Simon Rogghe Features May 5th

5/5/14 Simon Rogghe 

Simon Rogghe is a poet, fiction writer and translator of French surrealism and contemporary fiction. His work has appeared and is forthcoming in 3:AM Magazine, Tree Killer Ink, Rolling Thunder, Gone Lawn, The Undertow and other publications. He is currently earning his Ph.D. in French literature at UC Berkeley, specializing in poetry.

(Carol Hogan regrets that she will not be able to feature with Simon at this time.)

Monday 4/28 Open Mic with Footnotes

4/28/14 Theme Night: Open Mic with Footnotes -- Read 

your poem and then talk about it -- thoughts behind it, 

how you wrote it, how you edited it, etc.

Entire Evening Open Mic on this theme. Depending on the number of people there may be more individual time on mic than the usual 5 minute limit.

Carl Kopman Featured Monday, 4/21

4/21 Carl Kopman 

Treading on a rock path
I have not much to say.
That these children want
to hold my hand
is enough.

Letting words
age in cautious steps
is enough.

Carl Kopman is a cabdriver from Brooklyn, New York, a salmon fisherman from the Hippie Years in Mendocino, California,  a school teacher living in Berkeley, and a writer. He spends his time enjoying his family, playing pool, restoring a 600 year old monastery in Nepal, and, with his wife, making habitable a small house on a wild river in San Miguel, Panama. He is currently working on a collection of short stories and shorter poems.  He has been working on this collection most of his life.

Monday, 4/14 Features Adam Cornford

4/14/14  Adam Cornford 

Adam Cornford immigrated to the United States as a student in 1979. Since then he has lived almost entirely in the San Francisco Bay Area. From 1987 until the closure of that institution in 2008, Adam led the Poetics Program at New College of California in San Francisco. Today he once again works in the world’s second-oldest profession: writer for hire. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines in print and on the web, and he has published three full-length poetry collections—Shooting Scripts, Animations, and Decision Forest—as well as several chapbooks. Adam lives in Oakland, where he is currently working on a science-fiction novel. He has just started a new e-zine, HELL: A Magazine of the Arts. 

Dave and Chappell Holt Featured at Poetry Express Monday, 4/7

4/7/14 Dave and Chappell Holt

Dave Holt studied piano at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory. The 60’s brought rock ‘n’ roll, blues, jazz and a move to Northern California, while honing his songwriting skills. He toured with the country rock band, Frontier, fronted by Mitch Greenhill & Mayne Smith; was accompaniest to blues singer Pamela Polland and her cabaret show, The Melba Rounds Revue; fronted his own bands and began an original singer/songwriter partnership with Chappell in 1980. Later he earned an SFSU BA and Master’s in Creative Writing (1993, M.A.1995) and has become a published, award-winning poet, often in demand to read and perform his poetry accompanied by his drum. Sometimes Chappell accompanies him on guitar, autoharp & dulcimer. His book, Voyages to Ancestral Islands: Poems & Poetry, which won a Literary/Cultural Arts Award from Artists Embassy International (SF, 2013) is available at Amazon.com, http://www.amazon.com/voyages-ancestral-islands-poems-prose/dp/1448637279 and also at Barnes and Noble website. 

The daughter of a minister, Chappell grew up singing gospel music. Frequent moves took her Navy family to San Diego. With a guitar, dulcimer, and autoharp she left for Northern California during the 70’s folk music revival inspired by the new singer/songwriters and the soulfulness of jazz. She began an exploration of merging poetry with music in songwriting which continues to this day. She is also an artist, a professional seamstress, and clothing designer. Some of her paintings are displayed in the website Pictures section at http://www.chappellanddaveholt.com/pictures.