Book Launch & Signing: Contradictions from an Uncertain Silence”

Join Metropolitan Group for the book release of Oregon poet Emmett Wheatfall’s Contradictions from an Uncertain Silence, Thursday, April 10th at 7pm at The Public Will Building.

In a time of great challenge to democracy, equity, and justice, Emmett’s exploration of how we define democracy, how we are all accountable to its unfulfilled promises, and how we must seize opportunity to improve our democracy, is thought and action provoking. 

In Contradictions from an Uncertain Silence, Wheatfall takes poetic inspiration from The Darkened Temple by Mari L’Esperance. “To enter the story feels like drowning and drowning is the only way to get there.” Humans navigate an empirical world embodying contradictions. This book of verse makes conscious the sentiment contractions reside in silence. Readers of this body of verse are asked to consider said silence. To give Contradictions from an Uncertain Silence a read aloud would bear witness to its sentiment.

Emmett Wheatfall lives in Portland, Oregon. He is a two-time nominee for Oregon Poet Laureate and the recipient of the prestigious 2024 Oregon Poetry Association Patricia Ruth Banta Award. His poetry has been published in several books, collections, and anthologies. Emmett has served as the keynote speaker at two Oregon Poetry association Annual Conferences and many other conferences and workshops. In 2020, Corban University produced a nine-part documentary highlighting Emmett’s life and his introduction to poetry.