, but the bot­tom line remains: you can’t catch fish if your hooks aren’t in the water. There’s a sim­i­lar hunger among writ­ers to fill up on work­shops, retreats, exer­cis­es, groups, any oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­pare lit­er­ary prac­tices. As trollers talk hoochies, writ­ers tire­less­ly dis­cuss our lat­est work in progress, how it’s going, what’s work­ing, what’s not. And just like keep­ing one’s hooks in the water, in the end the only thing that will result in a fin­ished book is the sheer dis­ci­pline of keep­ing your butt in the chair. I get that, but still could­n’t resist ask­ing Rich how West of Spencer came to fruition.

“I’d had a rather vague idea of a nov­el I could write about Sit­ka for some time, but like many (most?) writ­ers, moti­va­tion’s the big issue,” he explained. “Jour­nal­ism, with its dead­lines, can be rel­a­tive­ly easy, but a long spec­u­la­tive work needs its own moti­va­tion. I final­ly got start­ed through a des­per­ate urge to pro­duce some­thing (any­thing!) out of a par­tic­u­lar­ly gloomy North­west mid-win­ter. Con­tin­u­ing it pro­vid­ed an out­let when I was hired as cap­tain to help an own­er who did­n’t han­dle the trop­ic heat very well get his boat from Flori­da through the Canal and north (as one of my crew remarked after a tem­per flare-up, “Yep, every day the boat gets a foot short­er.”) By the time I fin­ished that trip, the book had gath­ered its own momen­tum and it was a com­par­a­tive coast to the fin­ish. Not sure if the urge to get out­side one­self dur­ing time of frus­tra­tion is the best source of moti­va­tion, but it’s worked for me.”

As delight­ed as I am by my fel­low troller’s accom­plish­ment, I’m less delight­ed to admit that I haven’t yet ven­tured into e‑reader ter­ri­to­ry. (E‑reader? Please. I’m still cling­ing to my dumb flip phone, no mat­ter how overt­ly the Ver­i­zon staff sneer.) So I’m turn­ing to you, sweet Hooked friends. Those more tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced among you who crave a well craft­ed, utter­ly authen­tic nau­ti­cal tale, please do check out West of Spencer. Thanks for show­ing your sup­port for a fel­low fish­er-writer, friends, and many con­grat­u­la­tions on your work, Rich!

Long­time Hooked read­ers may remem­ber last year’s poet­ry com­pe­ti­tion, chal­leng­ing Fish­er Poets to use the line “work is our joy.” Rich’s piece, shared in the video below, was one of my favorite entries for sheer cleverness.