At the heart of the FisherPoets Gathering is the written word.

Fishermen share their poetry from worn notebooks, read passages from articles and sing songs.

But as the annual Astoria gathering has grown over nearly two decades, new dimensions have been added to celebrate commercial fishing and its community.

Visitors can step aboard a fishing boat, view artwork in galleries and watch films.

Corey Arnold — a Portland-based photographer and commercial fisherman who has presented his photographs at the gathering for the past few years — spent Friday evening setting up a projector on top of his pickup truck. He planned to project video footage he collected from fishing trips in eight different countries around Europe and recent trips in Alaska.

The footage played on a 25-minute loop projected on the side of a building along Commercial Street near the Imogen Gallery, where his photographs were hanging.

Arnold said the multi-media projection added another element to the FisherPoets Gathering. It gave people a sense of place, a sense of being on the ocean, he said. As people walked between different venues Friday and Saturday night, many stopped in their tracks at the sight of fishing footage projected on a side of an entire building.

In his travels, Arnold said, he hopes to produce more projections for events in different cities.

“This is my experiment,” he said. “This is just the beginning, feeling out what is possible.”

More than 95 poets took the stage at this year’s FisherPoets Gathering. Twenty-six were new faces.

Anjuli Grantham, of Kodiak, Alaska, attended and performed for the first time.

She heard about the event by word-of-mouth from friends.

“I love that the coastal and fishing heritage is so embraced,” she said.

Grantham, who grew up fishing on the west side of Kodiak Island, is directing a project with the Alaska Historical Society called the Alaskan Historic Canneries initiative.

It’s a grassroots initiative to do more to document and preserve the history of the seafood industry in Alaska. “Coming to Astoria is inspiring. I just had delicious beer and food in an old cannery. What is this? Heaven,” Grantham said. “We have a long way to go in Alaska. We do have some good beer and lots of old canneries. Those that are not in use are pretty much derelict and only two are listed on the national registry, some are hunting lodges. Little has been done to document or preserve the history of the industry. That is something we are trying to change.”

Along with voices from the East Coast, Canada and around Alaska, many local fishermen had a chance to share their stories at FisherPoets.

Geno Leech, of Chinook, Washington, performs poetry each year that he wrote to entertain shipmates while commercial fishing or working salvage. His crowd-pleasing delivery would make singer and actor Tom Waits proud.

Some locals performed this weekend for the first time.

Renee Ahre, who lives on a boat near the East End Mooring Basin in Astoria, shared a poem many fishermen could relate to titled, “Damn Sea Lions.”

“They are noisy, stinky, huge and cute. Tourists love them, that’s the truth. Fishermen and the Port would love to give them a big old boot,” her poem began.

Ahre lives near the thousands of sea lions that have occupied the East End Mooring Basin docks. She keeps an eye out for damage they may cause and reports it to the Port of Astoria.

“I’m the self-appointed sheriff,” she said.