9/1 No P.E., 9/8 Iris De Anda

9/1/14 NO PE -- LABOR DAY. See BAPC website for their annual picnic. http://www.bayareapoetscoalition.org/

9/8/14 Iris De Anda hosted by Odillia

Iris De Anda is a writer, activist, and practitioner of the healing arts. A womyn of color of Mexican and Salvadorean descent. A native of Los Angeles she believes in the power of spoken word, poetry, storytelling, and dreams. She has been published in Mujeres de Maiz Zine, Loudmouth Zine: Cal State LA, OCCUPY SF poems from the movement, Seeds of Resistance, In the Words of Women, Twenty: In Memoriam and online at La Bloga. She is an active contributor to Poets Responding to SB 1070. She performs at community venues and events throughout the Los Angeles area & Southern California. She hosted The Writers Underground Open Mic 2012 at Mazatlan Theatre and 100,000 Poets for Change 2012 and 2013 at the Eastside Cafe. She currently hosts The Writers Underground Open Mic every Third Thursday of the month at the Eastside Cafe. Author of CODESWITCH: Fires From Mi Corazon.

8/25/14 Theme Night: Food

8/25/14 Theme Night: Entire evening devoted to your poems loosely arranged around the theme ofFOOD.

David Welper Featured 8/18/14

8/18/14 David Welper

David Welper received his MA in Creative Writing from Wayne State University in Detroit (2003). His work appears in Writing Without Walls, Housefirebooks.com, Denver Syntax, Gumball Poetry, Louffa Press, and other collections.  He has been a featured reader in NYC and at the Writing Without Walls series in San Francisco.  He is a psychiatric nurse, living in the Bay Area.  He likes Jazz, redheads, and sushi.  His latest book is Lookbaby, which deals with the absurdity and immaturity of how we look at our surroundings.  It is available at indie bookstores and www.kobo.com or through his website: www.DavidWelper.com. 

MY DENTIST’S HAIR

is a big black cloud with
yellow highlights.

I lay, brow sweaty,
under her sun-like light
on her chair
not unlike my barber.

Except my barber
has no hair,
no spotlight stuck
into my mouth.
No fingers pulling
at my cheeks as if on some
quest for a secret tooth
long hidden from dental
professionals.

No. I keep no secrets in my mouth.
Elsewhere, yes.

Just ask the barber
who weaves in and out of
said secrets

as we banter back & forth.

The dentist.  She understands a grunt and 

drills like lightning

hunting for its answer.

Denver, 2/3/14 David Welper

8/11/14 Features Avoicja

8/11/14  Avoicja 

Avotcja has been published in English & Spanish in the USA, Mexico & Europe, and in more Anthologies than she remembers. She is an award winning Poet & multi-instrumentalist who has opened for Betty Carter in New York City, Peru's Susana Baca at San Francisco’s Encuentro Popular & Cuba’s Gema y Pável, played with Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Bobi & Luis Cespedes, John Handy, Sonido Afro Latina, Dimensions Dance Theater, Black Poets With Attitudes, Bombarengue, Nikki Giovanni, Los Angeles' Build An Ark, Dwight Trible, Diamano Coura West African Dance Co., Terry Garthwaite, Big Black, The Bay Area Blues Society & Caribeana Etc. Shared stages with Sonia Sanchez, Piri Thomas, Janice Mirikitani, Diane DiPrima, Michael Franti, Jayne Cortez, & with Jose Montoya's Royal Chicano Air Force & is a Bay Area icon with her group Avotcja & Modúpue.  Avotcja was the opening act for the legendary Poet Pat Parker the last three years of her life. She both composed & performed the film score for the Danish documentary MuNu. Her Poetry &/or music has been recorded by Piri Thomas, Famoudou Don Moyé (of The Art Ensemble Of Chicago), Bobby Matos Latin Jazz Ensemble, & performed by The Purple Moon Dance Project, and was the 1st Poetry performed by New York's Dance Mobile. She's appeared at The Lorraine Hansberry Theater in S. F., The Asian-American Jazz Festival in Chicago, as well as The Asian-American Jazz Festival in San Francisco.  She's been featured 5 times at Afro-Solo, twice at San Francisco's Carnival, The Scottish Rite Temple & Yoshi's in Oakland & San Francisco, Jose Castellar's play "Man From San Juan", Club Le Monmartre in Copenhagen Denmark, Stanford University, at San Francisco’s Brava Theater For The Arts with Cine Acción, New York's Henry Street Settlement Theater and The Women On The Way Festival in San Francisco. Avotcja a is popular Bay Area DeeJay & Radio Personality, and the founder/Director of "The Clean Scene Theater Project (AKA) Proyecto Teatral De La Escena Sobria". She continues to teach Creative Writing, Storytelling & Drama in Public Schools & thanks to the California Arts Council she was also an Artist in Residence at the Milestones Project & San Francisco Penal System. Avotcja is a proud member of DAMO (Disability Advocates Of Minorities  Organization), PEN Oakland, California Poets In The Schools,  IWWG & is an  ASCAP recording artist.

News Flash, feature change for 8/4: Gary Turchin

News Flash, feature change for 8/4:
8/4/14 Gary Turchin

Gary Turchin is a performance poet, artist and writer. His interactive
poetry show for kids, Gary T. & his PoetTree, featuring his own
original rhymes and poems, has been performed it in more than 350 schools,
libraries and venues throughout the state. He was on the performance
roster of Young Audiences of San Francisco and the Silicon Valley and
has won three performance art grants from the city of Oakland.
Gary has released an audiotape, On the Day Before Tomorrow! and a CD,
My Pants Want to Dance!, with his original verse. He has published two
chapbooks of verse, I Want to Write a Poem, But...and The Silly-Verse Universe.
Gary is the author/illustrator of The Book of Self & Other Drawings
(1995), and  IF I WERE YOU, a book he illustrated and wrote, which he describes as an upside-down and
backwards view of life. Gary was also a columnist (1999-2004) for Oakland's Montclarion
newspaper, and a graphic artist whose funny t-shirts designs were sold
not only on Telegraph Ave in Berkeley but in major national catalogues. He
wrote, performed and produced a one-man show, Catch A Comet By The
Tale, about his life as a vagabond craft show artist and t-shirt designer
that played on and off for two years in the Bay Area and Seattle.
http://www.garyturchin.net/ for more info.
We look forward to Gary at Poetry Express 

 Note that he will be performing other work, not the book of the above picture.