Eric Manzer
Buck Meloy
Cordova’s very own celebrate their fishing culture with verse, song and food. Last Thursday at the Anchor Bar & Grill located down in the Old Harbor, fisherpoets schooled up to perform original lines to a packed house.
The Crowd
Themes ranged from mending woes, as described by Patty McGuire by “miles and miles of little green piles” to burials at sea gone awry, to thanking salmoning, from sitting on a bucket in the rain to dangerous bar crossings, to one liners heard on board a seiner.
Steve Schoonmaker
Other themes touched on a more political side of issues that can threaten our fisheries such as Pebble Mine and genetically modified salmon, sung to the tune of Old McDonald had a farm, no less. “Man, my food is really creeping me out, e i e i o. I think I’m getting a case of the gout, e i e i o.
The evening ended with musicians bringing down the house.
Kim Menster & Tracy Nuzzi
Mike Mickelson
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Introduction Jen Pickett is a freelance writer, poet, and commercial fisherman. She has spent nearly two decades in Alaska’s commercial fishing industry. Starting as crew, she’s worked seiners, gill netters and long liners, to name a few. She’s fished Alaska’s waters for herring, salmon, and halibut from Southeast to Bristol Bay and most places in between. At 28 she became one of the few women to own and operate her boat on one of Alaska’s most dangerous waters, the Copper River Flats. She fished alone for the famous Copper River Kings and Reds. Encountering storms, breakers, broken-down equipment, ripped up nets, exhaustion, whales, sharks, close-calls with giant cruise ships and many other near misses, all became the norm aboard her 28’ boat. After 5 seasons of this nonsense the state of Alaska started handing out grant money to retrain fishermen. She sold out, packed up and moved to the big city, Anchorage. A few years later, and a few degrees she only fell off the wagon and went fishing once. However, the pull of the ocean proved to be too strong and she fell off the wagon and is once again fishing, but this time with a purpose, to write a book about it.
