I have been a writer and often enrolled student since 1984, giving up full-time seniority at Union Pacific's Albina Yards to support a couple of kids with words. The gamble, despite my depression-born grandmother's protests, worked. I now have ten grandchildren of my own who don't miss many meals.

I am the author of The Portland Bridge Book, the first and second editions published by the Oregon Historical Society Press in 1989 and 2001. After OHS went out of the business of books, I founded my own press, took out a loan on our house (with partner Ed Wortman’s collaboration) and published a third edition in 2006. It won a silver medal from Independent Publisher in 2007. Our latest projects are a book of poetry about bridges by 70 poets, and a 28-page calendar. Funded in part by a grant from the Regional Arts & Culture Council, Walking Bridges Using Poetry as a Compass: Poems and Bridges Real and Imagined by 70 Poets, with Directions for Five Self-Guided Explorations was published in late 2007. The 2009 Portland-Vancouver Bridges & Rivers Calendar is a fundraiser for the one-hundred-year-birthday celebration of the Hawthorne Bridge in 2010, and is available beginning in May 2008.

I am a University of Portland alum (M.Ed., class of '98). Brian Doyle, editor of Portland Magazine, paid me for my first poem, $25, in 1994. It was years before I realized that being paid for a random poem was like winning the lottery. The winter 2008 issue of Portland also includes one of my poems, and others are forthcoming. I've been a student of serious poetry since 2003. The American Society of Civil Engineers Oregon Section named me Journalist of the Year in 2007. Bridges have been the means for genres to cross between my left and right brain.

I've led May through October bridge walks along the Willamette River for Portland Parks & Outdoor Recreation since 1991. These became Poetry & Bridge walks in 2006. The 2008 itineraries feature Northwest poets Kim Stafford, Barbara Drake, Amy Minato, Ed Edmo, Marilyn Johnston, and Jonah Bornstein. I lead walks, too, for school and convention groups.

Multnomah County issues me an annual permit and I’ve been trained to take people into the operator's tower and down three stories into the bascule pit of the Morrison Bridge. We can be below, bridge and weather willing, during test openings. I also invite musicians and other performers to join the walks. Stephen Cohen, Paula Sinclair, and Nathan Hoover have been audience favorites. This is my last season to lead monthly bridge walks for Portland Parks, but I plan to lead one or two walks in 2009.

I’m downsizing so I can work on a committee of citizens organizing an all-city celebration to honor the one hundredth birthday of the Hawthorne Bridge in 2010, the oldest operating vertical lift bridge anywhere. In addition, the Steel Bridge is turning one hundred in 2012, and Broadway one hundred in 2013. As part of the fundraising efforts, I'm now putting together, with the help of community artists, a 2009 calendar of the Willamette River bridges. I'm looking for pithy, poetic, river-related quotes, and people and their companies to buy the calendar beginning in June 2008.

The poet and peacemaker William Stafford (1914-1993) helped me overcome the limitations of others when he said, and I paraphrase: none of us are required to earn a Ph.D. in voice, style, or use of imagery before our own standards can begin.

I've been a board member of the Friends of William Stafford since early 2006. With a lot of help from the other board members, I plan the annual Poetry & Potluck celebration for members and their family and friends in Lake Oswego's Foothills Park. September 14, 2008 will be our third event. (For more about FWS’s namesake, go to <www.williamstafford.org>.)

My own poetry gets mostly community credit. "Supporting the Divine," for example, published by the American Society of Civil Engineers Oregon section. "More Bondo, Please" appeared in the newsletter of the Oregon Writers Colony and Windfall—A Journal of Poetry of Place occasionally accepts a poem.

My favorite byline involves yellow chalk. Looking Glass Bookstore, when it was on Southwest Taylor, published "Bridges that Open Like Oysters" on the sidewalk outside its front door for a few hours before a reading. I watched passersby leap out of their way to avoid my stanzas.

Sharon Wood Wortman
January 21, 2008