Minutes of the Oregon Poetry Association (OPA) Board Meeting of March 14, 2022
The meeting was scheduled to begin at 7:00 pm via Zoom.
Present: Sue Fagalde Lick (President), Nancy Christopherson (Vice President and Adult Contest Chair), Dan Liberthson (Secretary), Rana Tahir (Treasurer and Webmaster), Dave Mehler (Membership Chair and Publications Liaison), Lauren Mallett (Cascadia Contest Chair), Priscilla Hunter (Historian), Lorna Rose-Hahn (Membership Co-Chair, Outreach Chair, Events Committee Chair), Efrain Diaz-Horna (guest)
Not Present: All board members were present.
I. Sue called the meeting to order at 7:06 pm.
II. Approval of Minutes
Approval of the February 15, 2022 OPA board meeting minutes was moved and seconded, and the board voted unanimously to approve.
III. Officer Reports
A. President’s Report (Sue Fagalde Lick)
1. Slam poetry project: We will not send an OPA slam poet representative to the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (NFSPS) slam event because OPA so far has not had much experience with slam and it would be difficult to recruit a representative by the May 1 deadline. We will make the news about the contest available.
2. Oregon poetry groups: Sue is gathering information about the various poetry groups in Oregon in an effort to compile a comprehensive list of who is doing what with poetry in the state, to be placed on the website.
3. A new memorandum of understanding (MOU) from the University of Oregon library needs to be signed by Sue and Charles Castle to indicate that OPA accepts moving the poetry collection and including it in the Special Collection Library’s temperature- and humidity-controlled stacks. So far Sue has not received the revised MOU from U of O.
B. Vice President’s Report (Nancy Christopherson)
No Report.
C. Secretary (Dan Liberthson)
No report.
D. Treasurer (Rana Tahir)
OPA’s current bank balance is $50,057.
E. Historian’s Report Summary (Priscilla Hunter)
No report.
V. Committee Reports
A. Membership and Publications Liaison (Dave Mehler)
Membership is steady at 370. People are having problems renewing their memberships with Safari on Wild Apricot, getting frustrated, and sending in checks. Rana reported that Wild Apricot just released a software fix that hopefully will solve this problem.
B. Adult Contests Summary (Nancy Christopherson)
Seventy-nine poets entered the adult contest and 192 poems were submitted. The poems are now being read by the judges. Once the winners are determined, Nancy will need to validate the entries and make sure none of them was previously published. Judging should be done by mid-April.
C. Social Media/Events (Lorna Rose-Hahn)
Lorna is working on getting OPA onto Instagram. She has found that a prior OPA account exists and has been trying to find out who originated it, so far without success. She emailed Instagram to see if they can tell her, but got no response. There might be privacy issues. Lorna will contact Instagram once more. If whoever started the old account can’t be found, a new account will be opened. Lorna says Instagram is her favorite social medium platform—it is platform of the moment for writers, as Facebook has fallen out of favor. Nancy suggested profiling contest judges, which may be done for future contests. Efrain mentioned that the old OPA Instagram account has no posts, but 53 followers. Lorna will send messages to the followers to try to find out who they are. If a new account must be started, they could be notified using the old account.
D. Youth Contests Report Summary (Lauren Mallett)
Six entries via Submittable have been received so far. Lauren has connected via Zoom with teachers from Tillamook High School; via phone with a teacher from Vernonia Family Academy; and via email with teachers from Tillamook Junior High, Knappa School District, Write Around Portland, and Oregon Home School Network. She will send the contest details to Lorna for social media publicity. Lorna asked if Lauren wants her to post about the youth contests on Facebook. Lauren said it was worth doing. Lorna said that for the adult contest she posted when it opened, at midpoint, and the night before closing. Lauren agreed that would be good to do for the youth contests also.
E. Webmaster (Rana Tahir)
Rana mentioned that the problem with using the Safari browser to renew membership on Wild Apricot, mentioned above by Dave (item V, A), appears to be an email issue, not a browser problem—emails are reported delivered when they have not been. She has another book review ready to post. The Mid Valley Poetry Society needs to be put back on the website; it was inadvertently deleted as part of revising the site. She is getting reports of dues payments from Wild Apricot.
VI. Old Business
A. New board member
Efrain Diaz-Horna will officially join the board next month after the Adult Contest, in which he is participating, is over. Efrain mentioned that he writes poetry in both Spanish and English and has noticed that translations do not always have the same impact as the poems in their original language. He published a book of poetry by Kim Stafford and will be doing a reading of César Vallejo, a prominent Peruvian poet first translated by Robert Bly, for the Salem Poetry Project.
B. OPA Open Poetry Month Readings April 5 and 19
Registration for these events, open to anyone, can be done on Wild Apricot. As is typical with open readings, they will not be recorded. Two people have already registered for the open readings.
VII. New Business
A. Performance Poetry Event
Alex Dang, a well-known performance poet, said he is willing do a workshop on spoken and performance poetry on Apr 14 at 7 pm for $200. Dan moved to pay Alex $200 to conduct a spoken/ performance poetry workshop on April 14. The motion was seconded and unanimously approved. Sue will provide copy about the event to Rana for posting on the website.
B. Annual Conference
Rana will get the extra Zoom license needed for an additional room on Oct 1, so we will only need to pay for the extra room for 1 month. She has the template from last year’s conference, which will facilitate organizing this one. She mentioned that the online bookstore worked well last year, and asked if we should promote it more. Sue mentioned that all bylaw changes need to be voted on by the membership at the annual meeting, so board members should re-read the bylaws and propose any changes they think necessary.
VIII. Announcements
The next Board meeting will be on April 12 at 7 pm.
IX. Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at 7:50 pm.
Minutes recorded and prepared by Dan Liberthson, Secretary