Monday December 30 No Poetry Express Happy Holidays

See you in 2020.
First session will be Monday, January 6th.
Happy New Year !

12/23/19 Aileen Cassinetto Features

12/23/19 Aileen Cassinetto hosted by Gary

Aileen Cassinetto is the first Asian-American appointed to the post of Poet Laureate of San Mateo County. Having grown up in the Philippines during Martial Law, she seeks not only to make poetry more accessible to people in their everyday lives, but to advocate for social justice and diversity. Widely anthologized, she is the author of the poetry collections, Traje de Boda andThe Pink House of Purple Yam Preserves & Other Poems, as well as three chapbooks through Moria Books’ acclaimed Locofo series. Aileen is also the publisher of Paloma Press, an independent literary press established in 2016 which has released 17 books to date.

Hate is lead-wrapped

follows a corkscrew path

all 1/25th of a human heart 

to tear apart skin, sinew

bone, prized tissue

rips as it leaves 

a bleeding vessel that is

the weight of someone’s love.

12/16/19 Andrena Zawinski features

12/16/19  Andrena Zawinski  hosted by Bruce

Photo Credit: Don Dutra

Andrena Zawinski’s latest poetry collection, Landings, is from Kelsay Books (Hemet, CA). She has published two previous full collections of poetry: Something About (Blue Light Press, San Francisco, CA), a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award recipient, and Traveling in Reflected Light (Pig Iron Press, Youngstown, O), a Kenneth Patchen competition winner. She has also authored four chapbooks and is editor of Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry (Scarlet Tanager Books, Oakland, CA). Her poems have received accolades for free verse, form, lyricism, spirituality, and social concern. She founded and runs the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com.

In Landings, Zawinski presents poems that embrace, in original ways and with deep-rooted emotional power, the worldwide condition of women, immigrants, and the working class alongside an abiding reverence for the natural world. Of this work, Jan Beatty says Zawinski is the necessary voice of the truth teller, speaking trouble among the beauty. Rebecca Foust lauds the collection as a book that offers wisdom and solace and one you will take comfort in reading again and again. Carolyne Wright goes on to say in these Landings, she embraces the richness of human experience and praises the courage of those who go on ‘living as if they could do anything.’

Links to work: poetrymagazine.com/zawinski  amazon.com/author/andrenazawinski

poem recited with images: 

http://www.poetrymagazine.com/movies/singing_bird_haibun_andrena_zawinski.mp4

Andrena Zawinski:

Rafts

Sun spills silver stars of light along rippling summer waves.

A string of pelicans wing the horizon,

light in flight for all their heft.

Children squeal and squirm inside their plastic inflatable.

One slips over the side, feigns drowning, splashing and kicking,

holding onto his crying sister, jumps back in to tickle her side––

all of them then swimming in giggles and smiles in frolic and fun,

family picnicking at the shore, waving from bright beach towels.

Other children, roped onto rafts in flimsy life jackets, float in

from Aleppo across the Aegean away from bombs and bullets

to find a way out, forge a way in, whole families cattled

by smugglers, squeezed in dozens deep. But those who slip

into this dark sea cannot be rescued with innocent teasing and mirth.

A three-year-old washes up onto the beach face down on the sand,

limp body leaden in his father’s arms,

water lapping the wounded shore.

Publication Credit:

Reunion Dallas Review, Vol 6, 2017. Univ. of Texas, Dallas, TX

Becky Bishop White features 12/9

12/9/19 Becky Bishop White  hosted by Jim

The east coast, the SF Bay Area, and Lake Tahoe are threaded throughout the poetry of Becky Bishop White. An emerging poet, Becky won the 2019 First Prize in the Benicia Love Poetry Contest for her poem, Flying Start, and was Second Place winner for an unpublished poem, Ghost Fleet, at the 2019 Solano County Fair. Becky lives in Benicia with her husband, author James W. White, who is her very best friend.

ALIGNMENT

To try to set a problem right

requires courage. Some might

think to leave or just pout

in silence, but to talk it out

or try for a hug is huge.

You are no longer fugitive

from your best self.

You have broken the spell

that makes you think ‘other.’

But it’s not really another

who aligns with you.

Here is what is true:

The soul who makes peace is nearer

to the person in the mirror.

            © Becky Bishop White

Jeanne Lupton Features 12/2/19

12/2/19 Jeanne Lupton host Elaine

Jeanne Lupton hosted Second Saturday Poetry and Prose at Frank Bette Center for the Arts for 13 years until this month.  She writes poems and memoir and her tanka are published internationally.  She's happy to feature again at Poetry Express.  She gets great material from living at Strawberry Creek Lodge, senior housing in Berkeley.  

Dave Holt Features Nov 25th

11/25/19 Dave Holt hosted by Gary

Dave Holt, born in Toronto of Irish/English and Ojibwe Indian ancestry, moved to California as an aspiring songwriter, then graduated from SF State University’s Creative Writing program (B.A. ‘93, M.A. ‘95). He’s won several poetry prizes, including a Literary/Cultural Arts award for his book Voyages to Ancestral Islands, and is included in several anthologies, most notably, Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California; Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California; The Wild, Marin Poetry Center Anthology 2019, and Descansos: Words from the Wayside, where his poem received a Pushcart Prize nomination. Also a musician & composer, he sometimes performs his poetry with Ojibwe drum or keyboard.

Bering Strait, Dakota Pipeline Straitjacket

I come from ice and snow, winter memories
carry me, crossing tundra to a new land.
Fleets of dugout canoes floated us through kelp forest.
Bass, crabs, otters fed us,
this history etched in our hearts like petroglyphs
pecked in stone by our native artists.
This new Turtle Island formed by Skywoman
and before then, he who descended to Earth
as if by a rope dropped through Bugonagiizhig,
“Hole in the Sky,” the seven sisters, the Pleiades.

A different people followed Giiwedin’anung,
North Pole star, brought trade goods from the south,
taught us their friendship songs,
gave us the three sisters: corn, beans, squash,
traded for gifts of the north, obsidian, copper, beaver furs.
They shared their strange stories of origin and creation,
here on this land, where they emerged like ants
from an anthill, from an underground world
into the fourth world of pueblos and mesas,
and Spanish soldiers offering Bibles.

We nodded, knowing that what we were hearing was sacred.
Like us, they came from the Star People
who gave us seven sacred laws, affirmed our place
in the sacred hoop, and another non-heavenly origin
in the land across the water, beyond snows and ice flows,
back in time where we were given stewardship of the earth.
Of the four races, the white race became guardians
of the fire, the spark at the center of things.

Carried here across the Bering Strait, to where our fight
for protection of the water has earned us pepper spray,
guard dog attacks, jail cells, federal prison sentences.
Of what crime, against who, have we been accused? 

Joyce Young Features 11/18

11/18/2019 Joyce Young hosted by Bruce

Joyce E. Young is the author of How it Happens, published by Nomadic Press. Her writing has been nominated for both a Pushcart and a California Book Award
and has appeared in Smith Alumnae Quarterly, WORDPEACE, riverbabble, The New Poets of the American West, and elsewhere. She has received grants from the California Arts Council, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and Writers on Site residency program at the Oakland Museum and Oakland Public Library through
Poets & Writers, Inc. Joyce has been awarded residencies at Virginia Center for
the Creative Arts, Hedgebrook, Soapstone and Vermont Studio Center. She works as a Writing Consultant at John F. Kennedy University, teaches writing privately, and is currently at work writing poetry, essays, and Parallel Journey, a novel.
Joyce maintains regular Yoga and Chi Gung practice and is a semi-retired Afro
Cuban folkloric and modern dancer. She keeps lots of music in her life,
particularly Jazz, Salsa, Reggae, Samba, and combinations of notes that defy

category. In reality, though, she really doesn’t like to assign categories for music.

Because

Like angels are supposed to

You don’t do it because

you want to be good,

get candy, or ice cream

You do it because you love

And forgetting all else

You tend to her or him,

watching, waiting, praying

for life, health, the best

for that person or persons

you love

Bruce Fessenden Features 11/11/19

11/11/19 Bruce Fessenden hosted by Jim

Bruce lives in Berkeley and is co-owner of Fessenden Firewood with his partner Christine.  He has been deeply immersed in the natural world his entire life through the activities of backpacking, climbing and skiing.  A book of his poems —“Crimson Coat” — was published in 2014 by Goldenstone Press.  Pieces of Bruce’s writings have appeared in a MoonShine Star Co. anthology called “What is Love”, and also in Richard Grossinger’s book “2013”.  A second volume of poems, titled “Bones” will be published shortly.

                              Frieda

My Mothers’ Mother was a gentle woman

    I remember her deep set, brown eyes.

She had a hearing aid, like a little microphone

    all that was available in the 50s.

She had her hearing aid as long as I can remember

    her hearing impaired by typhoid fever

    is the story I was told.

An uneducated woman living in a rooming house

    as a boy I felt we were connected close.

Two quiet souls, filled with empty time

    and the occasional unfriendly ghost.

When in high school, I’d drive

    her to her solitary room

    in my fathers’ forest green sports car.

He never gave her a single penny

    he was blind in so many ways.

Often I wonder why a few rise up

    while the others struggle and fall.

Hands of the clock easily seen

    but the inner gears remain hidden.

I’ve heard it said

    broken ones of this world sacrifice themselves

    discarded fruit enriching the soil.

She liked menthol cigarretes and dime store crime novels.

Who was the kindly elementary school teacher

    who taught her how to read?

Welfare checks and food stamps, TV in the lobby

    Bathroom and showers at the end of the hall.

The last forty years of her life

    spent in that solitary room

    with her paperbacks, her cigarretes, her silence.

For the forgotten ones, its almost a blessing

    to be so broken, and disassociated from their grief.

She lived her life a little bit stunned

    in that way we are so much alike.

There was not a single instance her entire life

    where my father realized

    that she actually existed.

Its october now, my favorite time of year

    angle of the sun so sublime.

I don’t even have a photo of her

    my memory of her face grows hazy in my mind.

Too many people never find their place

    punch the clock, ground up for fodder.

A choir sings sweetly

    from the other side of the horizon

    I stand tall and take the next step.

K.R Morrison Features 11/4

11/4/19  K.R Morrison  host Elaine

Black & White Photographs by Michelle Kilfeather

When she’s not drumming in two feminist rock bands, K.R. Morrison teaches English Literature and Creative Writing to high school students at Galileo in San Francisco, CA.

Morrison recently featured on Bay Area’s podcast, Storied: San Francisco about being an educator, musician, and writer in a city that’s rapidly changing. She has featured for many curations throughout the Bay Area, most recently Bay Area Generations, Naked Bulb, and Red Light Lit. Apart from reading her poetry at art events in Los Angeles and New Orleans last summer, Morrison featured for curations in New York in June, 2019. Published by Switchback and Quiet Lightning, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal as well as New York’s Gasconade Review selected Morrison as their feature for their most recent publications. She’s currently searching for a publisher for her chapbook, “Cauldrons,” while working on a larger poetry collection entitled, “From Her Wrist.” Once the manuscript is finished, she hopes to have it published by a press that reflects the priorities she voices in her writing.

Grace Grafton Features 10/28

10/28/19 Grace Grafton hosted by Gary

Grace Marie Grafton's most recent book is LENS from Unsolicited Press. It features poems inspired by California artists, 1853-2010. She is the author of six previous collections of poetry. Zero won the 2000 Poetic Matrix Chapbook contest. Visiting Sisters is a collection inspired by the artwork of contemporary women. Other Clues consists of experimental prose poems. A chapbook, Chrysanthemum Oratorio, plays with language and concept. Whimsy, Reticence & Laud, also from Poetic Matrix, explores the sonnet form. Jester, from Hip Pocket Press, features surreal persona poems.

Ms. Grafton taught for many years in the California Poets In The Schools program, for which she was awarded twelve California Arts Council grants. She was named Teacher of the Year by the River Of Words annual student poetry contest co-sponsored by Robert Hass, United States Poet Laureate.

Georgette Howington Feartures 10/21

10/21/2019 Georgette Howington hosted by Bruce

Georgette Howington is a UC Davis California Naturalist of the Mt. Diablo Region.  Her poems are published in Iodine, Sleet, Poeming Pigeons, Sacred Grounds, among others.  Her poems placed at the North American Women’s Music Festival, Ina Coolbrith Poetry Contests and the Benicia Love Poem Contest 2018.  As a horticulturist, her niche is Backyard Habitat and secondary-cavity nesters.  She is a County Coordinator and the Assistant State Program Director for the California Bluebird Recovery Program (www.cbrp.org) and an activist in the conservation community in the SF Bay Area for over 30 years.  Georgette is also a published garden and environmental writer.  

“It Bears Noting the Wolf Moon”

   By Georgette Howington

When the ancient tongue of sage,

wormwood and rosemary drops

below whispers, we can trust them

to tend us.  The dry deep-rooted tangle

of cosmos and sunflowers stretches

the attention offering an unobstructed

view of the blue and vast winter world.

January exhales.

And the Wolf Moon yawns in a white

glow of a frost biting night, while the

garden leaps into the season with a

shiver.  How soft the earth is after

a first rain and how nothing listens

better than a quiet moment when

tendrils of silence leave room for

reverie.

(Sacred Grounds Anthology, 2019)