A love for words led one WSU alumna on an unconventional path from civil engineering to Washington State Poet Laureate.

Kathleen Flenniken will share memories of her journey and read from her recent work “Plume” at the opening of this year’s Visiting Writer Series Oct. 22 at 7 p.m. in the Museum of Art.

“Her creativity is an inspiration for students across all disciplines,” said Debbie Lee, English professor and co-director of the WSU Visiting Writer Series.

At the height of the Cold War, Flenniken grew up in the small town of Richland, Wash., next to home of the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world, the Hanford Nuclear Site. Flenniken’s father spent his career there as a chemist.

“It was a very tight-knit community,” Flenniken said. “I am very proud of the people I grew up knowing.”

Wanting to make her father proud, Flenniken set out to fulfill her aspirations of becoming an engineer. After earning her BA in civil engineering at WSU in 1983 and later her MA at the University of Washington, she followed her father to Hanford, where she worked as an engineer for three years.

Many years after her time working for Hanford, government documents revealed the facility released significant amounts of radioactive material into the air and Columbia River, despite Handford’s assurance to workers and their families that their community was safe, Flenniken said.

“I had to come to terms with the community I knew, and the community revealed in the documents and that was a big tension in my life,” she said.

At the same time, the father of Flenniken’s childhood best friend, who also worked for Hanford, passed away from radiation-induced illness just before his wife was diagnosed with cancer.

It was then that Flenniken began expressing her experience through poetry, igniting a six-year journey of self-discovery and reconciling herself with the failures and flaws of the small town she loved and admired, she said.

Her transformational relationship with poetry began after taking a night class where she said she began exploring her love for language and words.

“My art comes from my tension,” she said. “I wrote these poems to try and reform my identity after I learned about Hanford.”

“Plume” combines her personal account with historical research to portray the sense of betrayal felt by many members of the Richland community and beyond, Flenniken said.

“Being able to put life experience into a small form is what really appealed to me,” she said. “When I started playing with words, I realized this is my passion.”

Her passion earned her the title of Washington State Poet Laureate, in which she will serve as the state’s primary spokeswoman, advocate and promoter of poetry during her tenure, Flenniken said.

“Plume” was also selected for Linda Bierd’s Pacific Northwest Poetry Series, she said.

Linda Russo, co-director of the Visiting Writers Series, said taking the opportunity to hear Flenniken read her work will spark a lasting thought in students.  

“They’ll be inspired to think about the kind of legacy they want to leave behind,” Russo said.

For Russo, Flenniken is an important guest for the series because of her ability to combine different ways of thinking into a condensed creative form.

“Her work demonstrates how disciplines are not disparate and there is room for the disciplines to work together in a meaningful way,” Russo said.

During her visit to WSU, Flenniken will also speak to a classroom filled with atomic history and English students.

Flenniken said she wants students to understand the meaning and potential behind poetry and writing.

“People don’t realize how powerful a poem can be,” she said.  “You can make anything you want.”

For Flenniken, poetry is not about how much of her work is published, but instead about self-improvement and hard work.

“I have had lots of failures, lots of rejections, but I think it makes the acceptances that much sweeter,” she said. “All writers have to work really, really hard. It doesn’t all happen in one day.”