The Astoria FisherPoets Gathering is an event in Astoria, Oregon that has brought poets and storytellers together sharing music, stories and poetry related to various features of fisheries in the last weekend of February since 1998. The event was originally conceived of by Jon Broderick, a former teacher who has been a commercial salmon fisherman since the '70s and, with his family, runs a set net outfit in Bristol Bay each summer. Broderick is still very involved with all features related to organization of the Astoria event. The Board currently consists of 10 people with various features of commercial fisheries and social science backgrounds. Kasilof resident Steve Schoonmaker, a commercial fisherman across the state of Alaska, has been performing in the event for 17 years and visited KBBI in Homer to share his fisheries background and his latest poem composition that he’ll be performing this year in Astoria.
Schoonmaker has lived on the central peninsula since he was 16 years old and started commercial fishing after working as a fish technician with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game at Karluk Lake on Kodiak Island in the early 1980’s. After visiting Kodiak’s Beach Comber Bar and looking out over the busy harbor, he decided he would prefer to try commercial fishing and was encouraged by his Fish and Game supervisor.
“I said, Man, I really want to go fishing. I think I'm not gonna go back to Lake Clark this summer. He looked at me, and he said, do it! He said, You know what? You're a good tech. And I was planning, I kind of want to go too. I had a chance to go to the University of Alaska in Juneau at Auke Bay for a fisheries thing. He said, “Man, it's fine. He said, you get that degree, you're gonna end up answering the phone like me in the office. He said, dude, I would love to be able to do what you’re doing! Dude, what you doing? Go. He said, you can come back anytime you want with a fish and game job. It took me a whole month pounding the docks. Got on a crab boat. And the guy was just an ass, just a screamer. That’s why I got on…”
Since the first year, he has been fishing in Sand Point, Kodiak, Togiak, the west side of Cook Inlet and now in the salmon drift fishery based out of Cordova in Prince William Sound. He has owned and operated the F/V Salteur since 2000, a 1989 28 foot fiberglass bowpicker. He notes that the industry has changed dramatically since the early 1980’s and over time he has thought about leaving it but at this point has his gear and permit paid off and intends to continue in the industry for now. Before sharing the poem that he has for this year’s composition he provided a background glance on what he’s done since he started in the industry:
At that time, the opportunity was incredible for a guy like me to go outdoors. That's what I wanted, hunting, fishing, outdoors, traveling…right out of the high school. I went across the island, spent three winters trapping in the bush, completely out of contact with town, one other person with me, you know? I mean, you can't do that no more. It's all national monuments over there. Now, you know, then it wow, you know, I'm so glad I did all that. I quit Fish and Game so I've got no pension. Oh, I work for the hatchers. I could have been a hatchery manager by now. Oh, I didn't do that either. Got out of high school like all my buddies. I could have gone out north and gone on with the oil company and didn't do that either. But, you know, I'm glad, because when I was young, and I was of the mind too, I'm not putting down people who wait till they're older to do these things. I understand responsibilities, and everyone's got their own thing, but looking back on it, even though I don't really have, like, a retirement or nothing, I'm so glad that when I had the powerful youth, it was all the opportunity looking back, it was kind of unbelievable. Now, you know what I mean, you grew up here, I mean, and the opportunity that people have now are different…
Schoonmaker shared his preference for reciting his poetry by oral memory rather than reading:
Some people are really good at reading. They can pull up there and they can capture the whole place. I'm not. Had I practiced it more, I would be, but I got this. You know, when I can perform it, pardon me, when I recite it, it's a performance. I'm looking at the audience. I'm moving my body. The words are gone. I mean, the written word, that's a powerful place to be. It's limiting, you know, because I can't memorize everything I have I could do better than what I and even now, you know, I, I know the power of it … But just like, if you want to compete as athlete, you simply got to train so that you can do it, and one day and one day, next day, next day. It's not a big deal, you know, when you look at it…
So, coming up for the Astoria 2026 performance, Schoonmaker recites his most recent poem, composed while fishing over the 2025 summer, from memory. He says this is only the second time he’s shared it socially. The title of this piece is “Duality Absent.”
Duality veils the obvious signs with devils and angels and even science sometimes and political perceptions developing sides, triggering responses of ancient design suggested by hunger in the predator's mind and in the inquiring sciences, where perceptions align With kingdom and phylum and order defined similarities and differences, carefully labeled, as in mineral taxonomy and in the periodic tables. With philosophies, logic and theologies, fables apply in Division, sometimes blind scrutiny, with thoughts of dominion and manifest destiny, hierarchies form in the molds of the past, bolding perceptions that dualities cast obscure in our world, when its resource for cash, with modern efficiency, set to the task duality veils in a hierarchy's mask, masking the signs of dualities mind, when mass cannot separate, what's all of one kind, when the sun's on the water, well, I can feel myself shine, and it's internally as sunlight blooms plankton, and plankton bloom feed and feed, feed the herring just trying to flee with the fat of the ocean caught by King Salmon teeth as oneness in motion of cycles complete. Orcas catch king salmon with salmon fed teeth, spotting spray at the surface, return to breathe, exhaling the breath of the breeze they received in that mist forms the prism of a Rainbow's beam and dualities absent, no veils to be seen in the presence of moisture that missed in the trees, clouds become rain and rains become creeks, and creeks become rivers, and rivers become seas, and seas become salmon, and salmon become me, all affected by moonlight, pulling the tide, wearing down mountains into all of one kind, as mountains and deltas become one in the same as the fluid inclusive has no single Name, because names can be veils in dualities, game, subject and object simply a blend, when reflections in water can never pretend, and I see myself made of the reflection I'm in duality disperses like the fog in the wind, and intuition grows brighter and logic grows dim, and my conscience awakens to the veils of my mind. And then veils cannot separate what's all of one kind, fishermen, earthen as the fish of the sea, earth, salt and skies, water, each blessed with these as Earth defines us to the internally stars define space to its infinity. And well, he's absent. No veils to be seen pulled from the land where the sea sensed the air pulled into this hunt of the not here, but where, scanning for jumpers with a predator stare, caught in the moment, simply feeling what's there when something or nothing could be anywhere. And the view describes me, and I sense I'm aware that something's going to give if I'm getting my share. Rolling dice with my instincts, we lay out in the breeze, catching nets full of salmon, caught up, much like me, caught up in the web that the universe weaves under the cosmic influence of vast galaxies and duality is absent. No veil is to be seen. Our actions, instinctive and conscious pretense. The whole crew's heavy breathing. Salmon gasping on deck, boot deep, and they're squirming. We high five that last set, and the energy's potent in the air all around salmon struggle in nets to the din of man sounds propellers and diesel's vibrations abound with reverberations to reach spawning grounds. Once you've sensed where you should be, man, you never forget, I'll convince an exhaustion what it has to accept bills V. Little body man, we have to make sets until the fish get delivered and we wash down the decks with the sea as a means, yeah, that fluid inclusive, that the scuppers receive, see water and blood, like the fluids in me with the Gurian scales announcing my deeds, I witness myself as the view describes me. And duality is absent. No veil is to be seen.
The fisherpoet events taking place in the Astoria Liberty Theater will be available to listen to through Coast Community Radio KMUN’s website: www.kmun.org. Schoonmaker will be presenting at 8:45 p.m. west coast time on Friday February 27th.
Reporting from Homer, this is Emilie Springer.
To hear Schoonmaker’s full poem visit the website kbbi.org.
