The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

WAITSBURG - The Royal Block Reading Series celebrates World Collage Day with its inaugural CollegeCollage event at the Royal Block in Waitsburg on Saturday, May 13, 2023, from 2:00 to 8:00 p.m. The event is free to 21+ public.

CollegeCollage is the Royal Block's inaugural contribution to World Collage Day to celebrate the poetry, wine, art, and food created by local college students and their professors. This year's line-up includes:

• 3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. - Walla Walla Community College students pour College Cellars wines.

• 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. - Royal Block Reading Series welcomes Janice King, who will read from her poetry collection, "Taking Wing."

• 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. - Royal Block Reading Series welcomes Shangyang Fang and his Whitman College creative writing students for poetry readings.

Collage is an art medium that excels at blending disparate elements to create new forms and ways of thinking. World Collage Day is an annual international celebration of collage on the second Saturday of May that was initiated by Kolaj Magazine in 2018. The magazine invited artists and art venues to hold events to connect across borders against a global context of entrenchment and separation.

Ric Kasini Kadour, the editor of Kolaj, wrote, "We created World Collage Day because we wanted to honor this community of artists and to remind the world what a spirit of cooperation, mutual support, and creativity can look like."

College Cellars is a teaching winery located at the Walla Walla Institute for Enology and Viticulture at Walla Walla Community College. Student winemakers have access to cutting-edge technology and time-honored techniques to craft wines with the vibrancy of the Walla Walla winemaking community.

Poet, Janice King, was raised in a Pendleton, Oregon, ranching family and lived for 25 years in New York's Hudson Valley, where she was active in performance poetry. Living in Walla Walla, King recently retired as the Whitman College Bookstore manager. King's oeuvre is a collage of collaborative work that often combines her poetry and performance with the work of other artists and musicians. King collaborated with Buster Simpson on Poetic License, part of the Walla Walla Bound/License Plate poetry project on Mill Creek. Other collaborating poets included Jennifer Boyden, Dan Lamberton, and Katrina Roberts.

Whitman College Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature Shangyang Fang grew up in Chengdu, China, and writes in English and Chinese. A graduate of the Michener Center for Writers, he is a recipient of the Gregory O'Donoghue International Poetry Award and the Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. His works appeared in The Nation, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, The Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and The Forward Book of Poetry Anthology. He is the author of the poetry collection, Burying the Mountain (Copper Canyon Press, 2021). 

The Royal Block is an oasis for the curious, the community, and travelers seeking a refreshing sojourn. Located at 222 Main Street, Waitsburg, Wash. The Art Bar is open Thursdays and Fridays 4-8PM and Saturdays 2-8PM. theRoyalBlock.com, @theRoyalBlock