Oregon poet Clemens Starck will read poems as part of a Sunday service at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Whidbey Island at 10 a.m. on Feb. 3.

All are welcome. Starck will appear with Joseph Bednarik, the co-publisher of Copper Canyon Press of Port Townsend. Bednarik will deliver a short talk on Starck’s work entitled “Figure Out Something.”

“I’ve been reading Clem’s poetry for decades,” Bednarik said. “I love the clarity of vision, his groundedness and the presence he creates when he reads. To my mind, Clem is a national treasure.”

The New York Times called Starck “an essential plainspoken poet of work.”

He is the author of seven books of poetry, including the just-published “Cathedrals & Parking Lots: Collected Poems” through Empty Bowl Press.

“I’m intrigued about giving voice to poems in a sanctuary as part of a worship service,” Starck said in a press release. “All religions use poetry and metaphor within their sacred texts. Poetry can help people see into their lives. I know poetry helps me see into mine.”

Regarding Starck’s work, the San Jose Metro wrote, “His poems are meditations—done with a painter’s light touch—about maintaining spiritual and mental balance in all aspects of living, and they have a distinctly Asian cast of thought and utterance reminiscent of the Chinese sage poets and Japanese Zen masters.”

“Cathedrals & Parking Lots” appeared in November, and to launch the book Starck embarked on a multi-city European reading tour with poet Finn Wilcox and the renowned Chinese translator Red Pine (aka Bill Porter).

“That European tour was a dream come true,” Starck said. “I started solo in Vienna, teaching for a week at the American International School, then met up with Finn and Bill.”

They presented poems in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Berlin, Venice, and Florence. “Back in the states, I’m gearing up for readings up and down the West Coast,” Starck said.

UUCWI is located at 20103 State Route 525 in Freeland.