Toni Hanner, or tonipoet, as she sometimes hubristically calls herself, has been a poet since the year Ray Carver died. In fact, it's largely Ray's fault. (Switching to 1st person now) I was non-ironically dying for a cigarette, having recently quit, and one look at that hunky leather boy puffing away on the back cover of his book, I think it was Where Water Comes Together With Other Water, and I was hooked. Fell into Lawson Inada's Rogue Valley Writers

Workshop, was reeled in, pulled into the boat and dumped in the bucket with the other gaspers. I moved to Eugene, wangled my way into a Windfall invitation, met Michael Hanner, and this seems like a good place to stop with the fishing metaphor.

I am a member in "meh" standing of Red Sofa Poets (they put up with me because meetings are usually at our house), the OPA, and a longstanding member of Centrum's Pt. Townsend Writers Conference.

Books: Moonmusic, with Connie Beitler, Wellspring Press, 2000

The Ravelling Braid, Tebot Bach, 2012

Gertrude, Traprock Books, 2012

More chapbooks than you could shake a stick at.

These days, when I write poetry, it's usually in French. That's because I am hopelessly in love with the French language. I write this at the end of 6 weeks in Paris and the French countryside, where every day is filled with many ways to humiliate myself simply by opening my mouth. When I write French poems to be read by Americans, I get away with a lot more crimes contre la langue!

That's about it. If you want to ask me anything, I'm happy to talk your ear off any time, but of course, I'd rather text.