WHAT WE HOLD & LEAVE BEHIND

An exhibition of photographs & poetry with reading by Oregon seasoned poets.

July 15 – September 9, 2026

OPENING Reception: Sat. July 18, 2-4PM

Poetry Reading: 3PM — Collins Gallery, Central Library (Third Floor)

Portland Central Library
801 SW 10th Avenue
Portland, OR 97205

Monday, Thursday, and Friday from 10 AM to 6 PM,
Tuesday and Wednesday from 12 PM to 8 PM,
Saturday from 10 AM to 6 PM,
Sunday from 12 PM to 6 PM

This project is a collaboration between photographer Jim Lommasson and poet Willa Schneberg. Jim Lommasson has created “What We Carry” projects around the U.S. with the houseless, and with refugee communities who were forced to flee their homelands. Willa Schneberg is the recipient of two fellowships and the Oregon Book Award in Poetry, both from Literary Arts.

At the What We Hold & Leave Behind exhibition at the Central Library Collins Gallery in downtown Portland, object images are coupled with the poets’ hand-written poems in the white space of 19” x 13” archival pigment prints. Included are their actual physical objects, memorabilia and artist books.

This project celebrates the lives of senior seasoned poets, including former Poet Laureates Paulann Petersen and Kim Stafford. In his studio, Jim Lommasson photographed the objects of special significance from over 25 master poets— objects that reveal what truly matters to them, acknowledgments of well-lived lives in terms of work, family, relationships, identity, place, and loss. These elder poets paired Jim Lommasson’s images of their objects with poems, and hand-wrote them with great care. Some poets with shaky hands employed scribes. They met in Willa Schneberg’s office to share their prints and poems with each other.

During “Cover to Cover,” the celebration leading up to the 2025 Portland Book Festival, Jim Lommasson projected slides of each print, as 20 of the celebrated poets shared their poems to a packed audience of over 70 at the book-cramped digs of Mother Foucault’s in SE Portland.

It is important that this exhibition, reading, and poetry workshop showcasing this project should be at the Central Library, which has one of the largest readerships in the U.S. and also one of the few that has an exhibition space. Especially since the pandemic, it has not always been a place that many, particularly elders, have experienced as a safe space. We see it as the magnificent house of books in which poets feel honored to have their work in the John Wilson Special Collections Room, check out books and visit the Collins Gallery. The poets in the What We Hold & Leave Behind project believe this is the perfect location to show the prints of Jim Lommasson and to celebrate their lives through poetry.

Poetry Workshop for elders: Sunday, August 23, 1-4PM

On Sunday, August 23, 1-4PM, Willa Schneberg will offer an inclusive poetry workshop to seniors in the community. Participants will bring their special objects and write poems about them, (no prior writing experience necessary).

Suggested registration opens 3 weeks before. Location: Room 1A https://multcolib.org/events-classes/poetry-writing-workshop-elders-led-willa-schneberg