Nellie Bridge, Clallam County Poet Laureate, 2025-27
Nellie recently returned to Sequim, where she was raised, after spending six years working with teens in international schools, including four years in Sofia, Bulgaria, and two in Lima, Peru. She currently works with fourth, fifth and sixth graders at Five Acre School in Dungeness.
She attended The Evergreen State College for her BA and NYU’s MFA program for poetry as a New York Times Fellow. She also apprenticed with letterpress printers including The Yolla Bolly Press, Copper Canyon Press and the Wells College Book Arts Center.
Her poems have appeared in journals such as Press Pause Press, Volume, Tethered Literary, Painted Bride Quarterly, Festival Internacional de PoesÃa, Vagabond, New Delta Review, EcoTheo Review, Pleiades, and Rattapallax. She has published two small-run chapbooks, Plea for Tearing with the Running Hours and Loose Poems (Poemas Sueltos). Her debut collection Holes in the Ship of Theseus was awarded the Best of the Bottom Drawer Global Writing Prize by Black Spring Press and will be released in late 2026.
The Clallam County Poet Laureate program began in 2023. Jaiden Dokken served as the first Poet Laureate.
Community poetry opportunities
Email poetlaureate@nols.org to share your ideas about how you’d like to bring poetry to your community in Clallam County and to collaborate on events like poetry readings, workshops and interactive experiences. Events with the Poet Laureate should be free and open to the public, with the exception of school or corrections facility visits.
Please allow time for the Poet Laureate to review and respond to your email request, typically within two weeks. Demand for the Poet Laureate can be high, and they will balance requests across the county.
For general questions about the Poet Laureate program, please email discover@nols.org. To contact the Poet Laureate directly, email poetlaureate@nols.org.
About the Poet Laureate Position
The Poet Laureate will serve a two-year term, bringing poetry to residents of the county by participating in events, leading workshops, and championing the community power of the written and spoken word throughout Clallam County.
A major goal of the Clallam County Poet Laureate program is to use poetry to bring a variety of voices and perspectives to culturally diverse audiences throughout the county, and to bring communities together through poetry. Poetry helps us to see, understand and think about our community and our world through a different lens and challenges us to reconsider the common ties that bind us together.
This position comes with an annual stipend of $5,000 ($10,000 total) in recognition of the appointed poet’s time and energy in participating in or hosting events as well as to support the poet’s craft and practice.
Nellie Bridge will serve as the second Clallam County Poet Laureate (April 2025 through March 2027). The position is generously funded by the North Olympic Library Foundation and Clallam County.
Jaiden Dokken served as the first Clallam County Poet Laureate (April 2023 through March 2025).
Poet Laureate Recommends
