Photo Copyright Carla Perry
CLEM STARCK
Clemens Starck was born in Rochester, New York. After dropping out of Princeton, he continued his education on the road, riding freight trains and stopping wherever he found a job. He has been a ranch hand in eastern Oregon, a newspaper reporter on Wall Street, a door to door salesman, and a merchant seaman. For over twenty years he worked construction up and down the West Coast, as a carpenter and carpenter foreman. He retired recently from a full-time construction and maintenance job at Oregon State University.
Starck's poems have appeared in numerous magazines and in anthologies. He has given readings in San Francisco and throughout the Northwest and has been a featured author at FisherPoets Gathering in Astoria several times. His books of poetry include "Journeyman's Wages," "Studying Russian on Company Time," "China Basin," and "Traveling Incognito."
"Journeyman's Wages" received the William Stafford Memorial Poetry Award from the Pacific Northwest Bookseller's Association, and the 1996 Oregon Book Award for Poetry.