5/6/19 Jan Dederick features

Jan came out of the poetry closet at Poetry Express just a few years ago. Well, maybe more than a few by now…Since then she has found many voices she had no idea she had. Her work varies from rant to rave, from ode to lyric, from sacred to profane, from humorous to brainiac science-headed.   

Her work is inspired by nature, both human and the rest, healing, science, the Big Questions, the usual suspects. 

She’s earned a number of prizes in local contests, but doesn’t seem too interested in ‘getting her work out there’, i.e. the publishing thing. Or maybe just not organized enough.

She has self- published 2 chapbooks,  Ear to the Rail  and  Between a Rock and a Soft Place, and a full length memoir in poetry, Hammer It Into Horseshoes.  She is incubating another book,The Anatomy Poetry Book.

Jan was for several years a co-host of Poetry Express, and is on the editorial board of Poetalk, journal of the Bay Area Poets’ Coalition.

Cinquaine series:

my breath

the in the out

I sit to notice it

cool coming in, warm going out.

changing

to sit

to watch and wait

how long will this itch last?

nothing lasts forever, nor this.

dharma.

between

the high and low

there lies the middle road

Buddha recommended this route:.

Good luck!

Other People's Poem Fun 4/29

4/29/19 Maverick Night:  host  Gary   Other People's Poems  Guess who wrote it? hosted by 

Bring 2 poems printed out with out your name on them. We will put in a bag or box or hat and other people will draw out, read. Then we will attempt to identify the poet who wrote the poem.  We have been doing this once a year for years and it is great fun.

Judy Wells Features 4/22/19

4/22/19 Judy Wells hosted by Gary

JUDY WELLS was born in San Francisco and raised in Martinez, California.  She received her B.A. from Stanford and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley. Judy has 12 poetry books to her credit. Her latest collection, Dear Phebe: The Dickinson Sisters Go West is a memoir/novella in poetry and prose about her New England-to-California Dickinson ancestors in the 1860s. She was thrilled to have access to real letters her Dickinson ancestors sent each other.

Her eleventh poetry collection, The Glass Ship, completes her trilogy of Irish-themed works, including Everything Irish and Call Home. Other works includeLittle Lulu Talks with Vincent Van Gogh and I Dream of Circus Characters: A Berkeley Chronicle.

Judy taught creative writing, women’s poetry, composition, and literature at various Bay Area colleges, before a career as an academic counselor and faculty member at Saint Mary’s College of California, working with adults returning to school.  Now a full-time poet, she lives with her husband, avant-garde poet Dale Jensen, in Berkeley. Her website is www.judywellspoet.com.  

SUPERMARKET LOVE

Last week at Whole Foods

as I was reaching

into the refrigerated shelves

for the coldest tofu

with the most future

expiration date

a yellow gloved hand

from the other side

laid itself on mine.

I nearly jumped a mile.

"Oh sorry!" said a woman's voice

from the other side.

A man behind me laughed.

This week as I walked by

the same tofu

section

I heard a disembodied voice

from the other side say,

"I needed you,

and you have never

been there

for me once."

“Yes, I have,”

I wanted to protest.

“Last week!”

From I Dream of Circus Characters: A Berkeley Chronicle

Beatitude Press  

4/15/19 Diane L. Moomey features

4/15/19 Diane L. Moomey hosted by Bruce

Diane has lived and wandered around the US and Canada, and now dips her
gardener’s hands in California dirt. A regular reader at San Francisco Bay
Area poetry venues, Diane has published prose and poetry, most recently in
Mezzo Cammin, The Sand Hill Review, California Poetry Quarterly, Caesura
and Red Wheelbarrow, and has been nominated for a Pushcart prize. In
2016, 2017 and 2018, she won prizes and Honorable Mentions in the Sonnet
and Creative Non-Fiction categories of the Soul Making Keats Literary
Contest. Her most recent poetry book, Nothing But Itself, is available now.
To know more, please visit https://www.pw.org/content/diane_moomey
Diane is also a watercolorist and collage artist, an experience that both
seeds and is seeded by, her poetic imagery. To view her artwork, please visit

www.dianeleemoomeyart.com

4/8/19 Reginald Edmonds features

4/8/19  Reginald Edmonds hosted by Jim

Reginald Edmonds is a poet, activist, and educator based out of Richmond, CA. Reggie was a member of the 2018 Berkeley Poetry Slam team and runs both the Rich Oak Alchemy Slam and the Oakland Poetry Slam and wide open mic. In their free time, they enjoy long walks through quiet graveyards, Hennessy with limes, and listening to trap music. They have two self published chapbooks, I’m Too Black For This Shxt (2017) and Sad Boi(2018).  Their poetry is map of intersections that illustrates the complexity of the human experience. Through their work, they hope you will come to understand how much we all contribute to the degradation of humanity, as well as what we can all do to turn this back around.  

All of My Fish Die In the Middle of the Night and I Imagine Myself Alongside Them.

I awaken to twelve glimmering bodies bobbing on the surface. Their eyes 

Are just as soulless in death as they were in life, bulging 

Pupils staring into the void. A 5-year-old probably shouldn't bury 

Pets by himself but nobody really gave a shit about lasting psychological 

Harm in the early 2000’s so I had a toilet bowl funeral 

Alone. Cried over the time spent excitedly pointing at the fish tank 

Like “look at how responsible I can be mama? Don’t that make 

Me a man now?” But haven’t I always tried to flush 

 My boyhood down the drain too early. Wasn’t I, in my foolishness,

 Craving manhood with my morning cereal. The same masculinity that is suffocating

 Me today. I should have learned that all That glitters is not

 Gold… fish. sometimes, they are just pretty Things waiting for a prettier 

 Death. And what's more beautiful than a Broken dream? Than my body 

 Floating alongside twelve nuggets of gold? Mama says that ​gold look good 

 On us black folks. ​ And don’t I look good, Mama? Am I 

 Man enough for you, now? Wrapped up in so much Masculine gold 

 That nobody hears me screaming? That nobody notices me choking? Will anybody

 Even know that I’m dead until the sun rises in the morning?