What's Up! Magazine

On page 13 of Jessica Lohafer’s new poetry book, “What’s Left to be Done,” is a piece about monks who devoted their lives to transcribing great works of literature. “When they finally went blind, did the pen still move?” reads the poem, entitled “An Effort.” “Did it reach forward into their newly found dark, groping for the page?”

It’s one of many provoking lines that appear in this rich collection of 17 poems released by the 23-year old Bellingham-based poet. But Lohafer sees it as the central theme that drove the book to completion and is driving her still.

“The most important thing we can put effort to in our lives is the attempt, not necessarily the result,” she says. “I’m still young, not settled with an outcome. All I’m doing is trying. That’s what the book revolves around an effort.”

And yet results are clearly emerging for the Ferndale-raised Lohafer, who has been writing since she was 10 years old and falling in love with poetry ever since.

At the age of 17, Lohafer attended her first live poetry reading at Stuart’s Coffeehouse. The experience of hearing spoken word changed her life forever.

“I had only been writing for myself, and I heard of this open mic in Bellingham called poetrynight,” Lohafer recalls. “It just blew my mind. Suddenly I wasn’t just writing for myself, but I had an audience to think about.”

A natural performer (she calls herself a drama kid at heart), Lohafer soon became a weekly regular. With steady feedback, her work grew and developed. She began to write poems from perspectives other than her own. She began to hone her work, inviting feedback from fellow poets. And she began to perform in front of a microphone.

Over the years, the effort bore fruit. Lohafer released a self-published chapbook in 2006 called “Good Posture,” and a spoken word CD called One Thing We Are Sure Of in 2009.

“What’s Left to be Done” was released through Bellingham-based Radical Lunchbox Press (run by Melissa Queen and Robert Huston) and is Lohafer’s first published book an exciting achievement for a young writer.

Lohafer is eager to give back some of the credit to the Poetry Night community.

“If I never found them, I would probably still be writing poems about boys that had broken my heart, and reading them to myself, and thinking they were really good,” Lohafer says.

In addition to writing and performing poetry, Lohafer labors to share her love of literature with others. She currently serves as the director of Poetry in Public Education, a program that works to bring local poets to public schools.

An undergraduate at WWU, Lohafer also plans to become an English teacher. She seems to have a gift in sparking interest in literature for others, and encouraging them to write.

“For me the point of poetry or writing has always been to try to relate to other people,” Lohafer says. “It’s a way for me to say, ‘Look at how we’ve had the same experience, even though we are so different.’”

While Lohafer is already birthing new poems in the New Year (she is writing 31 poems in 31 days this month), her primary focus is promoting her book. She will be performing her poetry at the Jinx Artspace on Flora Street on Friday, Jan. 15, when she opens for Robbie Q. Telfer’s tour, “Spiking the Sucker Punch.” The cost for the 8 p.m. show is $6; doors open at 7:30.

And you can catch her performing almost every week at poetrynight, held Monday nights at 8:30 p.m. at the Anker Caf on Cornwall Avenue.

For those who may claim that poetry isn’t their thing, Lohafer offers this final thought: “Literature is always only what we are doing. If you’re a human, you are literature. You can’t be bad at it.”

To obtain a copy of “What’s Left to be Done,” contact Lohafer via MySpace at myspace.com/jessicalohafer