12/19/2016 WAS: David Erdrich hosted by Bruce
Combine the sensibilities of a stand-up comic
With the observations of a naturalist
Serve it through a saxophone
And you've got a full fool eating falafel--a poet
psychiatric social worker-schizophrenics, alcoholics, own daycare center, juvenile delinquents, senior meals program
Telegraph Avenue airbrush artist/street vendor/organizer
truck driver
gardener
single father
grandfather
12/12/16 WAS: Julia Vinograd hosted by Jim
Julia Vinograd is a Berkeley street poet. She has published over 59 books of poetry and won the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation. She has a B.A. from UC Berkeley and a M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. A Pushcart Prize winner for "The Young Men Who Died of AIDS," she has a Poetry Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Berkeley and is one of the editors of the anthology New American Poetry Vol. I: The Babarians of San Francisco -- Poets from Hell. Her latest chapbook "Look Out" has just been published in October, 2016
12/5/16 WAS: Garrett Murphy hosted by Jan
Garrett Murphy, a political and human nature satirist, lives in Oakland, CA, and has written several chapbooks of poetry and prose.
12/19/2016 WAS: David Erdrich hosted by Bruce
Combine the sensibilities of a stand-up comic
With the observations of a naturalistTelegraph Avenue airbrush artist/street vendor/organizer
grandfather
12/12/16 WAS: Julia Vinograd hosted by Jim
Julia Vinograd is a Berkeley street poet. She has published over 59 books of poetry and won the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation. She has a B.A. from UC Berkeley and a M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. A Pushcart Prize winner for "The Young Men Who Died of AIDS," she has a Poetry Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Berkeley and is one of the editors of the anthology New American Poetry Vol. I: The Babarians of San Francisco -- Poets from Hell. Her latest chapbook "Look Out" has just been published in October, 2016
12/5/16 WAS: Garrett Murphy hosted by Jan
Garrett Murphy, a political and human nature satirist, lives in Oakland, CA, and has written several chapbooks of poetry and prose. THE OPPRESSOR RULE BOOK
ATTENTION:
Rest assured,
We shall begin the reading
ATTENTION:
If you are reading or hearing this
You have no doubt purchased
The
Oppressor Rule Book.
Rest assured,
our aim is to take you through each
commandment
in this manual
to make you achieve
all your effort’s worth
for your investment.
We shall begin the reading
of the commandments,
which are as follows:
Oppressors expect kudos from
the ones they oppress.
Oppressors feel good by
Oppressors pick symbols
Oppressors believe that they
Oppressors believe that only
Oppressors always believe
The oppressor’s favorite hiding
Oppressors never believe that
WARNING:
the ones they oppress.
Oppressors feel good by
making others feel bad.
Oppressors pick symbols
as easy targets
instead of going after
the actual culprits.
Oppressors believe that they
are the salt of existence.
Oppressors believe that only
they
can be right and are shocked
that others can possibly think
for themselves.
Oppressors always believe
that they are perfect
so how dare we oppose them!
The oppressor’s favorite hiding
places are:
Tradition,
Popular opinion,
Authority,
Poll numbers
and
Sound bytes.
Oppressors never believe that
their actions are wrong.
Oppressors never believe
they can ever be wrong.
That is what makes them
oppressors.
WARNING:
Some oppressors believe
they can never be oppressors
simply because the institutions
make that “impossible!”
On the contrary-----
You don’t have to be a race
for
Oppression is action
Oppression
And now the replies from the
NO
(Well,
That concludes this reading of
11/28 Was: Surprise Feature: Lily Fangz!: Plus,"Pool" is the prompt. (prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!)
Wordsmith, Painter, Poet, Speaker, HipHop Artist
See Lily Fangz TED Talk at the address below.
Lily has had roles in “Deliver Us” and “Alfosantory: City of Broken Dreams.”
Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year. hosted by J.D.
11/21 WAS: Lucille Lang Day hosted by Bruce
Lucille Lang Day (http://lucillelangday.com) has published ten poetry collections and chapbooks, most recently Becoming an Ancestor and Dreaming of Sunflowers: Museum Poems, winner of the 2014 Blue Light Poetry Prize. She is also a co-editor of Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California and the author of a children’s book, Chain Letter, and an award-winning memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story. The founder and director of a small press, Scarlet Tanager Books, she worked as a science writer and science educator for many years, including seventeen as director of the Children's Hospital Hall of Health, a museum formerly at the corner of Shattuck and Kittredge in downtown Berkeley. She is of Wampanoag, British, and Swiss/German descent.
COSMOLOGY LESSON
When I was four, my friend Diane
said her cousin Claire thought
she was the center of the universe
and everything existed just for her.
I was stunned. “I thought I was
the center of the universe,” I said,
my lip starting to quiver. “We all
start out thinking that,” Diane, age nine,
who’d taught me how to add and read,
explained as I burst into tears, scared
in a brand new way. Her mother said,
“She’s just a little girl. Don’t make
her cry,” but it was too late. Birds
were already singing for someone else,
maybe themselves. Even my parents
and my toys no longer belonged
only to me. The sun, moon
and stars trembled as they turned
away, leaving me alone, small
as a bit of broken shell on a beach,
helpless before the gathering waves.
11/14/16 WAS: Avotcja hosted by Jim
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.
11/7 Clyde Alway hosted by Jan
Clyde ALWAYS, for the promotion of bliss, writes and recites his own blend of tall tales and clever verses.
10/31/16 WAS: maverick night Formal Night (your poem within a poetry form)
Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year.
10/24 WAS: Prompt: Stacking Rocks
(prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!) Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year.
10/17/2016 Was: David Zeltzer hosted by Bruce
I started writing poems in grade school and I've never stopped. My writing continued but slowed down in grad school, and during my years in Boston working on human/computer interface design. I’ve returned to the Bay Area, writing at full speed, and reading everywhere I can.
While I was living in Eugene, Oregon, I co-founded the editorial collective that published 10 Point 5: A Magazine of the Arts. We published 7 issues from 1976-78, including poetry, images, and interviews with local filmmakers, dancers, Robert Bly, and the novelist Ursula Le Guin. My poems have appeared in Troubador Anthology, The Goodly Company, Mr. Cogito, Echo, 10 Point 5, Uut Poetry and Fur-lined Ghettos. You can get my digital chapbook, Realtime Babies, from iBooks, Barnes & Noble, and amazon -- you can hear me read all the poems in that volume at www.realtimebabies.net. On May 30, 2016, I was the featured poet in the San Francisco Open Mic Poetry Podcast TV Show on youtube, in the segment hotsted by Clara Hsu.
melt the poured titanium
overgrown life has graves
growing normal pilots in paris
i can’t find trees inside us
to reach molybdenum anywhere
or salvage the ancient robot wheatfield violin dances
there’s not enough mustard gas
in the student aircraft wires
to guide us through the stalingrad meteors
i talked to her this week so please rescue us
and start over
tiny little machines listen to my favorite dying hole
the laser found my hot
stellar tape will say my name
and push the wrong button under the green bushes
i like to think i have no friend to meet
someday all my radios will sing stillness
stop the microscope satellite
under small trees
and marry the silent deathbed
gathered in dark mountain gunshots
— san jose
may 2015
10/10 WAS: Jeannette DesBoine invited by Jim, hosted by Bruce
Jeannette DesBoine admits to being “possessed by the love of words and haunted by the spirit of the printed page.” The University of Texas @ El Paso
the BIO poem
I want my bio to read: “I don’t remember!”
I think I don’t remember is better than I don’t care...don’t you?
Seventy silver black-lights ignite the parameters of my time.
Those same silver black-lights have singed the retina of my left eye.
I try to remember why I am wherever I am...
but recall settles just outside my grasp.
So I write my bio in lines I don’t remember...
...don’t you?
© 08/15/16: jd
10/3 WAS: Wulf Losee hosted by Jan
Wulf Losee lives and works in the Bay Area. His poems and short stories have appeared in journals such as Crack the Spine, Forge, FRiGG, Full Moon, The New Guard, The North Coast Literary Review, Oak Square, OxMag, Pennsylvania English, Poetalk Magazine, Westview, Rio Grande Review, and SLAB.
Wulf believes that language is humanity's oldest art, and should be honored for what it is—whether it be a child's first nonsense rhyme or songs sung by hunter-gatherers around camp fires—whether it be the verse of Milton or Big Daddy Kane. For Wulf, open mics are the camp fires where the hunter-gatherers of language celebrate their hunt. Most of our words disappear into nothing, but sometimes they stay with us forever.
EPISTEMOLOGY #6
under the Brugmansia
the sorcery of angel trumpets
descends in waterfalls
I sit, writing longhand
in the patio’s thickening yellow
while an empire of porch lights
enslaves the pollinating moths
9/26 WAS: Prompt: Here Comes The Judge hosted by Liz
(prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!) Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the yearthe year.
9/19 WAS: James Cagney hosted by Liz
Cave Canem fellow James Cagney is a poet and writer from Oakland. He
has appeared as a featured poet and artist in San Francisco,
Vancouver, Chicago and Mumbai. His poems have appeared in Print
Oriented Bastards, Tandem, Eleven Eleven, and Ambush Review. His
current chapbook is entitled Dirty Thunderstorm.
The Florist
after smoking
he comes into the flower shop
approaches the florist, and says:
what flower
cuts thru the bullshit
between people
and says:
despite never saying that I love you
that apologizes
without
that
without saying it
but without
meaning death
and the florist says
the yellow chrysanthemum
9/12 WAS: Catharine Lucas hosted by Jim
Catharine Lucas, a Professor of English, emerita, at San Francisco State University, has work published or forthcoming in Cloudbank 9, Reunion Journal (Dallas Review), Women in the Arts Quarterly, Zone 3, Alembic, Burning Word and Willow Review, among others, and online in Persimmon Tree and Digital Paper. (www.catharinelucas.com) An ex-patriate Southerner, she writes, "After years teaching writers and writing teachers in the Bay Area, I embrace the writer’s life for myself, sustained by Zen practice, medieval singing, my grown son, and a Berkeley garden that mirrors life’s constant loss and renewal. www.catharinelucas.com
9/5 Labor Day, NO PE
BUT: The Bay Area Poets Coalition picnic was.
8/29 WAS: maverick night Favorite Poet and your imitation Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year.
8/22 Prompt: My Body Says…. (prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!)
Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year. hosted by Bruce
8/15 WAS: Jeanne Lupton hosted by Jim
Jeanne Lupton is a poet and writer, montage artist, and student of the dulcimer. She is self-employed doing odd jobs, including reflexology, caregiving, and pet and house sitting, She has featured and read at open mics in the bay area, leads a memoir writing group at the North Berkeley Senior Center, and cohosts poetry readings at Frank Bette Center for the Arts in Alameda. She also hosts the monthly talent show at Strawberry Creek Lodge, where she lives with 149 other elders and her cat.
8/8 WAS: Jack O’Neill hosted by Jim
In the school year '55/'56, I attended kindergartens in Berkeley, Chula Vista, and San Diego, CA. One through eight I attended Catholic schools in Honolulu, HI, Takoma Park, MD, and San Francisco, CA. And three high schools in northern Illinois. At my fourth college, somewhat near graduation and looking ahead, realizing I was more suited to a random sort of life; I shifted into shiftlessness and the rewards thereof, finding a kind of stability there.
A tree
A tree
In the sand
A tree
In the sand
At the beach
A tree
In the sand
At the beach
From a stick
A tree
In the sand
At the beach
From a stick
Touching the water
8/1 WAS: Diane Moomey hosted by Jan
Diane has lived and wandered around the US Canada California
Her poetry and short prose have appeared, or are scheduled to appear this year, in Red Wheelbarrow, Perfume River Poetry Review, The Sand Hill Review, Caesura, Glass: a Journal of Poetry; the Faultzone series, (California Writers’ Club anthologies); No Ordinary Language and Third Thursdays (the Willow Glen Poetry Project anthologies); Not Somewhere Else But Here, Sundress Publications; Northwest Literary Forum, Earth Prayers, (Roberts/Amidon, Harper-Collins, 1991,) Two-Twenty-Four Poetry Quarterly, Blis, Icon, The Love Project (Anabasis), and Writing For Our Lives. One prose piece from this last, “Grandmother, Geothermally Yours,” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Diane has published three books under her own imprint, Day’sEye Press and Studios:
Page on Poets and Writers’ Site: 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
7/25 WAS: Prompt: Through The Mind of Another Creature
(prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!) Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year. hosted by Liz
7/18/16 WAS: Geoff Pond hosted by Bruce
Geoffrey Pond (one of those in above photo---- which one?) is an actor, musician, singer and has been artistic director for Berkeley's Subterranean Shakespeare Theatre since 1997. He will be presenting for Poetry Express an excerpt of two pieces from SubShakes next show San Francisco: views of The City - written by Jack Kerouac, H.L Mencken, Jack London, Mark Twain and current Bay Area writer Gary Kamiya, directed by Robert Ernst. Over the past 35 years he has been involved in The Bay Area's arts scene. First as a producer of Punk Rock shows featuring bands Public Image, The Dead Kennedy's, and The Go-Go's among others. He then became a videographer with Climate Theatre's Theatre Video Service to document the SF arts scene. He has been a drummer and singer in bands The Sunz of Alien Tecknowlogy, The Serfs and Sub Shakes house band The Rude Mechanicals, producing two critically acclaimed CDs Folkspeare and Shakespeare's Greatest Hits. Some of his favorite roles as an actor have been Claudius, Caliban, and Falstaff from Shakespeare and Shelly Levine in Glengarry Glen Ross by David Memet. San Francisco: views of The City will run in repertory with a solo show on the life, letters and poetry of Emily Dickinson performed by Chetana Karel-Michaan as part of Subterranean Shakespeare presents The Great Writers series in 2017 at a theater in San Francisco tba. Subterranean Shakespeare Theatre Presents
7/11/16 WAS: Gary Turchin hosted by Jim
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 llustrated 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.
7/4/16 WAS: Happy 4th, no PE
6/27 Was: Prompt: Books When Six (prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!)
Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year hosted by Liz
6/20 WAS: Stan Morner hosted by Jan
After three years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, Stan Morner spent
a career as a high school English teacher, most of it in the Mt. Diablo
Unified School District. Mr. Morner is a vice president in The Ina
Coolbrith Circle, a literary organization founded by California’s
first Poet Laureate, Ina Coolbrith. He has been a swimmer with the
Walnut Creek Masters Swim Team for nearly 30 years and is a member of
the Lafayette Orinda Presbyterian Church. Stan Morner was born in 1934
in Wisconsin and came to California when he was nine months old because
his father had been given a contract as an actor/singer with MGM. His
father, AKA Dennis Morgan, made 52 films in Hollywood as a leading man.
Stan Morner has published poetry, fiction, and essays in a number of
periodicals, including _California English, Kansas Magazine, Anais, an
Iyternational Journal, Collages and Bricolages, and The San Jose Mercury
News, Bulletin of the California State Library Foundation. _Mr. Morner
is currently working on a book concerning his family’s experiences inHollywood.
6/13 WAS: Harold Dull hosted by Jim
in 1957 Harold joined the poets meeting regularly with Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan
in the San Francisco Renaissance. Many books and readings later,
Harold found himself in another scene, the warm pool at Harbin Hot Springs
where he created the world’s first aquatic bodywork, Watsu,
which he has taught in thirty countries. Harold,
who has been dry-docked in Berkeley since the fire took out Harbin,
will read poems from both of those lives.
Find Watsu at watsu.com and Harold at watsu.com/harold
Poem for Calias
Your friends may think it odd
that a father and daughter's ages are so far apart
but your 17 is a perfect mirror to my 71.
Though next year
yours is just one quarter of mine.
Relationships change.
But from the moment before you were born
when you whispered the name Calias in my ear
ours has been constant
as constant as the flow I see in your dance
and feel in your Watsu
and hear your bow draw out of your cello's strings.
The same flow flies on the wings and fins
of the fairies and mermaids you paint for me.
The more the earth changes under our feet
the closer we are.
But the farther apart we are in age
the more of the changes to come you may have to face alone.
There is not much I can do about that.
Now is just this moment
sitting on the couch together tonight
the brighter and blacker the fire and smoke
in Herzog's Doomsday
the closer we draw together
no matter how far apart we come from
nor how far apart we will be going away from.
5/30 WAS: maverick night Workshop your poem (bring copies, read it, hear non-judgmental comment) Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year.
5/23 WAS: Prompt: How can you be on a stage when you are going through one?
(prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!) Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year hosted by Liz
5/16 Tom Odegard hosted by Bruce
Tom Odegard (aka Tom/Ms.G) arrived in the Bay Area from Portland when he was eight, in 1948. When he was 12 he set about writing a science book but soon discovered that he only knew enough to write the introduction at
which point he switched to poetry. Since then he’s lived in many places in multiple states of mind, and written too many pages of words some of which he’s read at venues around the Bay or put into chapbooks.
He’s published two books: Friends Well Met – a collection of poems - and Past Lives Led – a poetic memoir both from Beatitude Press in Berkeley.
He shuttles back and forth between Friday Harbor Washington and Oakland spending four months in California where he reads and writes and polishes his nest eggs. His poems have been published in a number of collections
including, Spasso’s, Sacred Grounds, and Living in the Land of the Dead a production of Faithful Fools.
In 2005 he discovered he was intersex and came out as a “Two Spirit”, Tom/Ms.G. He takes great delight in sharing his double gendered points of view with anyone who’ll listen. Mark States favorably compared his poetry to e.e. cummings, to which accolade he remarked, “Yikes!”
Ashes in the closet...
In the machinery there are whispers
evil genies promoting their whims
as well promoters of average happiness.
Fie upon them... their makers and
their "help" that is no help at all.
In my nephew's closet my father's ashes
roast in the summer and freeze in the winter
yet they remain silent, inactive, content.
None of us fear him, nor his wife's remains
scattered high up on mossy limestone
beneath old old firs overlooking our pond.
Meanwhile technology builds peremptory ghosts
into our machines to dazzle, brainwash and
ultimately deceive us into giving up our livings,
our contact with each other and the world
as it comes tumbling down.
5/9/16 WAS: Elizabeth Alford
Elizabeth Alford has always had an on-again-off-again relationship with poetry; but in the wake of her graduation from CSU East Bay, she recently announced that they are now going steady (much to everyone’s relief). She lives in Hayward, CA with her loving fiancé, mother, and two stupid dogs. Her favorite things include sushi, loud music on long drives, staring at the stars, and poetry. Her work has appeared in the student literary magazine Occam’s Razor (once as third place winner in the Donald Markos Poetry Contest of 2014); and also online at Poetry Super Highway, Haikuniverse, Quatrain.fish, and the blogs of Silver Birch Press and Creative Talents Unleashed.
https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethAlfordPoetry/
"... Poetry is a verb, not a noun." - Jane Hirshfield
Poetry is a Verb
by Elizabeth Alford
When canyons rise to meet the cliffs
and the rivers all run dry;
when the air we need is hard to breathe,
come poetry with me.
For the sea itself is drowning
and the deserts cry for rain.
The bread we eat has tainted grain;
come poetry with me.
While the roads we take are crumbling
and our sidewalks fall apart,
a drifting leaf is no sign of peace;
come poetry with me.
When ancient trees are paved away,
stillbirthing barren land,
and the life we know has given way
once Fate has dealt our hand;
we’ll watch the stars above implode,
believing we’re still free.
When the world is gone, you’ll understand.
Come poetry with me.
5/2/16 WAS: Allegra Silberstein hosted by Jan
Allegra Silberstein grew up on a farm in Wisconsin but has lived in California since 1963. Her love of poetry began as a child when her mother would recite poems as she worked. In addition to three chapbooks of poetry, she has over a hundred publications and a growing number on-line. In March of 2010, Allegra became the first Poet Laureate for the city of Davis. Her new book of poems is entitled West of Angels. She is a member of Pamela Trokanski’s Third Stage Dance Company.
4/25/16 WAS: Prompt Night Sophomore Year hosted by Liz
(prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!) Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year.
4/18/16 WAS: Maw Shein Win hosted by Bruce
Maw Shein Win’s writing has appeared in various journals including Cimarron Review, Ping-Pong, Eleven Eleven, vitriol, and most recently in the anthology Cross-Strokes: Poetry between Los Angeles and San Francisco (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions). She is a poetry editor for Rivet and was an Artist In Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts. Win often collaborates with visual artists and musicians, and her collaborative book with paintings by Mark Dutcher, Ruins of a glittering palace, was published by SPA/Commonwealth Projects. Along with composer, Amanda Chaudhary, she is part of musical duo Pitta of the Mind which combines poetry with abstract electronic music. She is a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto.
Find her at http://www.amandachaudhary.com/potm
4/11/16 WAS: Claudette Sigg hosted by Jim
Having reached the ancient age of 81, I could reduce my existence to the statement, “I was born, I lived a while, and, no doubt, I shall die”—with far more years behind me than what I still might accumulate in the future. I could reduce my childhood to my mother’s lament about how my jeweler father could put pearls around her neck in the 1930s but scrounged week-old string beans from the grocer’s discard bin so his family could eat. Being a jeweler’s daughter back in those days meant not a luxurious existence of entitlement but working my way through college with secretarial skills that I discarded once I earned my teaching credential. Being a young woman then meant not knowing how to hold a hammer or to drive a truck or to manage a bank account: these were things that females were genetically unsuited to do—according to the men in my family. Becoming a feminist meant becoming me, myself, and I with all the beauty marks and warts that a free woman might possess. Being me has included many different existences: a wife for a while but never a mother, a dancer with the wrong body type but balletic inspirations, and now a docent at the Oakland Museum of California sharing my view of California ecology, history and art with both children and adults. And through all these roles I’ve played, I’ve been the poet whose work has appeared in such publications as Natural Bridge, the Atlanta Review, The Comstock Review, Common Ground Review, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Colere, Pinyon, Trajectory, and Earth’s Daughters, as well as in the anthologies, Sierra Songs & Descants, Rough Places Plain: Poems of the Mountains, 75 Poems on Retirement, and Cradle Song.
4/4/16 WAS: Poetry Express' 14th Aniversary ! the hosts read.
3/28/16 WAS: The Poets of Vol 1 of our PoetryExpressed Magazine co-featured, reading their published poems.
3/21/16 WAS: A Equinox Reading by Susan Terris and CB Follett hosted by Bruce
Susan Terris’ most recent book is Ghost of Yesterday: New & Selected Poems (Marsh Hawk Press, (2013). She is the author of 6 books of poetry, 15 chapbooks, and 3 artist's books. Journal publications include The Southern Review, Denver Quarterly, Field , The Journal, North American Review, and Ploughshares. A poem of hers from Field appeared in Pushcart Prize XXXI. She's editor of Spillway Magazine. Her chapbook Memos has just been published by Omnidawn. A poem from this book, which first appeared in the Denver Quarterly—"Memo to the Former Child Prodigy" — was selected by Sherman Alexie to be published in Best American Poetry 2015. http://www.susanterris.com
CB Follett won the 2001 National Poetry Book Award for her Collection of poems "At the Turning of the Light" published by Salmon Run Press. She is the Poet Laureate of Marin County, CA (2010 to 2012). Follett is the publisher and owner of Arctos Press and with Susan Terris was editor of RUNES, A Review of Poetry, an annual themed anthology, published until 2008.
CB Follett has had poems published by Calyx, Green Fuse, Peregrine, Ploughshares, The Cumberland Review, Rain City Review, Ambit (England), The MacGuffin, Birmingham Poetry Review, Black Bear Review, New Letters Review, Psychological Perspectives, Without Halos, The Iowa Woman, Heaven Bone, Americas Review, The Taos Review, among others. She has been printed in several anthologies, She has won the Portland Poetry Festival Competition, The New Press Literary Quarterly Prize, the Northwoods Journal National Poetry competition and a grant from the Marin Arts Council. Her poems have been awarded other contest prizes, including Third in the Billee Murray Denny, Honorable Mentions in the New Letters Prize, second, and third, in the Ann Stanford Prize, the National Poetry Book Award, the Michael W. Gearhart Memorial Prize Sun Dog, the Southeast Review, Black Bear Review Poetry Prize and many others. She has been runner up for the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award, the George Bogin Award and finalist in the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, all from Poetry Society of America. Six of her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she has been nominated three times as an individual poet. Besides various chapbooks, and handmade books of her poems, she has five collections of poetry. The latest is Houses (Tebot Bach, 2011).
3/14/16 WAS: Julia Vinograd hosted by Jim
Julia Vinograd is a Berkeley street poet. She has published over 59 books of poetry and won the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation. She has a B.A. from UC Berkeley and a M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. A Pushcart Prize winner for "The Young Men Who Died of AIDS," she has a Poetry Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Berkeley and is one of the editors of the anthology New American Poetry Vol. I: The Babarians of San Francisco -- Poets from Hell.
3/7/16 WAS: Stephanie Manning hosted by Jan
Stephanie Manning has been writing poetry for 25 years and a well-known face at Bay Area open mikes since 2000. The goal of her work is humility via observations in nature, in politics and the overwhelming consequences of time moving forward. Her work focuses on revolutions that begin within one's self as they take on more global concerns. With unfolding consciousness, she sees herself in the natural phenomena that surround her. Of primary concern is educating people about the 425 ancient native shellmounds that surround S.F.Bay and helping the Ohlone people reclaim their heritage. This poet holds many jobs in the effort to survive but, as she says, her one goal in life is to write one really good poem. Come hear her endeavor to reach these goals and more.
2/29 WAS: Maverick night Other People’s Poems (your work is blind read and we guess who wrote it)
Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year.
IMPORTANT, PLEASE BRING COPIES OF 2 POEMS WITHOUT YOUR NAME ON THEM.
We will put your work in a hat to be drawn, read by others, and then we will guess. . hosted by Liz
2/22 WAS: Prompt: Full Bore
(prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!) Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year.
2/15/16 WAS: George Q Johnson, Jr hosted by Bruce
"George Q. Johnson Jr. was born in Stockton, CA and educated in local schools. He graduated Cal State University at Sacramento, with a degree in Humanities. Writing poetry since his youth, he was influenced by A E Housman, early on. He discovered the "Beats" and never looked back. George lives in Berkeley with wife Eileen, daughter Stacy and the Cats
2/8/16 WAS: Naomi Ruth Lowinsky hosted by Jim
You don’t have to be a race
to be an oppressor.
You don’t have to be a gender
to be an oppressor.
You don’t have to be an economic state
to be an oppressor.
Don’t have to be a hierarchy
to be an oppressor.
Don’t have to be a religion
to be an oppressor.
Or ideology, size, nationality
or any other demo
to be an oppressor.
You just have to oppress
to be an oppressor.
And not even for twenty-four hours
to be an oppressor.
And you sure can’t be
BORN
an oppressor.
for
Oppression is action
plus intention
not accident of birth.
Oppression
is
Oppression
is
Oppression
is
Oppression.
Therefore,
you
too
can
be
an
oppressor.
And now the replies from the
makers and readers of this book.
What do you have to say?
NO
POPPYCOCK
PREPOSTEROUS
ERRONEOUS
I DO IT BECAUSE I LOVE YOU
BALONEY
I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG
DEAL WITH IT
IT’S YOUR FAULT
YOUR PROBLEM
GET WITH THE PROGRAM
GO WITH THE FLOW
BECAUSE I SAID SO
RESPECT YOUR ELDERS
YOU’RE JUST JEALOUS
IT’S ALL IN YOUR MIND
YOU’LL THANK ME FOR IT SOMEDAY
OBEY AUTHORITY
MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY
DO AS I SAY
NEVER MIND WHAT I DO
IT’S YOUR DESTINY
IT’S GENETIC
IN-YOUR-FACE
YOU JUST MADE IT UP
MADE IT UP
made it up…
(Well,
what can you expect from a perpetrator
but a typical oppressor line?)
That concludes this reading of
the Oppressor Rule Book.
See NEVER for more options.
Garrett Murphy
© 1995 Garrett Murphy
11/28 Was: Surprise Feature: Lily Fangz!: Plus,"Pool" is the prompt. (prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!)
Wordsmith, Painter, Poet, Speaker, HipHop Artist
See Lily Fangz TED Talk at the address below.
Lily has had roles in “Deliver Us” and “Alfosantory: City of Broken Dreams.”
Also see her facebook site at Lileana Fangz
For more info see http://www.planetfangz.org/
Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year. hosted by J.D.
11/21 WAS: Lucille Lang Day hosted by Bruce
Lucille Lang Day (http://lucillelangday.com) has published ten poetry collections and chapbooks, most recently Becoming an Ancestor and Dreaming of Sunflowers: Museum Poems, winner of the 2014 Blue Light Poetry Prize. She is also a co-editor of Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California and the author of a children’s book, Chain Letter, and an award-winning memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story. The founder and director of a small press, Scarlet Tanager Books, she worked as a science writer and science educator for many years, including seventeen as director of the Children's Hospital Hall of Health, a museum formerly at the corner of Shattuck and Kittredge in downtown Berkeley. She is of Wampanoag, British, and Swiss/German descent.
COSMOLOGY LESSON
When I was four, my friend Diane
said her cousin Claire thought
she was the center of the universe
and everything existed just for her.
I was stunned. “I thought I was
the center of the universe,” I said,
my lip starting to quiver. “We all
start out thinking that,” Diane, age nine,
who’d taught me how to add and read,
explained as I burst into tears, scared
in a brand new way. Her mother said,
“She’s just a little girl. Don’t make
her cry,” but it was too late. Birds
were already singing for someone else,
maybe themselves. Even my parents
and my toys no longer belonged
only to me. The sun, moon
and stars trembled as they turned
away, leaving me alone, small
as a bit of broken shell on a beach,
helpless before the gathering waves.
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.
11/7 Clyde Alway hosted by Jan
10/31/16 WAS: maverick night Formal Night (your poem within a poetry form) 
Clyde ALWAYS, for the promotion of bliss, writes and recites his own blend of tall tales and clever verses.
Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year.
10/24 WAS: Prompt: Stacking Rocks
(prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!) Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year.
10/17/2016 Was: David Zeltzer hosted by Bruce
I started writing poems in grade school and I've never stopped. My writing continued but slowed down in grad school, and during my years in Boston working on human/computer interface design. I’ve returned to the Bay Area, writing at full speed, and reading everywhere I can.
While I was living in Eugene, Oregon, I co-founded the editorial collective that published 10 Point 5: A Magazine of the Arts. We published 7 issues from 1976-78, including poetry, images, and interviews with local filmmakers, dancers, Robert Bly, and the novelist Ursula Le Guin. My poems have appeared in Troubador Anthology, The Goodly Company, Mr. Cogito, Echo, 10 Point 5, Uut Poetry and Fur-lined Ghettos. You can get my digital chapbook, Realtime Babies, from iBooks, Barnes & Noble, and amazon -- you can hear me read all the poems in that volume at www.realtimebabies.net. On May 30, 2016, I was the featured poet in the San Francisco Open Mic Poetry Podcast TV Show on youtube, in the segment hotsted by Clara Hsu.
melt the poured titanium
overgrown life has graves
growing normal pilots in paris
i can’t find trees inside us
to reach molybdenum anywhere
or salvage the ancient robot wheatfield violin dances
there’s not enough mustard gas
in the student aircraft wires
to guide us through the stalingrad meteors
i talked to her this week so please rescue us
and start over
tiny little machines listen to my favorite dying hole
the laser found my hot
stellar tape will say my name
and push the wrong button under the green bushes
i like to think i have no friend to meet
someday all my radios will sing stillness
stop the microscope satellite
under small trees
and marry the silent deathbed
gathered in dark mountain gunshots
— san jose
may 2015
Jeannette DesBoine admits to being “possessed by the love of words and haunted by the spirit of the printed page.” The University of Texas @ El Paso
the BIO poem
I want my bio to read: “I don’t remember!”
I think I don’t remember is better than I don’t care...don’t you?
Seventy silver black-lights ignite the parameters of my time.
Those same silver black-lights have singed the retina of my left eye.
I try to remember why I am wherever I am...
but recall settles just outside my grasp.
So I write my bio in lines I don’t remember...
I think I don’t remember is better than I don’t care
...don’t you?
© 08/15/16: jd
10/3 WAS: Wulf Losee hosted by Jan
Wulf Losee lives and works in the Bay Area. His poems and short stories have appeared in journals such as Crack the Spine, Forge, FRiGG, Full Moon, The New Guard, The North Coast Literary Review, Oak Square, OxMag, Pennsylvania English, Poetalk Magazine, Westview, Rio Grande Review, and SLAB.
Wulf believes that language is humanity's oldest art, and should be honored for what it is—whether it be a child's first nonsense rhyme or songs sung by hunter-gatherers around camp fires—whether it be the verse of Milton or Big Daddy Kane. For Wulf, open mics are the camp fires where the hunter-gatherers of language celebrate their hunt. Most of our words disappear into nothing, but sometimes they stay with us forever.
EPISTEMOLOGY #6
under the Brugmansia
the sorcery of angel trumpets
descends in waterfalls
I sit, writing longhand
in the patio’s thickening yellow
while an empire of porch lights
enslaves the pollinating moths
9/26 WAS: Prompt: Here Comes The Judge hosted by Liz
(prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!) Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the yearthe year.
9/19 WAS: James Cagney hosted by Liz
Cave Canem fellow James Cagney is a poet and writer from Oakland. He
has appeared as a featured poet and artist in San Francisco,
Vancouver, Chicago and Mumbai. His poems have appeared in Print
Oriented Bastards, Tandem, Eleven Eleven, and Ambush Review. His
current chapbook is entitled Dirty Thunderstorm.
he comes into the flower shop
approaches the florist, and says:
what flower
cuts thru the bullshit
between people
and says:
has appeared as a featured poet and artist in San Francisco,
Vancouver, Chicago and Mumbai. His poems have appeared in Print
Oriented Bastards, Tandem, Eleven Eleven, and Ambush Review. His
current chapbook is entitled Dirty Thunderstorm.
The Florist
james cagney
after smoking
whatever it was
down to its last flake
of ash
he comes into the flower shop
approaches the florist, and says:
what flower
cuts thru the bullshit
between people
and says:
I don't hate you
despite never saying that I love you
that apologizes
without
despite never saying that I love you
that apologizes
without
being sorry
that
that
means love
without saying it
without saying it
and says love
but without
but without
meaning death
and the florist says
the yellow chrysanthemum
and the florist says
the yellow chrysanthemum
9/12 WAS: Catharine Lucas hosted by Jim
Catharine Lucas, a Professor of English, emerita, at San Francisco State University, has work published or forthcoming in Cloudbank 9, Reunion Journal (Dallas Review), Women in the Arts Quarterly, Zone 3, Alembic, Burning Word and Willow Review, among others, and online in Persimmon Tree and Digital Paper. (www.catharinelucas.com) An ex-patriate Southerner, she writes, "After years teaching writers and writing teachers in the Bay Area, I embrace the writer’s life for myself, sustained by Zen practice, medieval singing, my grown son, and a Berkeley garden that mirrors life’s constant loss and renewal. www.catharinelucas.com
9/5 Labor Day, NO PE
BUT: The Bay Area Poets Coalition picnic was.
8/29 WAS: maverick night Favorite Poet and your imitation Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year.
8/22 Prompt: My Body Says…. (prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!)
Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year. hosted by Bruce
8/15 WAS: Jeanne Lupton hosted by Jim
Jeanne Lupton is a poet and writer, montage artist, and student of the dulcimer. She is self-employed doing odd jobs, including reflexology, caregiving, and pet and house sitting, She has featured and read at open mics in the bay area, leads a memoir writing group at the North Berkeley Senior Center, and cohosts poetry readings at Frank Bette Center for the Arts in Alameda. She also hosts the monthly talent show at Strawberry Creek Lodge, where she lives with 149 other elders and her cat.
Jeanne Lupton is a poet and writer, montage artist, and student of the dulcimer. She is self-employed doing odd jobs, including reflexology, caregiving, and pet and house sitting, She has featured and read at open mics in the bay area, leads a memoir writing group at the North Berkeley Senior Center, and cohosts poetry readings at Frank Bette Center for the Arts in Alameda. She also hosts the monthly talent show at Strawberry Creek Lodge, where she lives with 149 other elders and her cat.
8/8 WAS: Jack O’Neill hosted by Jim
In the school year '55/'56, I attended kindergartens in Berkeley, Chula Vista, and San Diego, CA. One through eight I attended Catholic schools in Honolulu, HI, Takoma Park, MD, and San Francisco, CA. And three high schools in northern Illinois. At my fourth college, somewhat near graduation and looking ahead, realizing I was more suited to a random sort of life; I shifted into shiftlessness and the rewards thereof, finding a kind of stability there.
A treeA treeIn the sandA treeIn the sandAt the beachA treeIn the sandAt the beachFrom a stickA treeIn the sandAt the beachFrom a stick
Touching the water
8/1 WAS: Diane Moomey hosted by Jan
Diane has lived and wandered around the US Canada California
Her poetry and short prose have appeared, or are scheduled to appear this year, in Red Wheelbarrow, Perfume River Poetry Review, The Sand Hill Review, Caesura, Glass: a Journal of Poetry; the Faultzone series, (California Writers’ Club anthologies); No Ordinary Language and Third Thursdays (the Willow Glen Poetry Project anthologies); Not Somewhere Else But Here, Sundress Publications; Northwest Literary Forum, Earth Prayers, (Roberts/Amidon, Harper-Collins, 1991,) Two-Twenty-Four Poetry Quarterly, Blis, Icon, The Love Project (Anabasis), and Writing For Our Lives. One prose piece from this last, “Grandmother, Geothermally Yours,” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Diane has published three books under her own imprint, Day’sEye Press and Studios:
Figure in a Landscape, a ten-year collection of poems, in 2015
Silk Road, Iron Bird, a long poem of pilgrimage, 2011
. . . Place . . . , a collection of prose and poetry, 2010
Page on Poets and Writers’ Site: 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
7/25 WAS: Prompt: Through The Mind of Another Creature
(prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!) Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year. hosted by Liz
7/18/16 WAS: Geoff Pond hosted by Bruce
Geoffrey Pond (one of those in above photo---- which one?) is an actor, musician, singer and has been artistic director for Berkeley's Subterranean Shakespeare Theatre since 1997. He will be presenting for Poetry Express an excerpt of two pieces from SubShakes next show San Francisco: views of The City - written by Jack Kerouac, H.L Mencken, Jack London, Mark Twain and current Bay Area writer Gary Kamiya, directed by Robert Ernst. Over the past 35 years he has been involved in The Bay Area's arts scene. First as a producer of Punk Rock shows featuring bands Public Image, The Dead Kennedy's, and The Go-Go's among others. He then became a videographer with Climate Theatre's Theatre Video Service to document the SF arts scene. He has been a drummer and singer in bands The Sunz of Alien Tecknowlogy, The Serfs and Sub Shakes house band The Rude Mechanicals, producing two critically acclaimed CDs Folkspeare and Shakespeare's Greatest Hits. Some of his favorite roles as an actor have been Claudius, Caliban, and Falstaff from Shakespeare and Shelly Levine in Glengarry Glen Ross by David Memet. San Francisco: views of The City will run in repertory with a solo show on the life, letters and poetry of Emily Dickinson performed by Chetana Karel-Michaan as part of Subterranean Shakespeare presents The Great Writers series in 2017 at a theater in San Francisco tba. Subterranean Shakespeare Theatre Presents
7/11/16 WAS: Gary Turchin hosted by Jim
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 llustrated 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.
7/4/16 WAS: Happy 4th, no PE
6/27 Was: Prompt: Books When Six (prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!)
Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year hosted by Liz
6/20 WAS: Stan Morner hosted by Jan
After three years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, Stan Morner spent
a career as a high school English teacher, most of it in the Mt. Diablo
Unified School District. Mr. Morner is a vice president in The Ina
Coolbrith Circle, a literary organization founded by California’s
first Poet Laureate, Ina Coolbrith. He has been a swimmer with the
Walnut Creek Masters Swim Team for nearly 30 years and is a member of
the Lafayette Orinda Presbyterian Church. Stan Morner was born in 1934
in Wisconsin and came to California when he was nine months old because
his father had been given a contract as an actor/singer with MGM. His
father, AKA Dennis Morgan, made 52 films in Hollywood as a leading man.
Stan Morner has published poetry, fiction, and essays in a number of
periodicals, including _California English, Kansas Magazine, Anais, an
Iyternational Journal, Collages and Bricolages, and The San Jose Mercury
News, Bulletin of the California State Library Foundation. _Mr. Morner
is currently working on a book concerning his family’s experiences inHollywood.
6/13 WAS: Harold Dull hosted by Jim
Poem for Calias
in 1957 Harold joined the poets meeting regularly with Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan
in the San Francisco Renaissance. Many books and readings later,
Harold found himself in another scene, the warm pool at Harbin Hot Springs
where he created the world’s first aquatic bodywork, Watsu,
which he has taught in thirty countries. Harold,
who has been dry-docked in Berkeley since the fire took out Harbin,
will read poems from both of those lives.
Find Watsu at watsu.com and Harold at watsu.com/harold
Poem for Calias
Your friends may think it odd
that a father and daughter's ages are so far apart
but your 17 is a perfect mirror to my 71.
Though next year
yours is just one quarter of mine.
Relationships change.
But from the moment before you were born
when you whispered the name Calias in my ear
ours has been constant
as constant as the flow I see in your dance
and feel in your Watsu
and hear your bow draw out of your cello's strings.
The same flow flies on the wings and fins
of the fairies and mermaids you paint for me.
The more the earth changes under our feet
the closer we are.
But the farther apart we are in age
the more of the changes to come you may have to face alone.
There is not much I can do about that.
Now is just this moment
sitting on the couch together tonight
the brighter and blacker the fire and smoke
in Herzog's Doomsday
the closer we draw together
no matter how far apart we come from
nor how far apart we will be going away from.
5/30 WAS: maverick night Workshop your poem (bring copies, read it, hear non-judgmental comment) Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year.
5/23 WAS: Prompt: How can you be on a stage when you are going through one?
(prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!) Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year hosted by Liz
(prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!) Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year hosted by Liz
5/16 Tom Odegard hosted by Bruce
Tom Odegard (aka Tom/Ms.G) arrived in the Bay Area from Portland when he was eight, in 1948. When he was 12 he set about writing a science book but soon discovered that he only knew enough to write the introduction at
which point he switched to poetry. Since then he’s lived in many places in multiple states of mind, and written too many pages of words some of which he’s read at venues around the Bay or put into chapbooks.
He’s published two books: Friends Well Met – a collection of poems - and Past Lives Led – a poetic memoir both from Beatitude Press in Berkeley.
He shuttles back and forth between Friday Harbor Washington and Oakland spending four months in California where he reads and writes and polishes his nest eggs. His poems have been published in a number of collections
including, Spasso’s, Sacred Grounds, and Living in the Land of the Dead a production of Faithful Fools.
In 2005 he discovered he was intersex and came out as a “Two Spirit”, Tom/Ms.G. He takes great delight in sharing his double gendered points of view with anyone who’ll listen. Mark States favorably compared his poetry to e.e. cummings, to which accolade he remarked, “Yikes!”
He shuttles back and forth between Friday Harbor Washington and Oakland spending four months in California where he reads and writes and polishes his nest eggs. His poems have been published in a number of collections
including, Spasso’s, Sacred Grounds, and Living in the Land of the Dead a production of Faithful Fools.
In 2005 he discovered he was intersex and came out as a “Two Spirit”, Tom/Ms.G. He takes great delight in sharing his double gendered points of view with anyone who’ll listen. Mark States favorably compared his poetry to e.e. cummings, to which accolade he remarked, “Yikes!”
Ashes in the closet...
In the machinery there are whispers
evil genies promoting their whims
as well promoters of average happiness.
Fie upon them... their makers and
their "help" that is no help at all.
In my nephew's closet my father's ashes
roast in the summer and freeze in the winter
yet they remain silent, inactive, content.
None of us fear him, nor his wife's remains
scattered high up on mossy limestone
beneath old old firs overlooking our pond.
Meanwhile technology builds peremptory ghosts
into our machines to dazzle, brainwash and
ultimately deceive us into giving up our livings,
our contact with each other and the world
as it comes tumbling down.
5/9/16 WAS: Elizabeth Alford
Elizabeth Alford has always had an on-again-off-again relationship with poetry; but in the wake of her graduation from CSU East Bay, she recently announced that they are now going steady (much to everyone’s relief). She lives in Hayward, CA with her loving fiancé, mother, and two stupid dogs. Her favorite things include sushi, loud music on long drives, staring at the stars, and poetry. Her work has appeared in the student literary magazine Occam’s Razor (once as third place winner in the Donald Markos Poetry Contest of 2014); and also online at Poetry Super Highway, Haikuniverse, Quatrain.fish, and the blogs of Silver Birch Press and Creative Talents Unleashed.
https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethAlfordPoetry/
"... Poetry is a verb, not a noun." - Jane Hirshfield
Poetry is a Verb
by Elizabeth Alford
When canyons rise to meet the cliffs
and the rivers all run dry;
when the air we need is hard to breathe,
come poetry with me.
For the sea itself is drowning
and the deserts cry for rain.
The bread we eat has tainted grain;
come poetry with me.
While the roads we take are crumbling
and our sidewalks fall apart,
a drifting leaf is no sign of peace;
come poetry with me.
When ancient trees are paved away,
stillbirthing barren land,
and the life we know has given way
once Fate has dealt our hand;
we’ll watch the stars above implode,
believing we’re still free.
When the world is gone, you’ll understand.
Come poetry with me.
5/2/16 WAS: Allegra Silberstein hosted by Jan
Allegra Silberstein grew up on a farm in Wisconsin but has lived in California since 1963. Her love of poetry began as a child when her mother would recite poems as she worked. In addition to three chapbooks of poetry, she has over a hundred publications and a growing number on-line. In March of 2010, Allegra became the first Poet Laureate for the city of Davis. Her new book of poems is entitled West of Angels. She is a member of Pamela Trokanski’s Third Stage Dance Company.
4/25/16 WAS: Prompt Night Sophomore Year hosted by Liz
(prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!) Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year.
4/18/16 WAS: Maw Shein Win hosted by Bruce
Maw Shein Win’s writing has appeared in various journals including Cimarron Review, Ping-Pong, Eleven Eleven, vitriol, and most recently in the anthology Cross-Strokes: Poetry between Los Angeles and San Francisco (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions). She is a poetry editor for Rivet and was an Artist In Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts. Win often collaborates with visual artists and musicians, and her collaborative book with paintings by Mark Dutcher, Ruins of a glittering palace, was published by SPA/Commonwealth Projects. Along with composer, Amanda Chaudhary, she is part of musical duo Pitta of the Mind which combines poetry with abstract electronic music. She is a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto.
Find her at http://www.amandachaudhary.com/potm
4/11/16 WAS: Claudette Sigg hosted by Jim
Having reached the ancient age of 81, I could reduce my existence to the statement, “I was born, I lived a while, and, no doubt, I shall die”—with far more years behind me than what I still might accumulate in the future. I could reduce my childhood to my mother’s lament about how my jeweler father could put pearls around her neck in the 1930s but scrounged week-old string beans from the grocer’s discard bin so his family could eat. Being a jeweler’s daughter back in those days meant not a luxurious existence of entitlement but working my way through college with secretarial skills that I discarded once I earned my teaching credential. Being a young woman then meant not knowing how to hold a hammer or to drive a truck or to manage a bank account: these were things that females were genetically unsuited to do—according to the men in my family. Becoming a feminist meant becoming me, myself, and I with all the beauty marks and warts that a free woman might possess. Being me has included many different existences: a wife for a while but never a mother, a dancer with the wrong body type but balletic inspirations, and now a docent at the Oakland Museum of California sharing my view of California ecology, history and art with both children and adults. And through all these roles I’ve played, I’ve been the poet whose work has appeared in such publications as Natural Bridge, the Atlanta Review, The Comstock Review, Common Ground Review, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Colere, Pinyon, Trajectory, and Earth’s Daughters, as well as in the anthologies, Sierra Songs & Descants, Rough Places Plain: Poems of the Mountains, 75 Poems on Retirement, and Cradle Song.
4/4/16 WAS: Poetry Express' 14th Aniversary ! the hosts read.
3/28/16 WAS: The Poets of Vol 1 of our PoetryExpressed Magazine co-featured, reading their published poems.
3/21/16 WAS: A Equinox Reading by Susan Terris and CB Follett hosted by Bruce
Susan Terris’ most recent book is Ghost of Yesterday: New & Selected Poems (Marsh Hawk Press, (2013). She is the author of 6 books of poetry, 15 chapbooks, and 3 artist's books. Journal publications include The Southern Review, Denver Quarterly, Field , The Journal, North American Review, and Ploughshares. A poem of hers from Field appeared in Pushcart Prize XXXI. She's editor of Spillway Magazine. Her chapbook Memos has just been published by Omnidawn. A poem from this book, which first appeared in the Denver Quarterly—"Memo to the Former Child Prodigy" — was selected by Sherman Alexie to be published in Best American Poetry 2015. http://www.susanterris.com
CB Follett won the 2001 National Poetry Book Award for her Collection of poems "At the Turning of the Light" published by Salmon Run Press. She is the Poet Laureate of Marin County, CA (2010 to 2012). Follett is the publisher and owner of Arctos Press and with Susan Terris was editor of RUNES, A Review of Poetry, an annual themed anthology, published until 2008.
CB Follett has had poems published by Calyx, Green Fuse, Peregrine, Ploughshares, The Cumberland Review, Rain City Review, Ambit (England), The MacGuffin, Birmingham Poetry Review, Black Bear Review, New Letters Review, Psychological Perspectives, Without Halos, The Iowa Woman, Heaven Bone, Americas Review, The Taos Review, among others. She has been printed in several anthologies, She has won the Portland Poetry Festival Competition, The New Press Literary Quarterly Prize, the Northwoods Journal National Poetry competition and a grant from the Marin Arts Council. Her poems have been awarded other contest prizes, including Third in the Billee Murray Denny, Honorable Mentions in the New Letters Prize, second, and third, in the Ann Stanford Prize, the National Poetry Book Award, the Michael W. Gearhart Memorial Prize Sun Dog, the Southeast Review, Black Bear Review Poetry Prize and many others. She has been runner up for the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award, the George Bogin Award and finalist in the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, all from Poetry Society of America. Six of her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she has been nominated three times as an individual poet. Besides various chapbooks, and handmade books of her poems, she has five collections of poetry. The latest is Houses (Tebot Bach, 2011).
CB Follett has had poems published by Calyx, Green Fuse, Peregrine, Ploughshares, The Cumberland Review, Rain City Review, Ambit (England), The MacGuffin, Birmingham Poetry Review, Black Bear Review, New Letters Review, Psychological Perspectives, Without Halos, The Iowa Woman, Heaven Bone, Americas Review, The Taos Review, among others. She has been printed in several anthologies, She has won the Portland Poetry Festival Competition, The New Press Literary Quarterly Prize, the Northwoods Journal National Poetry competition and a grant from the Marin Arts Council. Her poems have been awarded other contest prizes, including Third in the Billee Murray Denny, Honorable Mentions in the New Letters Prize, second, and third, in the Ann Stanford Prize, the National Poetry Book Award, the Michael W. Gearhart Memorial Prize Sun Dog, the Southeast Review, Black Bear Review Poetry Prize and many others. She has been runner up for the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award, the George Bogin Award and finalist in the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, all from Poetry Society of America. Six of her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she has been nominated three times as an individual poet. Besides various chapbooks, and handmade books of her poems, she has five collections of poetry. The latest is Houses (Tebot Bach, 2011).
3/14/16 WAS: Julia Vinograd hosted by Jim
Julia Vinograd is a Berkeley street poet. She has published over 59 books of poetry and won the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation. She has a B.A. from UC Berkeley and a M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. A Pushcart Prize winner for "The Young Men Who Died of AIDS," she has a Poetry Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Berkeley and is one of the editors of the anthology New American Poetry Vol. I: The Babarians of San Francisco -- Poets from Hell.
3/7/16 WAS: Stephanie Manning hosted by Jan
Stephanie Manning has been writing poetry for 25 years and a well-known face at Bay Area open mikes since 2000. The goal of her work is humility via observations in nature, in politics and the overwhelming consequences of time moving forward. Her work focuses on revolutions that begin within one's self as they take on more global concerns. With unfolding consciousness, she sees herself in the natural phenomena that surround her. Of primary concern is educating people about the 425 ancient native shellmounds that surround S.F.Bay and helping the Ohlone people reclaim their heritage. This poet holds many jobs in the effort to survive but, as she says, her one goal in life is to write one really good poem. Come hear her endeavor to reach these goals and more.
2/29 WAS: Maverick night Other People’s Poems (your work is blind read and we guess who wrote it)
Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year.
IMPORTANT, PLEASE BRING COPIES OF 2 POEMS WITHOUT YOUR NAME ON THEM.
We will put your work in a hat to be drawn, read by others, and then we will guess. . hosted by Liz
2/22 WAS: Prompt: Full Bore
(prompts are thought directions and your poem does not have to include the words of the prompt – use prompts as a cliff and jump off!) Maverick & Prompt nights the group nominates a work which then is eligible for publication in our on-line magazine at the end of the year.
2/15/16 WAS: George Q Johnson, Jr hosted by Bruce
"George Q. Johnson Jr. was born in Stockton, CA and educated in local schools. He graduated Cal State University at Sacramento, with a degree in Humanities. Writing poetry since his youth, he was influenced by A E Housman, early on. He discovered the "Beats" and never looked back. George lives in Berkeley with wife Eileen, daughter Stacy and the Cats
2/8/16 WAS: Naomi Ruth Lowinsky hosted by Jim
2/1/16 WAS: Dan Brady hosted by Jan
Dan was born in New York City and comes from a large family. He can
recount adventures from that portion of his childhood spent growing up in
Queens. His family moved to California in 1960, after his father suddenly
passed away. Although he had an interest in the arts, it was not until high
school that he began writing poetry. By the early 1970¹s he became a part
of San Francisco¹s poetry community and has been writing poems, haiku,
stories and prose ever since. However, the time now seems right to publish
what needs saying in the hopes of making a positive change - this is why he
has produced this collection of poetry.
He enjoys the process of producing poetry. First because of that
moment of inspiration when a new poem comes to mind is as subtle as it is
wondrous. He¹ll say that it all begins with attending to the voice of the
muse, which is similar to taking dictation. Secondarily he enjoys editing,
revising and rehearsing pieces in preparation for presenting them to an
audience, which may prompt further revisions.
When talking about his writing he¹ll usually explain that while
preparing a piece or performing is enjoyable, nothing compares to the
inspirational moment which brings about something new and incredible; he is
constantly amazed by that aspect of the writer¹s life. When asked about his
process he is fond of saying, ³I read and reread a poem until it settles
down² by which he means that the poem ceases to change and is no longer in
need of revision - at which point it is ready to present to an audience. In
addition, while some poems are done in a single draft and others take years
they are never truly done.
1/25/16 WAS: Prompt: Water
Poems read on the 4th and 5th Mondays of each month (Prompt Nights and Maverick Nights) will be eligible for the Poetry Express Poetry Contest. One winner will be chosen per month and every year we will publish the winners in a new Poetry Express on-line magazine..
1/18/16 WAS: Kurt Lumpkin hosted by Bruce
Kirk’s poetry has appeared in many different magazines, anthologies, and online publications. Kirk has performed his poetry and music in festivals, clubs, bookstores, and cafes all around the San Francisco Bay Area and much of Northern California. In 2006 he did a poetry performance mini-tour of the LA area—four readings in six days including one at Beyond Baroque in Venice. In 2006 he also did a mini-reading tour of western Colorado. In 2007 he did two readings in Toronto, Canada and one in New York City at the Bowery Poetry Club. He has also done poetry readings in England and Scotland under the auspices of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).
In 2003, Kirk ended his lengthy stint hosting the Cafe International Friday Night Performance Series (San Francisco Bay Guardian "Best Spoken Word Open Mic"), which he'd been with since 1994. He hosted the spoken word open mic at Burning Man (1997, '98, & '99). He coordinated the Ecology Center Literary Series 1997-99. As part of his work as the Special Events & Promotions Coordinator for the Berkeley Farmers’ Market (a program of the Ecology Center) he's developed a collaboration with Poetry Flash and Ecocity Builders in presenting the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival, hosted annually by former U.S. Poet Laureate, Robert Hass. At the beginning of 2005 Kirk joined the Board of PEN Oakland. In 2004 a song he co-wrote was a finalist in the UNISONG International Song Contest and another was an Honorable Mention in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest.
01/11/16 WAS: Kristina Ten hosted by Jim
Kristina Ten is a dog person and a people person, in that order. Her writing has appeared in Word Riot, The Literateur, Pantheon Magazine, Garbanzo Literary Journal, The Awl, and elsewhere. She lives in San Francisco.
Lazy
I have too many bones in my feet and
I have too many teeth in my mouth and
I put too much clout in follower count
and you, my belly my lemon my grove
This house is split by computer cables
This house has tables that drop every plate
This house is thigh-chafed sun-spoilt and Christ-cradled
and you, my wet mozzarella my love
And you, sugar pill pilled sweater sweet jam
And you, my jelly meat suckled and shorn
And you, my kill and my kill and my kill and my
City’s dumpling makers all went on strike
My city is spite gold brass Stoli commercials
My city is sure-footed falling uphill
and you, my wall stud my knock knock my screw
If you cannot be honest at least burn the truth
If you cannot be ruthless at least admit that
This star will one day throw us clean off
This star coughs through Czech words it would mispronounce
This star is bounced checks rising boats blown raspberries
and you, my shower curtain my mildew
I will braid the veins in your translucent wings
I will sell your ivory on Amazon Prime
I will watch you spread lotion across your new legs
I will beg it will rhyme I will beg I will beg I will
Call you my house and my city and star
When you cannot be human just be what you are
01/04/16 WAS: John Rowe hosted by Jan
JOHN ROWE has poems appearing most recently in Minotaur, red lights (tanka journal), San Diego Poetry Annual 2014-15, and San Francisco Peace and Hope (online and print edition). His latest chapbook is Beyond Perspective from Finishing Line Press (Fall 2015). Connie Post says: “The poems in Beyond Perspective will take any reader to a heightened level of introspection and awareness. John Rowe has found a delicate and perfect way of blending the imagined world with ordinary life.” His previous poetry chapbooks At My Wit's Beginning and Winsome Losesome showcase his tendencies toward whimsical word play and a minimalist approach. J.R. is a co-host of the monthly (2nd Fridays) Last Word Poetry Reading Series, held at Nefeli Caffe in Berkeley. For many years he’s served as president of the Bay Area Poets Coalition and associate editor of BAPC’s Poetalk magazine. Website: www.rowepoet.com
12/28 WAS Prompt Night: The Dark and the Light hosted by The Hosts
With A Special reading of Nancy Wogan's poetry by the Hosts of Poetry Express.
Nancy Wogan has been a host of Poetry Express since 2003, a retired university professor of English, a mother of three, and grandmother of four Recent health complications likely will prevent Nance from hosting this evening, although she may attend. The reading is in honor of her long contribution to Poetry Express.
Poems read on the 4th and 5th Mondays of each month (Prompt Nights and Maverick Nights) will be eligible for the Poetry Express Poetry Contest. One winner will be chosen per month and every year we will publish the winners in a new Poetry Express on-line magazine..
12/21 WAS: David Allen Sullivan hosted by Bruce
David Allen Sullivan’s first book, Strong-Armed Angels, was published by Hummingbird Press, and three of its poems were read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac. Every Seed of the Pomegranate, a multi-voiced manuscript about the war in Iraq, was published by Tebot Bach. A book of translation from the Arabic of Iraqi Adnan Al-Sayegh, Bombs Have Not Breakfasted Yet was published in 2013, and Black Ice, about his father’s dementia and death, was published by Turning Point Press. He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review with his students, and lives in Santa Cruz with his love, the historian Cherie Barkey, and their two children, Jules and Mina Barivan. He was awarded a Fulbright, and taught in China for one year (yesdasullivan.tumblr.com). His poems and books can be found at Welcome!
Status Update
My dead father friended me on Facebook
today. I recognized his grinning mug
since I’m the one who uploaded that look,
minus my mom. Algorithims trigger
such messages, I’m aware of that fact,
yet still I felt a little uptick in
my heart, a strange elation that he cracked
the code to invade my computer screen,
reaching out to me as he so seldom
did while with me. Spiritus sancti. Amen.
He teases me with that devilish grin,
is this another lesson in lessening?
I hit confirm. And send him a reply:
Are you freed from the living when you die?
12/14 WAS: Nadine Lockhart hosted by Jim
Nadine Lockhart received her MA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing with an
emphasis in Poetry from ASU; she is currently earning her PhD in Literature from the
same university. Along with Rosemarie Dombrowski, she founded and hosts the Phoenix
Poetry Series, a monthly featured reading showcasing award-winning poets; it’s in its
eighth year and won “Best of” page-poetry reading in Phoenix Magazine. Lockhart has
been awarded more than a baker’s dozen of fellowships and scholarships providing travel
and study in English, poetry, and languages to such places as India, Oaxaca, Prague, and
the UK. She presented several times at academic conferences over the last two years on
the ability of poetry to transform itself into continued relevancy through hybridity and
cultural relativism. Her dissertation explores Arizona poetry in the public sphere for
which she received the Lattie and Elva Coor Fellowship for Building Communities. She
recently published “Hidden Lives of the Black Cat Poets,” a five-part interview series
during April, the poetry month, for the Herald of Truth or Consequences, NM. Nadine
lives with Badger the Cat. They happily travel together throughout California and the
American Southwest in search of plays, poetry, and paintings.
Once Upon a Time . . . Dancing, Swarming
I, who have arrived in heaven, watch from an advantaged angle,
you who are getting obliterated in the dancing swarm of fireflies.1
(A falling angel, maybe two, enter my vision as they pass by).
You radiate with lesser stars, a crescent moon, or a gibbous,
which waxes and wanes as this is your life on the earth, obsidian,
or lamp black and dark, lamp black and coal dark. . .
I, however, am forced to follow my soul which has headed northward
or inward—it’s difficult to know directions—being bodiless and all
dimensions are everywhere at once.
Music, spheres of it, sends me packing toward itself. And the lights,
you think your fireflies are something? They are nothing—swirling
sunlit beads of a reflection of a reflection . . . small ardors.
The light here—a thousand thousand orgasms and then some and not
describable. The sound, the sound that pulls up and in, that sound—
another thousand thousand orgasms.
You: Catch that firefly—the faint sound of it, the dim light of it—
latch on until you are that sound, that light, obliterated in the dancing
swarm, until you are the dancing swarm, until you are . . . the dancing.
1 Yayoi Kusama, “You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies.”
12/07/15 WAS: Jayne McPherson hosted by Jan
D Jayne McPherson is a poet, teacher and performance artist past recipient of writing grants from Santa Rosa Junior College, Squaw Valley Community & Sonoma State University's Recovery Program. Last month, she read with John Rhodes for SF Poetry Podcast and recently published in the State-wide California Anthology, "Corners of the Mouth".
Orphan At The Well
A B C D
Belonging is the chase of a lifetime.
E F G
Anything done to recoil awaits your return to it.
H I J K
Seek to live with and without rather than through
approval.
L M N
The bridge to all humanity is this truth:
each one of us carries at least 10,000 sorrows.
O P
Poetry irrupts between the words.
Q R S
Self is molded by adversity and stands elegantly alone.
T U V
The orphan's heart can be re-united by touching a flower,
tree, animal, or by honoring a dream as ‘In God We Trust’
face up from wishing well water’s depth, or
by the cyclical acquaintance of music.
W X
Success, akin to beauty – is in the eyes of the beholder.
Y ZZZZZZZ
Sleep well, my love. God, who has swaddling hands,
molded you.
11/30 Maverick Night: : Ekphrastic Poetry: choose a work of visual art (painting, sculpture, photo, installation, etc.) and then write a poem using the work of art as a prompt. Bring an image of the art to your reading.
Poems read on the 4th and 5th Mondays of each month (Prompt Nights and Maverick Nights) will be eligible for the Poetry Express Poetry Contest. One winner will be chosen per month and every year we will publish the winners in a new Poetry Express on-line magazine.
11/23 WAS: prompt: After I’m Gone hosted by Nance
Poems read on the 4th and 5th Mondays of each month (Prompt Nights and Maverick Nights) will be eligible for the Poetry Express Poetry Contest. One winner will be chosen per month and every year we will publish the winners in a new Poetry Express on-line magazine.
11/16/15 WAS: Jen Sharda hosted by Bruce
Jen Sharda grew up WASP in New England and was happy to leave its darker feel and weather for the San Francisco Bay region. Here she enjoys the cultural diversity, quality of light, easy access to nature, more flexible social spirit, its fine arts community, and greater, if still lacking, acceptance of the varieties of the feminine, the masculine, the tribal.
She ponders the deeply-strictured psychohistorical legacy for all WASPs, especially the women, and speculates about the impact of the tens of thousands of their ancestor women burned over many generations in Europe and the thousands tried and hanged in Puritan New England as witches—all by their own tribal men. Men who also committed the American Indian genocide, founded this long-WASP-dominated country, many of their names still prominent, and left descendants who benefited one way or another from a couple centuries of stealing humans, genetically their cousins, from Africa into slavery. A legacy that values power over love.
Three trips to Brazil studying the joyful ceremony, drumming, singing, and dance of the African diaspora have deeply affected her sense of possibilities, as has Hindu meditation and chanting. Nature, art, science, and earthspirit ancestors—child mind, wild mind, happy and troubled mind—all speak in her poems. Her work has been published in Spillway, Forge, Squaw Valley Review, Burningword, Chaparral, the Marin Poetry Center Anthology, and is forthcoming in Lullwater Review and Westview.
11/9 WAS: Jeanne Powell hosted by Jim
Jeanne Powell writes poetry, flash fiction, short stage plays and cultural reviews. Her books in print are MY OWN SILENCE and WORD DANCING from Taurean Horn Press, along with CAROUSEL and TWO SEASONS by Regent Press. For ten years she hosted a popular open mic series, "Celebration of the Word." Jeanne has received degrees from WSU in Detroit and USF in San Francisco. She is the inspiration behind Meridien PressWorks™ which has published 20 authors since 1996. Jeanne has been an instructor in the CS, OLLI and UB programs on California campuses.
untamed lavender
deep in the Persian mountains
tempting you to pray
(c) Jeanne Powell
11/2 WAS: Roopa Ramamoorthi hosted by Jan
Roopa is a scientist and poet who calls Berkeley home. Her poetry,
essays and short stories have appeared including on NPR Perspectives,
the books "Dismantle" and "She is Such a Geek" and in India Currents,
Berkeley Daily Planet, Khabar, Spectrum, 23 and me site, Bay Area Poets
Coalition Anthology etc. She was a finalist for the national poetry
series in 2011. And she remembers the earlier avatar of poetry express
when it was poetry nitro.
2/1/16 WAS: Dan Brady hosted by Jan
Dan was born in New York City and comes from a large family. He can
recount adventures from that portion of his childhood spent growing up in
Queens. His family moved to California in 1960, after his father suddenly
passed away. Although he had an interest in the arts, it was not until high
school that he began writing poetry. By the early 1970¹s he became a part
of San Francisco¹s poetry community and has been writing poems, haiku,
stories and prose ever since. However, the time now seems right to publish
what needs saying in the hopes of making a positive change - this is why he
has produced this collection of poetry.
He enjoys the process of producing poetry. First because of that
moment of inspiration when a new poem comes to mind is as subtle as it is
wondrous. He¹ll say that it all begins with attending to the voice of the
muse, which is similar to taking dictation. Secondarily he enjoys editing,
revising and rehearsing pieces in preparation for presenting them to an
audience, which may prompt further revisions.
When talking about his writing he¹ll usually explain that while
preparing a piece or performing is enjoyable, nothing compares to the
inspirational moment which brings about something new and incredible; he is
constantly amazed by that aspect of the writer¹s life. When asked about his
process he is fond of saying, ³I read and reread a poem until it settles
down² by which he means that the poem ceases to change and is no longer in
need of revision - at which point it is ready to present to an audience. In
addition, while some poems are done in a single draft and others take years
they are never truly done.
recount adventures from that portion of his childhood spent growing up in
Queens. His family moved to California in 1960, after his father suddenly
passed away. Although he had an interest in the arts, it was not until high
school that he began writing poetry. By the early 1970¹s he became a part
of San Francisco¹s poetry community and has been writing poems, haiku,
stories and prose ever since. However, the time now seems right to publish
what needs saying in the hopes of making a positive change - this is why he
has produced this collection of poetry.
He enjoys the process of producing poetry. First because of that
moment of inspiration when a new poem comes to mind is as subtle as it is
wondrous. He¹ll say that it all begins with attending to the voice of the
muse, which is similar to taking dictation. Secondarily he enjoys editing,
revising and rehearsing pieces in preparation for presenting them to an
audience, which may prompt further revisions.
When talking about his writing he¹ll usually explain that while
preparing a piece or performing is enjoyable, nothing compares to the
inspirational moment which brings about something new and incredible; he is
constantly amazed by that aspect of the writer¹s life. When asked about his
process he is fond of saying, ³I read and reread a poem until it settles
down² by which he means that the poem ceases to change and is no longer in
need of revision - at which point it is ready to present to an audience. In
addition, while some poems are done in a single draft and others take years
they are never truly done.
1/25/16 WAS: Prompt: Water
Poems read on the 4th and 5th Mondays of each month (Prompt Nights and Maverick Nights) will be eligible for the Poetry Express Poetry Contest. One winner will be chosen per month and every year we will publish the winners in a new Poetry Express on-line magazine..
1/18/16 WAS: Kurt Lumpkin hosted by Bruce
Kirk’s poetry has appeared in many different magazines, anthologies, and online publications. Kirk has performed his poetry and music in festivals, clubs, bookstores, and cafes all around the San Francisco Bay Area and much of Northern California. In 2006 he did a poetry performance mini-tour of the LA area—four readings in six days including one at Beyond Baroque in Venice. In 2006 he also did a mini-reading tour of western Colorado. In 2007 he did two readings in Toronto, Canada and one in New York City at the Bowery Poetry Club. He has also done poetry readings in England and Scotland under the auspices of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).
In 2003, Kirk ended his lengthy stint hosting the Cafe International Friday Night Performance Series (San Francisco Bay Guardian "Best Spoken Word Open Mic"), which he'd been with since 1994. He hosted the spoken word open mic at Burning Man (1997, '98, & '99). He coordinated the Ecology Center Literary Series 1997-99. As part of his work as the Special Events & Promotions Coordinator for the Berkeley Farmers’ Market (a program of the Ecology Center) he's developed a collaboration with Poetry Flash and Ecocity Builders in presenting the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival, hosted annually by former U.S. Poet Laureate, Robert Hass. At the beginning of 2005 Kirk joined the Board of PEN Oakland. In 2004 a song he co-wrote was a finalist in the UNISONG International Song Contest and another was an Honorable Mention in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest.
In 2003, Kirk ended his lengthy stint hosting the Cafe International Friday Night Performance Series (San Francisco Bay Guardian "Best Spoken Word Open Mic"), which he'd been with since 1994. He hosted the spoken word open mic at Burning Man (1997, '98, & '99). He coordinated the Ecology Center Literary Series 1997-99. As part of his work as the Special Events & Promotions Coordinator for the Berkeley Farmers’ Market (a program of the Ecology Center) he's developed a collaboration with Poetry Flash and Ecocity Builders in presenting the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival, hosted annually by former U.S. Poet Laureate, Robert Hass. At the beginning of 2005 Kirk joined the Board of PEN Oakland. In 2004 a song he co-wrote was a finalist in the UNISONG International Song Contest and another was an Honorable Mention in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest.
01/11/16 WAS: Kristina Ten hosted by Jim
Kristina Ten is a dog person and a people person, in that order. Her writing has appeared in Word Riot, The Literateur, Pantheon Magazine, Garbanzo Literary Journal, The Awl, and elsewhere. She lives in San Francisco.
Lazy
I have too many bones in my feet and
I have too many teeth in my mouth and
I put too much clout in follower count
and you, my belly my lemon my grove
This house is split by computer cables
This house has tables that drop every plate
This house is thigh-chafed sun-spoilt and Christ-cradled
and you, my wet mozzarella my love
And you, sugar pill pilled sweater sweet jam
And you, my jelly meat suckled and shorn
And you, my kill and my kill and my kill and my
City’s dumpling makers all went on strike
My city is spite gold brass Stoli commercials
My city is sure-footed falling uphill
and you, my wall stud my knock knock my screw
If you cannot be honest at least burn the truth
If you cannot be ruthless at least admit that
This star will one day throw us clean off
This star coughs through Czech words it would mispronounce
This star is bounced checks rising boats blown raspberries
and you, my shower curtain my mildew
I will braid the veins in your translucent wings
I will sell your ivory on Amazon Prime
I will watch you spread lotion across your new legs
I will beg it will rhyme I will beg I will beg I will
Call you my house and my city and star
When you cannot be human just be what you are
01/04/16 WAS: John Rowe hosted by Jan
JOHN ROWE has poems appearing most recently in Minotaur, red lights (tanka journal), San Diego Poetry Annual 2014-15, and San Francisco Peace and Hope (online and print edition). His latest chapbook is Beyond Perspective from Finishing Line Press (Fall 2015). Connie Post says: “The poems in Beyond Perspective will take any reader to a heightened level of introspection and awareness. John Rowe has found a delicate and perfect way of blending the imagined world with ordinary life.” His previous poetry chapbooks At My Wit's Beginning and Winsome Losesome showcase his tendencies toward whimsical word play and a minimalist approach. J.R. is a co-host of the monthly (2nd Fridays) Last Word Poetry Reading Series, held at Nefeli Caffe in Berkeley. For many years he’s served as president of the Bay Area Poets Coalition and associate editor of BAPC’s Poetalk magazine. Website: www.rowepoet.com
With A Special reading of Nancy Wogan's poetry by the Hosts of Poetry Express.
Nancy Wogan has been a host of Poetry Express since 2003, a retired university professor of English, a mother of three, and grandmother of four Recent health complications likely will prevent Nance from hosting this evening, although she may attend. The reading is in honor of her long contribution to Poetry Express.
Poems read on the 4th and 5th Mondays of each month (Prompt Nights and Maverick Nights) will be eligible for the Poetry Express Poetry Contest. One winner will be chosen per month and every year we will publish the winners in a new Poetry Express on-line magazine..
David Allen Sullivan’s first book, Strong-Armed Angels, was published by Hummingbird Press, and three of its poems were read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac. Every Seed of the Pomegranate, a multi-voiced manuscript about the war in Iraq, was published by Tebot Bach. A book of translation from the Arabic of Iraqi Adnan Al-Sayegh, Bombs Have Not Breakfasted Yet was published in 2013, and Black Ice, about his father’s dementia and death, was published by Turning Point Press. He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review with his students, and lives in Santa Cruz with his love, the historian Cherie Barkey, and their two children, Jules and Mina Barivan. He was awarded a Fulbright, and taught in China for one year (yesdasullivan.tumblr.com). His poems and books can be found at Welcome!
Status Update
My dead father friended me on Facebook
today. I recognized his grinning mug
since I’m the one who uploaded that look,
minus my mom. Algorithims trigger
such messages, I’m aware of that fact,
yet still I felt a little uptick in
my heart, a strange elation that he cracked
the code to invade my computer screen,
reaching out to me as he so seldom
did while with me. Spiritus sancti. Amen.
He teases me with that devilish grin,
is this another lesson in lessening?
I hit confirm. And send him a reply:
Are you freed from the living when you die?
Nadine Lockhart received her MA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing with an
emphasis in Poetry from ASU; she is currently earning her PhD in Literature from the
same university. Along with Rosemarie Dombrowski, she founded and hosts the Phoenix
Poetry Series, a monthly featured reading showcasing award-winning poets; it’s in its
eighth year and won “Best of” page-poetry reading in Phoenix Magazine. Lockhart has
been awarded more than a baker’s dozen of fellowships and scholarships providing travel
and study in English, poetry, and languages to such places as India, Oaxaca, Prague, and
the UK. She presented several times at academic conferences over the last two years on
the ability of poetry to transform itself into continued relevancy through hybridity and
cultural relativism. Her dissertation explores Arizona poetry in the public sphere for
which she received the Lattie and Elva Coor Fellowship for Building Communities. She
recently published “Hidden Lives of the Black Cat Poets,” a five-part interview series
during April, the poetry month, for the Herald of Truth or Consequences, NM. Nadine
lives with Badger the Cat. They happily travel together throughout California and the
American Southwest in search of plays, poetry, and paintings.
Once Upon a Time . . . Dancing, Swarming
I, who have arrived in heaven, watch from an advantaged angle,
you who are getting obliterated in the dancing swarm of fireflies.1
(A falling angel, maybe two, enter my vision as they pass by).
You radiate with lesser stars, a crescent moon, or a gibbous,
which waxes and wanes as this is your life on the earth, obsidian,
or lamp black and dark, lamp black and coal dark. . .
I, however, am forced to follow my soul which has headed northward
or inward—it’s difficult to know directions—being bodiless and all
dimensions are everywhere at once.
Music, spheres of it, sends me packing toward itself. And the lights,
you think your fireflies are something? They are nothing—swirling
sunlit beads of a reflection of a reflection . . . small ardors.
The light here—a thousand thousand orgasms and then some and not
describable. The sound, the sound that pulls up and in, that sound—
another thousand thousand orgasms.
You: Catch that firefly—the faint sound of it, the dim light of it—
latch on until you are that sound, that light, obliterated in the dancing
swarm, until you are the dancing swarm, until you are . . . the dancing.
1 Yayoi Kusama, “You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies.”
12/07/15 WAS: Jayne McPherson hosted by Jan
Orphan At The Well
A B C D
Belonging is the chase of a lifetime.
E F G
Anything done to recoil awaits your return to it.
H I J K
Seek to live with and without rather than through
approval.
L M N
The bridge to all humanity is this truth:
each one of us carries at least 10,000 sorrows.
O P
Poetry irrupts between the words.
Q R S
Self is molded by adversity and stands elegantly alone.
T U V
The orphan's heart can be re-united by touching a flower,
tree, animal, or by honoring a dream as ‘In God We Trust’
face up from wishing well water’s depth, or
by the cyclical acquaintance of music.
W X
Success, akin to beauty – is in the eyes of the beholder.
Y ZZZZZZZ
Sleep well, my love. God, who has swaddling hands,
molded you.
11/30 Maverick Night: : Ekphrastic Poetry: choose a work of visual art (painting, sculpture, photo, installation, etc.) and then write a poem using the work of art as a prompt. Bring an image of the art to your reading.
Poems read on the 4th and 5th Mondays of each month (Prompt Nights and Maverick Nights) will be eligible for the Poetry Express Poetry Contest. One winner will be chosen per month and every year we will publish the winners in a new Poetry Express on-line magazine.
Poems read on the 4th and 5th Mondays of each month (Prompt Nights and Maverick Nights) will be eligible for the Poetry Express Poetry Contest. One winner will be chosen per month and every year we will publish the winners in a new Poetry Express on-line magazine.
11/23 WAS: prompt: After I’m Gone hosted by Nance
Poems read on the 4th and 5th Mondays of each month (Prompt Nights and Maverick Nights) will be eligible for the Poetry Express Poetry Contest. One winner will be chosen per month and every year we will publish the winners in a new Poetry Express on-line magazine.
11/16/15 WAS: Jen Sharda hosted by Bruce
Jen Sharda grew up WASP in New England and was happy to leave its darker feel and weather for the San Francisco Bay region. Here she enjoys the cultural diversity, quality of light, easy access to nature, more flexible social spirit, its fine arts community, and greater, if still lacking, acceptance of the varieties of the feminine, the masculine, the tribal.
She ponders the deeply-strictured psychohistorical legacy for all WASPs, especially the women, and speculates about the impact of the tens of thousands of their ancestor women burned over many generations in Europe and the thousands tried and hanged in Puritan New England as witches—all by their own tribal men. Men who also committed the American Indian genocide, founded this long-WASP-dominated country, many of their names still prominent, and left descendants who benefited one way or another from a couple centuries of stealing humans, genetically their cousins, from Africa into slavery. A legacy that values power over love.
Three trips to Brazil studying the joyful ceremony, drumming, singing, and dance of the African diaspora have deeply affected her sense of possibilities, as has Hindu meditation and chanting. Nature, art, science, and earthspirit ancestors—child mind, wild mind, happy and troubled mind—all speak in her poems. Her work has been published in Spillway, Forge, Squaw Valley Review, Burningword, Chaparral, the Marin Poetry Center Anthology, and is forthcoming in Lullwater Review and Westview.
11/9 WAS: Jeanne Powell hosted by Jim 
Jeanne Powell writes poetry, flash fiction, short stage plays and cultural reviews. Her books in print are MY OWN SILENCE and WORD DANCING from Taurean Horn Press, along with CAROUSEL and TWO SEASONS by Regent Press. For ten years she hosted a popular open mic series, "Celebration of the Word." Jeanne has received degrees from WSU in Detroit and USF in San Francisco. She is the inspiration behind Meridien PressWorks™ which has published 20 authors since 1996. Jeanne has been an instructor in the CS, OLLI and UB programs on California campuses.
11/2 WAS: Roopa Ramamoorthi hosted by Jan(c) Jeanne Powelltempting you to prayuntamed lavenderdeep in the Persian mountains
Roopa is a scientist and poet who calls Berkeley home. Her poetry,
essays and short stories have appeared including on NPR Perspectives,
the books "Dismantle" and "She is Such a Geek" and in India Currents,
Berkeley Daily Planet, Khabar, Spectrum, 23 and me site, Bay Area Poets
Coalition Anthology etc. She was a finalist for the national poetry
series in 2011. And she remembers the earlier avatar of poetry express
when it was poetry nitro.
Family Tree
By Roopa Ramamoorthi
Tuesday December 23, 2008 - 10:27:00 AM
Few weeks ago I spent two days in Mendocino
tucked away on California’s northern coast
Heard the waves lashing the rocks, saw a red-breasted robin
ready to take flight, a young seal on the rocks
sunning itself, then setting out for a swim
When I hiked in fern canyon
I touched the trunk
Of one sturdy redwood tree
Climbing the narrow trails, inhaling the misty air
I saw nobody else out there this Tuesday
Only those ancient pteridophytes
Layers upon layers of green
Beckoning and bewitching from the other side of time
I descended back to pygmy forest
Nature’s bonsai of acorn and cypress
Stunted trees adapted to the saline soil
five hundred thousand years old
The landscape here became more stark, less serene
I stood transported to a different tree, a different time
A photocopy in charcoal black, empty white and shades of gray
From five full years ago. It could have been
a Japanese artist’s ink brush drawing
A single tree standing on a winter’s night, severe and still
Or a botanist’s sketch of a new species
with nodules narrowing four branches
But no, it was my mother’s arteries
Captured from her angiography
In Jaslok hospital, Mumbai
soon after her heart attack
I took that image—consulted cardiologists
In Palo Alto and San Francisco
A month later she became ashes sprinkled in the Godavari River
Traveling to where the Arabian sea kisses the star-studded sky
Becoming engulfed in the universe’s eternal canopy
A black and white sketch that still breathes in a cardboard box of mine
Along with the torn black book of her recipes and her childhood photos
One of her sitting in her chubby frock at one
Another of her watering young saplings
as a girl of eleven
One more at twenty-four
Holding her newborn baby
standing next to a budding jasmine tree
Links:
------
10/26 WAS: Prompt: Bringing in the Sheaves hosted by Nance
Please use the prompt loosely, as a place to begin your thoughts. There is no requirement to use the actual words of the prompt. As with all our prompt nights we will try to nominate, by attendee vote, a poet of the evening who can, if they wish, be featured in our forthcoming on-line magazine (see links for more info).
10/19 WAS: Barbara Atkinson hosted by Bruce
Barbara Atkinson identifies as an obscure Berkeley poet and performer. After teaching herself to read at a precocious age, she earned a Bachelor of Rhymes degree from kindergarten, her most prized diploma. In the many intervening years, she has written numerous poems (rhyming, metered, both, and neither), short stories, cartoons, songs & song lyrics, tributes in verse, and paraphrases of popular classics. Of late she has taken to composing and presenting spoken word for events ranging from literary readings to summer camps to office parties. Barbara's poetry has been occasionally published - most recently in a chapbook entitled "Poets in the Pews" by the First Unitarian Church of Oakland, where she sometimes declaims it in the service with the Earth Justice Associates. Now retired from a career as an energy-efficiency policy analyst at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, after earning an MS in Energy and Resources at UC Berkeley, she also published a prolific amount of technical writing. Ms. Atkinson volunteered in Nicaragua from the 1980s through 2000s on solar energy projects, traveled and worked in Central and South America, and composed a few of her poems in Spanish. Her current labor of love is being full-time mom of a middle school daughter, some of whose multiple talents are writing and drama.
Scavenger
The poet
picks through garbage piles
on certain streets
on special days
runs the morsels
through the grinder
Her mission
flaunting laws of chemistry
is to transmute
scraps into sustenance
filth into feast
On the porches
they sit and chant
it can’t be done
it can’t be done
And she says
if there is no freedom
why do we dream of it
how could we stop
10/12 WAS: Chantal Guillemin hosted by Jim
Tragedy and the miraculous are part of the fabric of life in Truchas, the tiny remote mountain village in Northern New Mexico where poet Chantal Guillemin has spent a lifetime of summers. Come listen to the magic of her stories. Find out about water thieves, life after death, romance in a hail storm and the dangers of being Anglo in an old hispanic community.
The Rescue
After an all-night struggle to escape,
the kestrel floats in a horse trough.
Mother scoops up the raptor,
lays it on the picnic table.
She warms him
with her electric hair-dryer.
The kestrel stirs,
quivers,
flops around,
suddenly takes flight,
then vanishes
into the piñon.
10/5 WAS: Katy Brown hosted by Jan
photograph was taken at the recent Dancing Poetry Festival by Judy Cheung
Katy Brown is a poet and photographer whose work appears online in Medusa’s Kitchen Blogspot and Convergence. She has won awards in The Ina Coolbrith Circle, Berkeley Poets’ Dinner, California Federation of Chaparral Poets, and The International Dance Poetry competitions. She was twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Her secret power is that she can catch a lizard with a blade of grass.
The Art of Losing
I’ve always lost things:
my keys, phone numbers,
grocery lists, the remote control—
all things that can be replaced
or will not be missed for long—
preludes to more complex losses:
my purse and credit cards,
my wedding ring, my temper—
not so easy to recover from and
practice for the big ones:
loss of my heart’s companion, lost faith,
my sense of purpose— my way.
The art of losing is not in the finding
or replacing— but in putting one foot
in front of the other without a map . . . .
Convergence,
An Online Journal of Poetry and Art
Spring, 2011
Editor’s Choice Page: Cynthia Linville
9/28 WAS: Terry McCarthy hosted by Bruce
Terry McCarty was born on July 31, 1959 in Electra, Texas. He moved to Southern California in 1988. From 1988 to 1997, he worked as a background actor and occasional stand-in for actors including Joe Pesci (THE PUBLIC EYE, LETHAL WEAPON 3, and JIMMY HOLLYWOOD) and Wallace Shawn (HOUSE ARREST).
Terry began writing poetry in the summer of 1997. From 1998 to 1999, he was a member of the Midnight Special Bookstore poetry workshop in Santa Monica. He has been a featured poet in several Southern California venues. Terry has also featured at readings in Las Vegas, NV, San Francisco, CA, Santa Cruz, CA, , CA and Seattle, WA.
Books/chapbooks written by Terry include: HOLLYWOOD POETRY: 2001-2013, WICHITA FALLS: 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION, I SAW IT ON TV, IMPERFECTIONIST, CONSPICUOUS PRESUMPTIONS and the new ONE CORNER OF THE SKY. Terry is also included in these anthologies: BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE CONTEMPORARY POETS, SO LUMINOUS THE WILDFLOWERS, THE LONG WAY HOME: THE BEST OF THE LITTLE RED BOOK SERIES 1998-2008 LUMMOX Volumes 2 and 3
A POET IS A POET NO MATTER HOW TALL: Episode II Attack of the Poems
ONE SMALL STEP
i took a compliment today
instead of returning it
like an undersized sweater
resisted the temptation to say:
glad you liked my poem
but so-and-so wouldn't
instead, I drank the glass filled with accolade
it tasted like the purest water
enabling me to relax
and enjoy the rest of the day
without allowing so-and-so
to be a phantom companion
uttering hypothetical negativities,
causing me no end of worry
9/21/15 WAS: Prompt night The Last Time I Cried (swapped with 9/28), hosted by Nance
Please use the prompt loosely, as a place to begin your thoughts. There is no requirement to use the actual words of the prompt. As with all our prompt nights we will try to nominate, by attendee vote, a poet of the evening who can, if they wish, be featured in our forthcoming on-line magazine (see links for more info).
9/14/15 WAS: Riss Rosado hosted by Jim
Riss is bad with names but she still wants to know yours. She has been described as "absurd", "a magical space unicorn", and "a hot piece with brains to match". She writes poetry, prose, short stories, and hand-written letters. She lives in Oakland with her partner, a three-legged dog, and a snake named Kisses.
What's the point?
When it's an less than an hour
And just once a week
When you bend and fold
And they're stiff as stone
When you're just another guest
in line
When the actions are so much louder than the pretty words you're embarrassed and consider the possibility of being deaf
When it hurts less and less
And still on, you press
When it's low on the to-do list
Like cleaning the sink
When you embrace the other things you'll get to do instead
Like cleaning the sink
When you don't want an hour, you just want a drink
When you're getting better at being let down
What do you think?
9/7/15 WAS Labor Day - No Poetry Express, BPAC picnic was suggested instead. See our links page for details on BPAC.
8/31/15 WAS: Maverick night: Read and Imitate: bring a work by a published poet that you love, read it, and then read a poem you wrote in the style of the poem you just read.
8/24/15 prompt WAS: What’s under the Bridge?
Please use the prompt loosely, as a place to begin your thoughts. There is no requirement to use the actual words of the prompt. As with all our prompt nights we will try to nominate, by attendee vote, a poet of the evening who can, if they wish, be featured in our forthcoming on-line magazine (see links for more info).
8/17/15 WAS: African American Poetry by Phoenix Fire (Phavia Kujichagulia, Robert Woods, Lige Dailey) hosted by Bruce 
Lige, Kujichagulia, and Robert read from their latest collaboration, “Elephant in the Room,” a book of Poems, Stories and articles. These writers gave an extraordinary performance of their spoken words at their book launch in the Joyce Gordon Gallery on July 5th, and here is an opportunity to hear them if you missed that event.
Dr Lige Dailey is a former president of the Bay Area Association of Black Psychologists and is the author of 5 books. He has appeared widely across the US and Africa.
Phavia Kujichagulia has been a professor at World College West and Stanford Universities. She has several books of poetry and non-fiction as well as numerous articles as a writer for the San Francisco Examiner and Jazz New Magazine. Phavia has been extremely active in teaching in California’s prison system. She is a Griot (oral historian who uses music and poetry to reveal history) and has performed widely in the US. Her most recent CD The Human Race, is available online.
Robert Woods has been a playwright, a poet, and a teacher in the bay area. He has appeared with many nationally know poets such as Gil Scott-Heron, Ishmael Reed, Joyce Carol Thomas, Maya Angelou and others. He, along with Lige Dailey, has represented the US in African arts festivals. Robert Woods has written five books and also published three books of poetry by Berkeley High students.
8/10/15hy Avoicja hosted by Jim
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.
8/3/15 WAS: Bill Vartnaw hosted by Jan
Sonoma County poet laureate emeritus, Bill Vartnaw, has been a part of the San Francisco Bay Area poetry scene for over 40 years; he established Taurean Horn Press in SF in 1974. He's authored two books, the last—Suburbs of my Childhood, & 3 chapbooks of poetry. Taurean Horn Press published its 19th book, Kim Shuck's Clouds Running In, in 2014, presently working on H. D. Moe's Ambrosia of the Netherworld.
Poem Beginning with Lines from Carol Lee Sanchez as its Spine
© 2012, Bill Vartnaw
7/27/15 WAS: Prompt:
Please use the prompt loosely, as a place to begin your thoughts. There is no requirement to use the actual words of the prompt. As with all our prompt nights we will try to nominate, my attendee vote, a poet of the evening who can, if they wish, be featured in our forthcoming on-line magazine (see links for more info).
7/20/15 WAS: Jeannie Lupton hosted by Bruce
By Roopa Ramamoorthi
Tuesday December 23, 2008 - 10:27:00 AM
Few weeks ago I spent two days in Mendocino
tucked away on California’s northern coast
Heard the waves lashing the rocks, saw a red-breasted robin
ready to take flight, a young seal on the rocks
sunning itself, then setting out for a swim
When I hiked in fern canyon
I touched the trunk
Of one sturdy redwood tree
Climbing the narrow trails, inhaling the misty air
I saw nobody else out there this Tuesday
Only those ancient pteridophytes
Layers upon layers of green
Beckoning and bewitching from the other side of time
I descended back to pygmy forest
Nature’s bonsai of acorn and cypress
Stunted trees adapted to the saline soil
five hundred thousand years old
The landscape here became more stark, less serene
I stood transported to a different tree, a different time
A photocopy in charcoal black, empty white and shades of gray
From five full years ago. It could have been
a Japanese artist’s ink brush drawing
A single tree standing on a winter’s night, severe and still
Or a botanist’s sketch of a new species
with nodules narrowing four branches
But no, it was my mother’s arteries
Captured from her angiography
In Jaslok hospital, Mumbai
soon after her heart attack
I took that image—consulted cardiologists
In Palo Alto and San Francisco
A month later she became ashes sprinkled in the Godavari River
Traveling to where the Arabian sea kisses the star-studded sky
Becoming engulfed in the universe’s eternal canopy
A black and white sketch that still breathes in a cardboard box of mine
Along with the torn black book of her recipes and her childhood photos
One of her sitting in her chubby frock at one
Another of her watering young saplings
as a girl of eleven
One more at twenty-four
Holding her newborn baby
standing next to a budding jasmine tree
Links:
------
10/26 WAS: Prompt: Bringing in the Sheaves hosted by Nance
Please use the prompt loosely, as a place to begin your thoughts. There is no requirement to use the actual words of the prompt. As with all our prompt nights we will try to nominate, by attendee vote, a poet of the evening who can, if they wish, be featured in our forthcoming on-line magazine (see links for more info).
Barbara Atkinson identifies as an obscure Berkeley poet and performer. After teaching herself to read at a precocious age, she earned a Bachelor of Rhymes degree from kindergarten, her most prized diploma. In the many intervening years, she has written numerous poems (rhyming, metered, both, and neither), short stories, cartoons, songs & song lyrics, tributes in verse, and paraphrases of popular classics. Of late she has taken to composing and presenting spoken word for events ranging from literary readings to summer camps to office parties. Barbara's poetry has been occasionally published - most recently in a chapbook entitled "Poets in the Pews" by the First Unitarian Church of Oakland, where she sometimes declaims it in the service with the Earth Justice Associates. Now retired from a career as an energy-efficiency policy analyst at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, after earning an MS in Energy and Resources at UC Berkeley, she also published a prolific amount of technical writing. Ms. Atkinson volunteered in Nicaragua from the 1980s through 2000s on solar energy projects, traveled and worked in Central and South America, and composed a few of her poems in Spanish. Her current labor of love is being full-time mom of a middle school daughter, some of whose multiple talents are writing and drama.
Scavenger
The poet
picks through garbage piles
on certain streets
on special days
runs the morsels
through the grinder
Her mission
flaunting laws of chemistry
is to transmute
scraps into sustenance
filth into feast
On the porches
they sit and chant
it can’t be done
it can’t be done
And she says
if there is no freedom
why do we dream of it
how could we stop
10/12 WAS: Chantal Guillemin hosted by Jim
Tragedy and the miraculous are part of the fabric of life in Truchas, the tiny remote mountain village in Northern New Mexico where poet Chantal Guillemin has spent a lifetime of summers. Come listen to the magic of her stories. Find out about water thieves, life after death, romance in a hail storm and the dangers of being Anglo in an old hispanic community.
The Rescue
After an all-night struggle to escape,
the kestrel floats in a horse trough.
Mother scoops up the raptor,
lays it on the picnic table.
She warms him
with her electric hair-dryer.
The kestrel stirs,
quivers,
flops around,
suddenly takes flight,
then vanishes
into the piñon.
10/5 WAS: Katy Brown hosted by Jan
photograph was taken at the recent Dancing Poetry Festival by Judy Cheung
Katy Brown is a poet and photographer whose work appears online in Medusa’s Kitchen Blogspot and Convergence. She has won awards in The Ina Coolbrith Circle, Berkeley Poets’ Dinner, California Federation of Chaparral Poets, and The International Dance Poetry competitions. She was twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Her secret power is that she can catch a lizard with a blade of grass.
The Art of Losing
I’ve always lost things:
my keys, phone numbers,
grocery lists, the remote control—
all things that can be replaced
or will not be missed for long—
preludes to more complex losses:
my purse and credit cards,
my wedding ring, my temper—
not so easy to recover from and
practice for the big ones:
loss of my heart’s companion, lost faith,
my sense of purpose— my way.
The art of losing is not in the finding
or replacing— but in putting one foot
in front of the other without a map . . . .
Convergence,
An Online Journal of Poetry and Art
Spring, 2011
Editor’s Choice Page: Cynthia Linville
9/28 WAS: Terry McCarthy hosted by Bruce
Terry McCarty was born on July 31, 1959 in Electra, Texas. He moved to Southern California in 1988. From 1988 to 1997, he worked as a background actor and occasional stand-in for actors including Joe Pesci (THE PUBLIC EYE, LETHAL WEAPON 3, and JIMMY HOLLYWOOD) and Wallace Shawn (HOUSE ARREST).
Terry began writing poetry in the summer of 1997. From 1998 to 1999, he was a member of the Midnight Special Bookstore poetry workshop in Santa Monica. He has been a featured poet in several Southern California venues. Terry has also featured at readings in Las Vegas, NV, San Francisco, CA, Santa Cruz, CA, , CA and Seattle, WA.
Books/chapbooks written by Terry include: HOLLYWOOD POETRY: 2001-2013, WICHITA FALLS: 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION, I SAW IT ON TV, IMPERFECTIONIST, CONSPICUOUS PRESUMPTIONS and the new ONE CORNER OF THE SKY. Terry is also included in these anthologies: BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE CONTEMPORARY POETS, SO LUMINOUS THE WILDFLOWERS, THE LONG WAY HOME: THE BEST OF THE LITTLE RED BOOK SERIES 1998-2008 LUMMOX Volumes 2 and 3
A POET IS A POET NO MATTER HOW TALL: Episode II Attack of the Poems
ONE SMALL STEP
i took a compliment today
instead of returning it
like an undersized sweater
resisted the temptation to say:
glad you liked my poem
but so-and-so wouldn't
instead, I drank the glass filled with accolade
it tasted like the purest water
enabling me to relax
and enjoy the rest of the day
without allowing so-and-so
to be a phantom companion
uttering hypothetical negativities,
causing me no end of worry
9/21/15 WAS: Prompt night The Last Time I Cried (swapped with 9/28), hosted by Nance
Please use the prompt loosely, as a place to begin your thoughts. There is no requirement to use the actual words of the prompt. As with all our prompt nights we will try to nominate, by attendee vote, a poet of the evening who can, if they wish, be featured in our forthcoming on-line magazine (see links for more info).
Please use the prompt loosely, as a place to begin your thoughts. There is no requirement to use the actual words of the prompt. As with all our prompt nights we will try to nominate, by attendee vote, a poet of the evening who can, if they wish, be featured in our forthcoming on-line magazine (see links for more info).
Riss is bad with names but she still wants to know yours. She has been described as "absurd", "a magical space unicorn", and "a hot piece with brains to match". She writes poetry, prose, short stories, and hand-written letters. She lives in Oakland with her partner, a three-legged dog, and a snake named Kisses.
What's the point?
When it's an less than an hourAnd just once a weekWhen you bend and foldAnd they're stiff as stoneWhen you're just another guestin lineWhen the actions are so much louder than the pretty words you're embarrassed and consider the possibility of being deafWhen it hurts less and lessAnd still on, you pressWhen it's low on the to-do listLike cleaning the sinkWhen you embrace the other things you'll get to do insteadLike cleaning the sinkWhen you don't want an hour, you just want a drinkWhen you're getting better at being let down
What do you think?
9/7/15 WAS Labor Day - No Poetry Express, BPAC picnic was suggested instead. See our links page for details on BPAC.
8/31/15 WAS: Maverick night: Read and Imitate: bring a work by a published poet that you love, read it, and then read a poem you wrote in the style of the poem you just read.
8/24/15 prompt WAS: What’s under the Bridge?
8/17/15 WAS: African American Poetry by Phoenix Fire (Phavia Kujichagulia, Robert Woods, Lige Dailey) hosted by Bruce 
Please use the prompt loosely, as a place to begin your thoughts. There is no requirement to use the actual words of the prompt. As with all our prompt nights we will try to nominate, by attendee vote, a poet of the evening who can, if they wish, be featured in our forthcoming on-line magazine (see links for more info).
Lige, Kujichagulia, and Robert read from their latest collaboration, “Elephant in the Room,” a book of Poems, Stories and articles. These writers gave an extraordinary performance of their spoken words at their book launch in the Joyce Gordon Gallery on July 5th, and here is an opportunity to hear them if you missed that event.
Dr Lige Dailey is a former president of the Bay Area Association of Black Psychologists and is the author of 5 books. He has appeared widely across the US and Africa.
Phavia Kujichagulia has been a professor at World College West and Stanford Universities. She has several books of poetry and non-fiction as well as numerous articles as a writer for the San Francisco Examiner and Jazz New Magazine. Phavia has been extremely active in teaching in California’s prison system. She is a Griot (oral historian who uses music and poetry to reveal history) and has performed widely in the US. Her most recent CD The Human Race, is available online.
Robert Woods has been a playwright, a poet, and a teacher in the bay area. He has appeared with many nationally know poets such as Gil Scott-Heron, Ishmael Reed, Joyce Carol Thomas, Maya Angelou and others. He, along with Lige Dailey, has represented the US in African arts festivals. Robert Woods has written five books and also published three books of poetry by Berkeley High students.
8/10/15hy Avoicja hosted by JimAvotcja 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.
8/3/15 WAS: Bill Vartnaw hosted by Jan
Sonoma County poet laureate emeritus, Bill Vartnaw, has been a part of the San Francisco Bay Area poetry scene for over 40 years; he established Taurean Horn Press in SF in 1974. He's authored two books, the last—Suburbs of my Childhood, & 3 chapbooks of poetry. Taurean Horn Press published its 19th book, Kim Shuck's Clouds Running In, in 2014, presently working on H. D. Moe's Ambrosia of the Netherworld.
Poem Beginning with Lines from Carol Lee Sanchez as its Spine
chaos waves deep in the unconscious
is reason a particle? ego comfort?
humane like a charted star in the Milky Way
it (this order) cannot hold
restores itself with a pulse of
clarity: all is one, this body
resumes itself upon
the fabric of "space" it takes up, the new
natural is timeless
order depends on telepathy
of a tacit agreement we make
things* are meaning
* - lines from Sanchez, "the cry," from spirit to matter
© 2012, Bill Vartnaw
Please use the prompt loosely, as a place to begin your thoughts. There is no requirement to use the actual words of the prompt. As with all our prompt nights we will try to nominate, my attendee vote, a poet of the evening who can, if they wish, be featured in our forthcoming on-line magazine (see links for more info).
7/20/15 WAS: Jeannie Lupton hosted by Bruce
Jeanne Lupton is a poet and performer well known in the Bay Area, especially for her tanka. She hosts a Poetry and Prose reading serices at the Frank Bette Center in Alameda on 2nd and 4th Saturdays of each month as well as being deeply involved in many other groups. Her reviews speak for themselves:
"The sensuous work of Jeanne Lupton deeply touches the secret center of things. From the mystic tradition we know that there are a thousand paths, yet but one destination. Love, and its consequences, reverberate in these brief, evocative lines. For those with whom they do not resound we can only shake our heads at life unlived. Standing on the shoulders of her sisters before her, Jeanne Lupton enriches the centuries old traditon of the tanka; in these illuminating pages, the Way of the Lover is revealed." (Don Wentworth of the Lilliput Review)
"Lupton's keenly observed details of her life serve as a lens focusing greater human truths; she is not just a woman, but Everywoman. She journeys through her life with the intensely emotional but never sentimental heart of a poet, faithfully recording her truths that speak to all women." (M. Kei)
Larry Chrispyn started writing poetry in grad school about the same time he started practicing Zen. Now in retirement he is a full time poet and also self-proclaimed fitness fanatic who as exercised daily for the last 30 years. A teacher of herbal healing in both Hawaii and California, he has studied the use of herbs for over four decades. He has also taught humanistic and existential psychology in college, worked as an expediter for the postal service, and traveled extensively in the world and USA while prolifically consuming books and attending up to 100 poetry events a year. His themes include humor, animals, his dad, growing up in Indiana, nature, runners, infatuations and lost love. He cites Christina Hutchins as his mentor and says “she has influenced my poetry more than any poet, living or dead.” Several of his poems have been translated in to Russian and Ukrainian. He has been read on all continents except Antarctica.
Your Mona Lisa Smile
to the loveliness of you
7/6/15 WAS: Britt Peter hosted by Jan
Britt Peter was born in the North Arm of Indian Valley in 1938. His parents moved to the Bay Area at the start of World War II and he has been living here off and on ever since. Britt has loved poetry in all forms for most of his life, starting with Burl Ives, his grandmother’s songs and Carl Sandburg. Among the artists, poets and musicians he has known and admired are Juan Silva, Jim Gray, Kenneth Rexroth, Carol Tinker, Lloyd J. Reynolds, the Alexander brothers, Jack Spicer, Gene Fowler, Welton Smith, Bob Stephens, Don Cobb, Karl Shapiro, Lee Bartlett, Willie Van Ness, and Jack Gilbert. The richness of their lives and art brushed against him and often matched or fueled his own internal growl. Britt’s poems have appeared in The Intransigent Voice, Blue Collar Review, Jerry Jazz Musician, Poetry Now and the California Quarterly He and his son Alexander Peter have filmed and presented over thirty poems on YouTube. Britt can be reached at forestpeter6@hotmail.com
6/29/15 WAS: Other People’s Poems: bring your poem without your name on it, poems go in a hat and another poet reads it, we try to guess who wrote it.
As with all our prompt nights, a poet of the evening will be nominated for inclusion in our coming on-line magazine, due out annually.
Judy Wells was nominated.
6/15/15 WAS: Stella Beratlis, Lisa Robertson, Helen Wickes (The 16 River Poets)
(sample poems are below the bios)
Stella Beratlis grew up in a Greek-American family in Northern California. Her work has appeared in Quercus Review, Penumbra, Song of the San Joaquin, California Quarterly, and other journals, as well as in the anthology The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Francisco Bay Watershed (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2010). She is coeditor of the collection More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets (Quercus Review Press, 2011). Beratlis is a librarian in Modesto, where she lives with her daughter.
“In her poem ‘Vitreous Detachment,’ Stella Beratlis asks ‘How do I know?’ In Alkali Sink, a book that is
Lisa Erin Robertson was born in Sonoma County into a family with both Western and Southern roots, and grew up in Northern California. She lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she has worked in public health for many years. The Orbit of Known Objects is her first collection of poetry.
The Orbit of Known Objects
World as You Left It is the thirty-third book to be published by Sixteen Rivers Press, a poetry collective
Helen Wickes was raised on a horse farm in southeastern Pennsylvania and attended Vassar College. She lives in Oakland, California, has a Ph.D. in psychology, and worked for many years as a psychotherapist. In 2002, she received an M.F.A. from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her first book of poems, In Search of Landscape, was published in 2007 by Sixteen Rivers Press. Her second poetry collection, Dowser’s Apprentice, was published by Glass Lyre Press in 2014, as was her third book of poems, Moon Over Zabriskie.
World as You Left It
Mustard Greens, Interstate 580
it was easy for her to overlook the occasional
woody stem, their bitter tang:
roadside mustard, dandelion greens,
right there at the freeway’s side—
first a bag, then the entire trunk stuffed
full. She came to carry a knife in the glove box
to cut the juicy weeds of this new country,
while her husband laughed
at the provincial poverty of it all—
eating greens that had been basking
in car fumes and animal piss—
yet for her, hunger was not just a distant thought
but a chemical memory in her muscles,
her jaws. And out here was a veritable Sound of Music,
the hills alive, nourishing the village she carried,
whispering yes, we will feed you. These are new
melodies of unyellowed mustard in early spring,
songs of fullness, love. The crunch underfoot as she scouts
the freshest bunch. The squeak of swaddling in clean
flour-sack towels. The drive back in the brown LeSabre,
shrugging off banana boat comments.
Later, at home, she washes up a sinkload
and boils it gently for an hour. Everyone eats.
Listening to Seamus Heaney Read His Translation of Beowulf While at the Gym
out of life, a grand deflation. The tatted homey next over,
huge headphones, loud on his cell; I evil-eye him; he desists.
who’s taken on the ravisher of life, hoarder of treasure.
way too high. Note to self: chick on next machine
hurling sweat, coughs a frenzy; best avoid her.)
sharp words, glints of treasure, all for memory.
summoning the last words of solace, designing funeral rites,
his heritage, what’s carried forward.
fail me—anyhow, they give the machines a workout.
want with gold, to bury it deep in earth, to take so many lives?
as usual, sighs and works the daylights from the bike.
turning it around in the light, hoarding all for later.
As day begins again I enter the chapel of his voice.
The Mineral Kingdom
Just an hour outside of Las Vegas, the sky
chilled Baker through winter nights, my cheek against the Ford glass, black
and cold like that desert, nothing
between December-dead creosote and
a sky that glittered like druze, mineral
black gleam of coal
or diamonds that shone in defiance
over the city of meadows, the defilement
of the vegas, meadows and desert both ruined and loved for the ruining — that highway marked my first illicit cleaving
of loyalty: to the desert and to the mineral
palace of my grandmother, her bedroom cavern aglow with silver and gold, diamond
like a good clear liquor, ruby like
pulse through the lips, and pearl, especially
the pearl, which my father had reported
were condensed tears, minerals ascended
to heaven and cast down by
condensation, to be worn by unwitting
women who brought upon their bodies expensively tactile sorrow. To shed tears,
he warned me, might mitigate the poison; refuse to cry, though, and something
else happens, and I am
here to tell you about that. And after
the cancer had situated in his bile duct, domicile of held anger, even a desert
will wait for winter, he told me, and I
waited, even for a desert.
6/8/15 WAS: Lisa Marie Rollins hosted by Jim
Lisa Marie is a Bay Area (Oakland) based, Black/Filipina writer, playwright, solo performer, director, educator and one of the leading voices in transracial/ international adoption education and advocacy. She is currently touring her acclaimed solo show, Ungrateful Daughter: One Black Girls Story of being adopted by a White Family… that aren’t Celebrities, a comedic look her experience of being adopted by a white family in the 1970′s.
She has performed Ungrateful Daughter in the New York International Fringe Theater Festival, Los Angeles Women’s Theater Festival, The Atlanta Black Theater Festival, San Francisco Solo Festival, San Francisco Theater Festival, at StageWerx Theater, Off-Market Theatre, The Marsh Theater at Berkeley & in SF, The Shelton Theatre, universities and academic conferences across the United States. Ungrateful Daughter has been awarded James Irvine New Works, Zellerbach Family Foundation and City of Oakland Cultural Arts grants. Lisa Marie is the original co-producer of the highly praised “W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About an Hour”, the basis for FX television series, “Totally Biased w W. Kamau Bell”. She directed “All Atheists are Muslim” by Zahra Noorbakhsh and most recently co-produced “A History of the Body”, a new play by Filipina playwright Aimee Suzara.
She has been teaching creative writing, poetry and performance workshops for over ten years. She was the 2010-2011 Poet in Residence at June Jordan’s Poetry for the People at U.C. Berkeley and is an alumni in Poetry of VONA Writing Workshop working with Ruth Foreman and Willie Perdomo. She was most recently published in Eye to the Telescope, in the anthology, Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out, As/Us Literary Journal, Line/Break Special Issue on Asian American Adoptee poetry, The Pacific Review and others. She is currently focused in on her new manuscript of poems, tentatively titled, “Anchoring the Compass” and obsessing about her new play in development, “Side Effects”.
Lisa Marie has been featured as a commentator on CNN, NPR, HuffPostLive, KPFA Berkeley, KPFK Los Angeles and was given the honor of one of Colorlines Magazine’s “Innovators to Watch”for her social justice work around black adoptees. As Founder and Director of AFAAD, Adopted and Fostered Adults of the African Diaspora, Lisa Marie has helped build one of the first international organizations to focuses on the needs of adoptees and foster care alumni of African descent. AFAAD provides space for adoptees and foster care alumni to connect, heal from loss, create support networks and advocate around domestic and international adoption issues.
Lisa Marie holds an M.A. in Cultural Studies focusing in African Diasporic Women’s Literature, and an M.A. in African American Studies from UC Berkeley. She authored “A Birth Project”, a blog focusing on transracial adoption and black diasporic identity 2006-2012. She is currently an Adjunct Professor in Race and Resistance Studies at San Francisco State University. lisamarierollins@gmail.com
6/1/15 WAS: Grace Grafton hosted by Jan
Grace Marie Grafton, an active community poet, has taught in the California Poets In The Schools program for over thirty years. She was awarded twelve CA Arts Council Artist-In-Residence grants for her work at Lakeshore Elementary School in San Francisco. Through her teaching, she became involved in US Poet Laureate (1997-99) Robert Hass’ annual River Of Words Youth Poetry and Art Contest.
After many years of seeing her poems widely published in literary magazines, her first book, Zero,won the 1999 Poetic Matrix Chapbook contest. In 2001, her book of poems inspired by the artwork of contemporary women, Visiting Sisters, was published by Coracle Books. Ms. Grafton’s most recent books are Other Clues (2010) from Latitude Press, and Whimsy, Reticence & Laud, unruly sonnets (2012) from Poetic Matrix Press. Other Clues is comprised of surreal prose poems. Whimsy, Reticence & Laud, as the subtitle indicates, is Grace’s experimentation with the sonnet form. Author Tobey Hiller writes, of this book, “In these lush sonnets by Grace Marie Grafton the wild and the cultivated often collide. Here the habit of observation and the outcome of wonder produce…the sensate pleasures of both language and being.”
Hermost recent book, Jester, was published in 2013 by Hip Pocket Press
Recent poems appear in Ambush Review, The Offending Adam, Talking/Writing, and Theodate. Ms. Grafton’s poems have won prizes from The Bellingham Review, the Soul Making contest (San Francisco PEN Women), The Sycamore Review, and Coracle.
Ms. Grafton grew up in the central valley of California, earned her BA from the University of California Berkeley and her MA from New York University. She currently resides in Oakland, CA, with her husband and extended family.
The Last Saturday
On the last Saturday in May, she changed.
I suppose it was the moon, I suppose
it was the grasses that sprang up in their
enthusiasm and she couldn’t say No.
They imprinted her newly-wrought fur
with patterns of sap. Insisted she shimmy
in the wind. She’d never been submissive
but now she meadowed into communal.
Threw her carefully carved profile into
mix and match. Her tongue became
sensitive as a snake’s, leaves iridesced
in her sight, she arched her back to let
the moon scratch her spine. Yes, it was that kind
of affair. The town was scandalized, the priest
held up his crucifix and roared,
civic matrons clutched handkerchiefs
to their mouths, children were warned.
But she was gone. No longer vulnerable
to judgment. Above the creek’s current,
prismatic shadows might be spied.
--Grace Marie Grafton
5/25/15 WAS: Prompt: If only I Were......, hosted by Nance
As with all our prompt nights, a poet of the evening was nominated for inclusion in our coming on-line magazine, due out late July or early August. This weeks chosen poet was tied so we will include all 3: Paul Taylor, Grace Grafton, and Bruce Bagnell.
5/18/15 WAS: Adam David Miller Read from his new memoir hosted by Bruce
Adam David Miller has worked in northern California for four decades as a teacher, writer, poet, editor, publisher, and radio and television producer. He has won many awards, including the Bay Area Writing Project’s Teachers as Writers Lifetime Achievement Award. Visitwww.adamdavidmillerpoet.com for more information.
5/11/15 WAS: Robin Turtle White Lysne hosted by Jim & Bruce
Robin White Turtle Lysne, M.A., M.F.A., Ph.D is an author of 5 books, artist and energy healer. Recent books are Handbook to Heart Path, An Energy Medicine Guide, and Poems for the Lost Deer, (BlueBoneBooks, Santa Cruz,CA, 2014).
Her poems and reviews have been published in; Rattle, Phren-z online Magazine, Samizdat, Awkening Consciouesness Magazine, The Weekely Avocet, North American Review, Porcupine Literary Arts Magazine, Tree Stories, Beneath the Sleeping Maiden, Korone, Volumes VIII, IX, X, and Wounded Healers, (Wounded Healers Press, Bolinas, Ca., Rachel Remen, M.D., editor.) A member of Emerald Street Poets in Santa Cruz, she has an M.F.A.-Poetry, Mills College (2012), and Ph.D.-Energy Medicine, University of Natural Medicine, Satna Fe, (2013) Other published book titles are: Heart Path (BlueBoneBooks), Sarced Living (Conari Press), and Dancing Up The Moon (Conari Press).
She is a psychic/medium and energy healer with 25 years experience around the Bay Area and across the country by phone.
Lament for the Deer People
Shining in the inky firmament
no longer the deer-child
once carried
no longer a womb-bound
earth-tied star,
no longer here.
You were once a dream
a living moon
a sea of white deer
pouring over dark hillsides.
Moon of glowing sky
fallen over fields and green hills
a river herd
of blue bones
A tide given back
to the turquoise sea
always shining beyond
the storm ruined sky.
for Mar-i-Luna del Sol
--- Robin H. Lysne
5/4/15 WAS: Katherine Hastings hosted by Jan
Katherine Hastings is the author of Nighthawks (Spuyten Duyvil NYC, 2014) and Cloud Fire (Spuyten Duyvil NYC, 2012) as well as several chapbooks. Her poems have been published in many journals and anthologies, as well as The Book of Forms — A Handbook of Poetics, Lewis Putnam Turco, ed. (University Press of New England, 2012). Hastings is the founder and host of WordTemple on NPR affiliate KRCB FM as well as the WordTemple Poetry Series. In 2011, she edited and published the anthology What Redwoods Know — Poems From California State Parks as a benefit for the California State Parks Foundation when 70 State parks were threatened with permanent closure. She is serving as Poet Laureate of Sonoma County for the years 2014 — 2016. Her poet laureate project, Digging Our Poetic Roots will culminate with an anthology of poems from Sonoma County to be released in October of this year.
4/27/15 Prompt "There is no right or wrong", hosted by Nance & Bruce
As with all our prompt nights, a poet of the evening was nominated for inclusion in our coming on-line magazine, due out late July or early August. This weeks chosen poet was Joshua Curtis
.4/20/15 WAS: Juan Sequeira hosted by Bruce
Juan R. Sequeira was born in Granada, Nicaragua.
At the age of 7, he emigrated to San Francisco
with his mother, brother and sisters. He lived in the
Mission District and graduated from Mission High
in 1970. He earned a Bachelor of Science Degree
from the University of San Francisco in 1974 and
a Medical Degree from the University
of California at San Francisco in 1978. He has been
a practicing Physician in Contra Costa County.
His poems have been published in literary magizines.
(Black Bear Review, Blue Unicorn, Carquinez Poetry Review,
Mobius, San Fernando Poetry, Poet talk and Zyzzyva)
He has 2 collections of his poetry, Marimba Dreams,
1999 and Jaguar Footprints, 2006
Return
I will return to Nicaragua one day,
I will return to Nicaragua one day,
I will return to Nicaragua one day,
I will return to Nicaragua one day,
Zyzzyva 1999
4/13/15: WAS: Chris Chandler hosted by Jim
Poet and storyteller Chris Chandler is as hilarious and entertaining as he is provocative and rabble-rousing, delivering vignettes about politics and modern culture with the fire of a Baptist Preacher. His appearances are insightful tales of a world gone slightly mad, accompanied by a wide variety of musical styles. He has performed on thousands of stages across North America, working with such legendary figures as Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Mojo Nixon and Ani DiFranco. The late great Utah Phillips called Chris "the best performance poet I have ever seen." see more at chrischandler.org
4/6/15 WAS: Nina G hosted by Jan
Going Beyond Inspirational
Solo performance on growing up with a Disability by Nina G
"How many people with Disabilities does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" Answer: "One to screw it in and 5 abled bodied people to say, 'you are such an inspiration!'"
This joke is a favorite in Nina G's stand up routine. It brings to light (no pun intended) the struggle people with Disabilities have in an abled bodied society that reduces them to images of "inspirations" and "overcomers.” As America’s only female stand up comedian who stutters, Nina has been challenging attitudes about Disability since she took the stage for the first time in 2010. Nina challenges perceptions about Disability in her new show, Beyond Inspirational, to premiere in her hometown of Alameda on April 1 and 3, 2015. Beyond Inspirational deals with the pain, joys, and revelations growing up with Speech and Learning Disabilities. Join the Pacific Pinball Museum for the premiere of this unique one person show! Portion of the proceeds go to the museum.
For more information about Nina and Beyond Inspirational, go to www.beyondinspirational.
Nina G is America’s favorite female stuttering stand up comedian (granted she is the only one). She is also a disability activist, storyteller, children's book author and educator. She brings her humor to help people confront and understand social justice issues such as disability, diversity, and equity.
When she isn’t performing at comedy clubs like the San Francisco Punchline or the Laugh Factory, she is playing colleges and presenting as a keynote speaker to children with disabilities and training professionals! She is the author of a children’s book titled, Once Upon An Accommodation: A Book About Learning Disabilities, that helps children and adults advocate for their rights as a person with a Disability. 2015 will be the release of her one woman show, Going Beyond Inspirational, which is a comical exploration about growing up with Learning and Speech Disabilities.
Nina was diagnosed with a Learning Disability and began to stutter while in elementary school. She struggled to deal with teachers who underestimated her abilities, teasing from peers and family members, and issues of self-esteem. Nina was raised in the Oakland area and attended UC Berkeley where the roots of the Disability Movement took place, solidifying her identity as a person with a disability, one she sees with cultural and political empowerment. She later received her doctoral degree and works toward access for people with disabilities. Nina strives not to overcome her disability but to overcome the attitudes about what people with disabilities can achieve.
Keith Bowers of the SF Weekly sums Nina up best, "Nina G. grew up with a stutter. A couple of times each minute, a certain syllable will hang her up. She'll stall, repeat the same sound a few times – like the word is literally trapped – but then she'll get it out and move on. All her life people have given condescending advice on how she can cure the condition if she just tries hard enough. Others haven't been so kind. To this day grown people mock her and laugh at her expense. But Nina G. doesn't hide. In fact she'll tell you stories about publicly embarrassing people who've laughed at her. She'll tell you these stories from the stage. See, Nina G. is a comedian, and she deals in comebacks. So if you meet her in a cafe or on a BART platform and want to put her down, think hard on that. (Really. We've seen her. She's fierce.)"
3/30/15 WAS: Workshop: Helpful Hints --
People attending brought 15-20 copies of their work which they read and then peoplel provided helpful comments about the work. Each Poet got 15 minutes (including the reading and comments) If (Please see menu at top of page and read http://poetryexpressberkeley.blogspot.com/p/maverick-nights-poetry-contest-and.html The nominated poet from this evening is Laura Schulkind
Some of the discussion included:
3/23/15 Prompt: Ancestors, hosted by Nance (Please see menu at top of page and read http://poetryexpressberkeley.blogspot.com/p/maverick-nights-poetry-contest-and.html
The Nominated Poet from this evening was Alice Templeton for her pantoun (Please see menu at top of page and read http://poetryexpressberkeley.blogspot.com/p/maverick-nights-poetry-contest-and.htm
3/16/15 WAS: --- Adele Mendelson & Bruce Bagnell
"The sensuous work of Jeanne Lupton deeply touches the secret center of things. From the mystic tradition we know that there are a thousand paths, yet but one destination. Love, and its consequences, reverberate in these brief, evocative lines. For those with whom they do not resound we can only shake our heads at life unlived. Standing on the shoulders of her sisters before her, Jeanne Lupton enriches the centuries old traditon of the tanka; in these illuminating pages, the Way of the Lover is revealed." (Don Wentworth of the Lilliput Review)
"Lupton's keenly observed details of her life serve as a lens focusing greater human truths; she is not just a woman, but Everywoman. She journeys through her life with the intensely emotional but never sentimental heart of a poet, faithfully recording her truths that speak to all women." (M. Kei)
Jeanne has won many awards and prizes and has a number of books. See www.JeanneLupton.com for more.
7/13/15 WAS: Larry Chrispyn hosted by Jim
Larry Chrispyn started writing poetry in grad school about the same time he started practicing Zen. Now in retirement he is a full time poet and also self-proclaimed fitness fanatic who as exercised daily for the last 30 years. A teacher of herbal healing in both Hawaii and California, he has studied the use of herbs for over four decades. He has also taught humanistic and existential psychology in college, worked as an expediter for the postal service, and traveled extensively in the world and USA while prolifically consuming books and attending up to 100 poetry events a year. His themes include humor, animals, his dad, growing up in Indiana, nature, runners, infatuations and lost love. He cites Christina Hutchins as his mentor and says “she has influenced my poetry more than any poet, living or dead.” Several of his poems have been translated in to Russian and Ukrainian. He has been read on all continents except Antarctica.
Your Mona Lisa Smile
I have seen the Mona Lisa hanging in the Louvre
I have viewed the Sistine chapel and El Prado too
and I know for certain
no work of art compares
to the work of art of God
to the loveliness of you
7/6/15 WAS: Britt Peter hosted by Jan
Britt Peter was born in the North Arm of Indian Valley in 1938. His parents moved to the Bay Area at the start of World War II and he has been living here off and on ever since. Britt has loved poetry in all forms for most of his life, starting with Burl Ives, his grandmother’s songs and Carl Sandburg. Among the artists, poets and musicians he has known and admired are Juan Silva, Jim Gray, Kenneth Rexroth, Carol Tinker, Lloyd J. Reynolds, the Alexander brothers, Jack Spicer, Gene Fowler, Welton Smith, Bob Stephens, Don Cobb, Karl Shapiro, Lee Bartlett, Willie Van Ness, and Jack Gilbert. The richness of their lives and art brushed against him and often matched or fueled his own internal growl. Britt’s poems have appeared in The Intransigent Voice, Blue Collar Review, Jerry Jazz Musician, Poetry Now and the California Quarterly He and his son Alexander Peter have filmed and presented over thirty poems on YouTube. Britt can be reached at forestpeter6@hotmail.com
6/29/15 WAS: Other People’s Poems: bring your poem without your name on it, poems go in a hat and another poet reads it, we try to guess who wrote it.
6/22/15 Prompt: Oh what a beautiful ____ hosted by Nance
As with all our prompt nights, a poet of the evening will be nominated for inclusion in our coming on-line magazine, due out annually.
Judy Wells was nominated.
6/15/15 WAS: Stella Beratlis, Lisa Robertson, Helen Wickes (The 16 River Poets)
(sample poems are below the bios)
Stella Beratlis grew up in a Greek-American family in Northern California. Her work has appeared in Quercus Review, Penumbra, Song of the San Joaquin, California Quarterly, and other journals, as well as in the anthology The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Francisco Bay Watershed (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2010). She is coeditor of the collection More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets (Quercus Review Press, 2011). Beratlis is a librarian in Modesto, where she lives with her daughter.
Alkali Sink is her first collection:
“In her poem ‘Vitreous Detachment,’ Stella Beratlis asks ‘How do I know?’ In Alkali Sink, a book that is
at once sly and precise, honest and unique, Beratlis’s faith in both the interior and exterior worlds can be trusted enough to believe she can answer: with ‘the names of things and their pulpy centers.’ This is a poet in love with the dirt and the lamb, the armored car and the terrible sadness, with chaos and linear thought—everything that might ‘illuminate the several darknesses of the heart’ and the
‘multiplicity of the selves’ within a soul.” —Julia Levine “Alkali Sink reads like ‘a locomotive / speeding through a native West / changing the scale of my earth.” Central California races toward Greece, memory races toward reality, old age races toward youth, but the poems take their time, too, the way trains do, and I can peer into backyards and orchards and used-car lots as I go. At first I was here and now I am there, and the world I see is different because of how these poems moved me. Stella Beratlis has written a beautiful book.” —Camille T. Dungy “Stella Beratlis writes unforgettable poems that stir inside you long after you’ve finished reading them. Alkali Sink is simultaneously domestic and wild, urban and rural, full of surprises and wisdom. Your axis may shift after reading this remarkable book. Beratlis is a fierce talent whose beautiful mind encompasses the land, the open road, the kitchen window, and the heart's inconstancies. Her first full-length collection is one of the best debuts I have read.” —Lee Herrick In Alkali Sink, Stella Beratlis’s debut poetry collection, themes of family, loss, and the natural world weave together to create a universe of dichotomies at once dangerous and intimate, walking the line between the catastrophic and the sublime. Beratlis’s poems, rooted in her family’s Greek culture and the culture of California’s Central Valley, deftly maneuver between worlds as familiar and exotic as the mustard greens her immigrant mother gathers along an interstate highway. These poems transform ordinary acts—bird-watching, cooking, taking a road trip—into extraordinary ones. With its startling imagery and touches of wry humor, Alkali Sink brings us an exciting and original new poetic voice. Alkali Sink is the thirty-fifth book to be published by Sixteen Rivers Press, a poetry collective dedicated to providing an alternative publishing avenue for Bay Area poets. The press is named for the sixteen rivers that flow into San Francisco Bay.
Lisa Erin Robertson was born in Sonoma County into a family with both Western and Southern roots, and grew up in Northern California. She lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she has worked in public health for many years. The Orbit of Known Objects is her first collection of poetry.
The Orbit of Known Objects
by Lisa Erin Robertson
“ ‘Live in the layers,’ exhorted Stanley Kunitz in one of his poems—and this is precisely what Lisa Erin
Robertson does in her exquisitely crafted first volume. A rare intelligence draws the subtle layers of the
human heart, the hard facts of geology and the natural sciences, the nostalgia of the Confederate South,
love, loss, longing, and other ambiguities, all into one great hypnotic incantation whose rhythms insinuate
themselves into the body as much as the mind.” —Roger Housden “In The Orbit of Known Objects, Lisa Erin Robertson explores memory and history, especially through the eyes of women and family. She is a poet intimate with loss and regret, as well as persistence and resolve. She knows, as another writer from the South put it, that ‘the past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ In the universe of her poems, buried moments cast off their dirt and rise again for the consideration of her readers. Robertson is a poet of exquisite sensibilities, with a generous heart and an eye for the sadness and beauty of our brief, mysterious lives.” —Edward Falco
In The Orbit of Known Objects, Lisa Erin Robertson gives us long, breathless poems, some of them
almost like fever dreams, tangled up in love and loss. The “known object” whose orbit she charts is
family: the family of origin, lost, remembered, and finally supplanted by a new and precarious one.
Rooted in the Deep South, a land “like the Book of Common Prayer / taken by the ankles and shaken /
upside down,” these poems move west with feeling, humor, ironic knowing—all the necessary distances—
to the subtle and achieved lyric wisdom of “that animal . . . who remembers . . . the location of
every buried / seed, the way I remembered the morning / of the first day my child rooted at my breast, the
mammal / warmth of us. . . .” This is a stunning first collection by a gifted young poet you will want to
read and savor.
World as You Left It is the thirty-third book to be published by Sixteen Rivers Press, a poetry collective
dedicated to providing an alternative publishing avenue for Bay Area poets. The press is named for the
sixteen rivers that flow into San Francisco Bay.
Helen Wickes was raised on a horse farm in southeastern Pennsylvania and attended Vassar College. She lives in Oakland, California, has a Ph.D. in psychology, and worked for many years as a psychotherapist. In 2002, she received an M.F.A. from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her first book of poems, In Search of Landscape, was published in 2007 by Sixteen Rivers Press. Her second poetry collection, Dowser’s Apprentice, was published by Glass Lyre Press in 2014, as was her third book of poems, Moon Over Zabriskie.
World as You Left It
by Helen Wickes
“Such good poems in Helen Wickes’ new collection, poems about memory and loss that skillfully
combine the startling poetic image (‘off we’d go // into the cold air’s bright teeth’) and exuberant
colloquial language (‘everyone knows I don’t like dogs— / the smell, the noise, and the drool’). At the
heart of World as You Left It are the poems centering on the poet’s late father—both hilarious (as in
‘Loot,’ about his old address book with its delicious list of big blonds and ‘sweet patooties’) and
mysterious, as touching as they are enlivening.” —Lloyd Schwartz
“In World as You Left It, Helen Wickes asks us, ‘Didn’t you / ever have a need so sharp that if you tasted
the edge of it, / your tongue might bleed?’ her voice crackling with intimacy, intelligence. She needs these
words, these pages that bring back the farm fields where she grew up, the horses and dogs, birds shot and
roasted, sweet cherries, roadside corn. She needs to remember the deaths, most keen her father’s. And she
needs, above all, to tell us the life, ours too, as it burns past, and we catch it in piercing details: ‘One
crow, then another, / calls out, and three of us stop to listen.’ ” —Richard Silberg
World as You Left It, Helen Wickes’ fourth poetry collection, is an extended elegy for her parents, her
childhood, and the farm where she grew up. These poems are both exquisitely down-to-earth and open to
the realms of myth and memory. With lyric ease, they blend anger, praise, and love for an imperfect, lossriven
world. In the final section, a new kind of knowledge, beyond biography, transforms this book into a
memory palace for the poet’s mother and father: “You couldn’t tell / them apart, light from place, they
inhabited the mind / so deeply, light that sculpted September evenings, / those two people mowing here,
raking there, // the glow that warmed their faces as they puttered / around their world.”
Mustard Greens, Interstate 580
-Stella Beratlis
With enough olive oil and lemon juice,
it was easy for her to overlook the occasional
woody stem, their bitter tang:
roadside mustard, dandelion greens,
right there at the freeway’s side—
first a bag, then the entire trunk stuffed
full. She came to carry a knife in the glove box
to cut the juicy weeds of this new country,
while her husband laughed
at the provincial poverty of it all—
eating greens that had been basking
in car fumes and animal piss—
yet for her, hunger was not just a distant thought
but a chemical memory in her muscles,
her jaws. And out here was a veritable Sound of Music,
the hills alive, nourishing the village she carried,
whispering yes, we will feed you. These are new
melodies of unyellowed mustard in early spring,
songs of fullness, love. The crunch underfoot as she scouts
the freshest bunch. The squeak of swaddling in clean
flour-sack towels. The drive back in the brown LeSabre,
shrugging off banana boat comments.
Later, at home, she washes up a sinkload
and boils it gently for an hour. Everyone eats.
it was easy for her to overlook the occasional
woody stem, their bitter tang:
roadside mustard, dandelion greens,
right there at the freeway’s side—
first a bag, then the entire trunk stuffed
full. She came to carry a knife in the glove box
to cut the juicy weeds of this new country,
while her husband laughed
at the provincial poverty of it all—
eating greens that had been basking
in car fumes and animal piss—
yet for her, hunger was not just a distant thought
but a chemical memory in her muscles,
her jaws. And out here was a veritable Sound of Music,
the hills alive, nourishing the village she carried,
whispering yes, we will feed you. These are new
melodies of unyellowed mustard in early spring,
songs of fullness, love. The crunch underfoot as she scouts
the freshest bunch. The squeak of swaddling in clean
flour-sack towels. The drive back in the brown LeSabre,
shrugging off banana boat comments.
Later, at home, she washes up a sinkload
and boils it gently for an hour. Everyone eats.
*******
Listening to Seamus Heaney Read His Translation of Beowulf While at the Gym
The badass dragon’s done for, collapsed, out of form,
out of life, a grand deflation. The tatted homey next over,
huge headphones, loud on his cell; I evil-eye him; he desists.
out of life, a grand deflation. The tatted homey next over,
huge headphones, loud on his cell; I evil-eye him; he desists.
Our hero is languishing, our old man
who’s taken on the ravisher of life, hoarder of treasure.
who’s taken on the ravisher of life, hoarder of treasure.
(Note to self: Breathe, buy milk, pay bills, and heart rate’s
way too high. Note to self: chick on next machine
hurling sweat, coughs a frenzy; best avoid her.)
way too high. Note to self: chick on next machine
hurling sweat, coughs a frenzy; best avoid her.)
I’m the dragon, hoarding bright moments,
sharp words, glints of treasure, all for memory.
sharp words, glints of treasure, all for memory.
Beowulf at life’s end, breath’s end, beside his fiercest foe,
summoning the last words of solace, designing funeral rites,
his heritage, what’s carried forward.
summoning the last words of solace, designing funeral rites,
his heritage, what’s carried forward.
The Wednesday couple toddle in, fatter than—now words
fail me—anyhow, they give the machines a workout.
fail me—anyhow, they give the machines a workout.
All that gold—what’s a dragon
want with gold, to bury it deep in earth, to take so many lives?
want with gold, to bury it deep in earth, to take so many lives?
Old guy removes his shoes, weighs his scrawny body
as usual, sighs and works the daylights from the bike.
as usual, sighs and works the daylights from the bike.
Still a dragon, here I go, stealing texture, faceting the edges,
turning it around in the light, hoarding all for later.
turning it around in the light, hoarding all for later.
And Seamus Heaney’s voice, calling me back to sound.
As day begins again I enter the chapel of his voice.
As day begins again I enter the chapel of his voice.
The Mineral Kingdom
~ Lisa Erin Robertson
Just an hour outside of Las Vegas, the sky
chilled Baker through winter nights, my cheek against the Ford glass, black
and cold like that desert, nothing
between December-dead creosote and
a sky that glittered like druze, mineral
black gleam of coal
or diamonds that shone in defiance
over the city of meadows, the defilement
of the vegas, meadows and desert both ruined and loved for the ruining — that highway marked my first illicit cleaving
of loyalty: to the desert and to the mineral
palace of my grandmother, her bedroom cavern aglow with silver and gold, diamond
like a good clear liquor, ruby like
pulse through the lips, and pearl, especially
the pearl, which my father had reported
were condensed tears, minerals ascended
to heaven and cast down by
condensation, to be worn by unwitting
women who brought upon their bodies expensively tactile sorrow. To shed tears,
he warned me, might mitigate the poison; refuse to cry, though, and something
else happens, and I am
here to tell you about that. And after
the cancer had situated in his bile duct, domicile of held anger, even a desert
will wait for winter, he told me, and I
waited, even for a desert.
chilled Baker through winter nights, my cheek against the Ford glass, black
and cold like that desert, nothing
between December-dead creosote and
a sky that glittered like druze, mineral
black gleam of coal
or diamonds that shone in defiance
over the city of meadows, the defilement
of the vegas, meadows and desert both ruined and loved for the ruining — that highway marked my first illicit cleaving
of loyalty: to the desert and to the mineral
palace of my grandmother, her bedroom cavern aglow with silver and gold, diamond
like a good clear liquor, ruby like
pulse through the lips, and pearl, especially
the pearl, which my father had reported
were condensed tears, minerals ascended
to heaven and cast down by
condensation, to be worn by unwitting
women who brought upon their bodies expensively tactile sorrow. To shed tears,
he warned me, might mitigate the poison; refuse to cry, though, and something
else happens, and I am
here to tell you about that. And after
the cancer had situated in his bile duct, domicile of held anger, even a desert
will wait for winter, he told me, and I
waited, even for a desert.
Lisa Marie is a Bay Area (Oakland) based, Black/Filipina writer, playwright, solo performer, director, educator and one of the leading voices in transracial/ international adoption education and advocacy. She is currently touring her acclaimed solo show, Ungrateful Daughter: One Black Girls Story of being adopted by a White Family… that aren’t Celebrities, a comedic look her experience of being adopted by a white family in the 1970′s.
She has performed Ungrateful Daughter in the New York International Fringe Theater Festival, Los Angeles Women’s Theater Festival, The Atlanta Black Theater Festival, San Francisco Solo Festival, San Francisco Theater Festival, at StageWerx Theater, Off-Market Theatre, The Marsh Theater at Berkeley & in SF, The Shelton Theatre, universities and academic conferences across the United States. Ungrateful Daughter has been awarded James Irvine New Works, Zellerbach Family Foundation and City of Oakland Cultural Arts grants. Lisa Marie is the original co-producer of the highly praised “W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About an Hour”, the basis for FX television series, “Totally Biased w W. Kamau Bell”. She directed “All Atheists are Muslim” by Zahra Noorbakhsh and most recently co-produced “A History of the Body”, a new play by Filipina playwright Aimee Suzara.
She has been teaching creative writing, poetry and performance workshops for over ten years. She was the 2010-2011 Poet in Residence at June Jordan’s Poetry for the People at U.C. Berkeley and is an alumni in Poetry of VONA Writing Workshop working with Ruth Foreman and Willie Perdomo. She was most recently published in Eye to the Telescope, in the anthology, Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out, As/Us Literary Journal, Line/Break Special Issue on Asian American Adoptee poetry, The Pacific Review and others. She is currently focused in on her new manuscript of poems, tentatively titled, “Anchoring the Compass” and obsessing about her new play in development, “Side Effects”.
Lisa Marie has been featured as a commentator on CNN, NPR, HuffPostLive, KPFA Berkeley, KPFK Los Angeles and was given the honor of one of Colorlines Magazine’s “Innovators to Watch”for her social justice work around black adoptees. As Founder and Director of AFAAD, Adopted and Fostered Adults of the African Diaspora, Lisa Marie has helped build one of the first international organizations to focuses on the needs of adoptees and foster care alumni of African descent. AFAAD provides space for adoptees and foster care alumni to connect, heal from loss, create support networks and advocate around domestic and international adoption issues.
Lisa Marie holds an M.A. in Cultural Studies focusing in African Diasporic Women’s Literature, and an M.A. in African American Studies from UC Berkeley. She authored “A Birth Project”, a blog focusing on transracial adoption and black diasporic identity 2006-2012. She is currently an Adjunct Professor in Race and Resistance Studies at San Francisco State University. lisamarierollins@gmail.com
6/1/15 WAS: Grace Grafton hosted by Jan
Grace Marie Grafton, an active community poet, has taught in the California Poets In The Schools program for over thirty years. She was awarded twelve CA Arts Council Artist-In-Residence grants for her work at Lakeshore Elementary School in San Francisco. Through her teaching, she became involved in US Poet Laureate (1997-99) Robert Hass’ annual River Of Words Youth Poetry and Art Contest.
After many years of seeing her poems widely published in literary magazines, her first book, Zero,won the 1999 Poetic Matrix Chapbook contest. In 2001, her book of poems inspired by the artwork of contemporary women, Visiting Sisters, was published by Coracle Books. Ms. Grafton’s most recent books are Other Clues (2010) from Latitude Press, and Whimsy, Reticence & Laud, unruly sonnets (2012) from Poetic Matrix Press. Other Clues is comprised of surreal prose poems. Whimsy, Reticence & Laud, as the subtitle indicates, is Grace’s experimentation with the sonnet form. Author Tobey Hiller writes, of this book, “In these lush sonnets by Grace Marie Grafton the wild and the cultivated often collide. Here the habit of observation and the outcome of wonder produce…the sensate pleasures of both language and being.”
Hermost recent book, Jester, was published in 2013 by Hip Pocket Press
Hermost recent book, Jester, was published in 2013 by Hip Pocket Press
Recent poems appear in Ambush Review, The Offending Adam, Talking/Writing, and Theodate. Ms. Grafton’s poems have won prizes from The Bellingham Review, the Soul Making contest (San Francisco PEN Women), The Sycamore Review, and Coracle.
Ms. Grafton grew up in the central valley of California, earned her BA from the University of California Berkeley and her MA from New York University. She currently resides in Oakland, CA, with her husband and extended family.
The Last Saturday
On the last Saturday in May, she changed.
I suppose it was the moon, I suppose
it was the grasses that sprang up in their
enthusiasm and she couldn’t say No.
They imprinted her newly-wrought fur
with patterns of sap. Insisted she shimmy
in the wind. She’d never been submissive
but now she meadowed into communal.
Threw her carefully carved profile into
mix and match. Her tongue became
sensitive as a snake’s, leaves iridesced
in her sight, she arched her back to let
the moon scratch her spine. Yes, it was that kind
of affair. The town was scandalized, the priest
held up his crucifix and roared,
civic matrons clutched handkerchiefs
to their mouths, children were warned.
But she was gone. No longer vulnerable
to judgment. Above the creek’s current,
prismatic shadows might be spied.
--Grace Marie Grafton
5/25/15 WAS: Prompt: If only I Were......, hosted by Nance
As with all our prompt nights, a poet of the evening was nominated for inclusion in our coming on-line magazine, due out late July or early August. This weeks chosen poet was tied so we will include all 3: Paul Taylor, Grace Grafton, and Bruce Bagnell.
5/18/15 WAS: Adam David Miller Read from his new memoir hosted by Bruce
Adam David Miller has worked in northern California for four decades as a teacher, writer, poet, editor, publisher, and radio and television producer. He has won many awards, including the Bay Area Writing Project’s Teachers as Writers Lifetime Achievement Award. Visitwww.adamdavidmillerpoet.com for more information.
Robin White Turtle Lysne, M.A., M.F.A., Ph.D is an author of 5 books, artist and energy healer. Recent books are Handbook to Heart Path, An Energy Medicine Guide, and Poems for the Lost Deer, (BlueBoneBooks, Santa Cruz,CA, 2014).
Her poems and reviews have been published in; Rattle, Phren-z online Magazine, Samizdat, Awkening Consciouesness Magazine, The Weekely Avocet, North American Review, Porcupine Literary Arts Magazine, Tree Stories, Beneath the Sleeping Maiden, Korone, Volumes VIII, IX, X, and Wounded Healers, (Wounded Healers Press, Bolinas, Ca., Rachel Remen, M.D., editor.) A member of Emerald Street Poets in Santa Cruz, she has an M.F.A.-Poetry, Mills College (2012), and Ph.D.-Energy Medicine, University of Natural Medicine, Satna Fe, (2013) Other published book titles are: Heart Path (BlueBoneBooks), Sarced Living (Conari Press), and Dancing Up The Moon (Conari Press).
She is a psychic/medium and energy healer with 25 years experience around the Bay Area and across the country by phone.
Lament for the Deer People
Shining in the inky firmament
no longer the deer-child
once carried
no longer a womb-bound
earth-tied star,
no longer here.
You were once a dream
a living moon
a sea of white deer
pouring over dark hillsides.
Moon of glowing sky
fallen over fields and green hills
a river herd
of blue bones
A tide given back
to the turquoise sea
always shining beyond
the storm ruined sky.
for Mar-i-Luna del Sol
--- Robin H. Lysne
5/4/15 WAS: Katherine Hastings hosted by Jan
Katherine Hastings is the author of Nighthawks (Spuyten Duyvil NYC, 2014) and Cloud Fire (Spuyten Duyvil NYC, 2012) as well as several chapbooks. Her poems have been published in many journals and anthologies, as well as The Book of Forms — A Handbook of Poetics, Lewis Putnam Turco, ed. (University Press of New England, 2012). Hastings is the founder and host of WordTemple on NPR affiliate KRCB FM as well as the WordTemple Poetry Series. In 2011, she edited and published the anthology What Redwoods Know — Poems From California State Parks as a benefit for the California State Parks Foundation when 70 State parks were threatened with permanent closure. She is serving as Poet Laureate of Sonoma County for the years 2014 — 2016. Her poet laureate project, Digging Our Poetic Roots will culminate with an anthology of poems from Sonoma County to be released in October of this year.
4/27/15 Prompt "There is no right or wrong", hosted by Nance & Bruce
As with all our prompt nights, a poet of the evening was nominated for inclusion in our coming on-line magazine, due out late July or early August. This weeks chosen poet was Joshua Curtis
.4/20/15 WAS: Juan Sequeira hosted by Bruce
Juan R. Sequeira was born in Granada, Nicaragua.
At the age of 7, he emigrated to San Francisco
with his mother, brother and sisters. He lived in the
Mission District and graduated from Mission High
in 1970. He earned a Bachelor of Science Degree
from the University of San Francisco in 1974 and
a Medical Degree from the University
of California at San Francisco in 1978. He has been
a practicing Physician in Contra Costa County.
His poems have been published in literary magizines.
(Black Bear Review, Blue Unicorn, Carquinez Poetry Review,
Mobius, San Fernando Poetry, Poet talk and Zyzzyva)
He has 2 collections of his poetry, Marimba Dreams,
1999 and Jaguar Footprints, 2006
Return
I will return to Nicaragua one day,
one day shielded by skyscraper volcanoes
I will remove my vagabond shoes one day,
one day pin a sacuanjoche flower to my sombrero
I will return to Nicaragua one day,
one day walk the narrowed cobblestones
wander among chocolate faces, mango dreamers
jaguar eyes drawn to marimba horizon
I will return to Nicaragua one day,
one day sit under a palm eating baho
watch monkeys somersault, herons strut
history parade to a chorus of guitars
I will return to Nicaragua one day,
one day shadowed by a tortilla moon
I will remove my designer clothes one day,
one day my cenzontle heart will sing I never left
Zyzzyva 1999
4/13/15: WAS: Chris Chandler hosted by Jim
Poet and storyteller Chris Chandler is as hilarious and entertaining as he is provocative and rabble-rousing, delivering vignettes about politics and modern culture with the fire of a Baptist Preacher. His appearances are insightful tales of a world gone slightly mad, accompanied by a wide variety of musical styles. He has performed on thousands of stages across North America, working with such legendary figures as Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Mojo Nixon and Ani DiFranco. The late great Utah Phillips called Chris "the best performance poet I have ever seen." see more at chrischandler.org
Going Beyond Inspirational
Solo performance on growing up with a Disability by Nina G
"How many people with Disabilities does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" Answer: "One to screw it in and 5 abled bodied people to say, 'you are such an inspiration!'"
This joke is a favorite in Nina G's stand up routine. It brings to light (no pun intended) the struggle people with Disabilities have in an abled bodied society that reduces them to images of "inspirations" and "overcomers.” As America’s only female stand up comedian who stutters, Nina has been challenging attitudes about Disability since she took the stage for the first time in 2010. Nina challenges perceptions about Disability in her new show, Beyond Inspirational, to premiere in her hometown of Alameda on April 1 and 3, 2015. Beyond Inspirational deals with the pain, joys, and revelations growing up with Speech and Learning Disabilities. Join the Pacific Pinball Museum for the premiere of this unique one person show! Portion of the proceeds go to the museum.
For more information about Nina and Beyond Inspirational, go to www.beyondinspirational.
Solo performance on growing up with a Disability by Nina G
"How many people with Disabilities does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" Answer: "One to screw it in and 5 abled bodied people to say, 'you are such an inspiration!'"
This joke is a favorite in Nina G's stand up routine. It brings to light (no pun intended) the struggle people with Disabilities have in an abled bodied society that reduces them to images of "inspirations" and "overcomers.” As America’s only female stand up comedian who stutters, Nina has been challenging attitudes about Disability since she took the stage for the first time in 2010. Nina challenges perceptions about Disability in her new show, Beyond Inspirational, to premiere in her hometown of Alameda on April 1 and 3, 2015. Beyond Inspirational deals with the pain, joys, and revelations growing up with Speech and Learning Disabilities. Join the Pacific Pinball Museum for the premiere of this unique one person show! Portion of the proceeds go to the museum.
For more information about Nina and Beyond Inspirational, go to www.beyondinspirational.
Nina G is America’s favorite female stuttering stand up comedian (granted she is the only one). She is also a disability activist, storyteller, children's book author and educator. She brings her humor to help people confront and understand social justice issues such as disability, diversity, and equity.
When she isn’t performing at comedy clubs like the San Francisco Punchline or the Laugh Factory, she is playing colleges and presenting as a keynote speaker to children with disabilities and training professionals! She is the author of a children’s book titled, Once Upon An Accommodation: A Book About Learning Disabilities, that helps children and adults advocate for their rights as a person with a Disability. 2015 will be the release of her one woman show, Going Beyond Inspirational, which is a comical exploration about growing up with Learning and Speech Disabilities.
Nina was diagnosed with a Learning Disability and began to stutter while in elementary school. She struggled to deal with teachers who underestimated her abilities, teasing from peers and family members, and issues of self-esteem. Nina was raised in the Oakland area and attended UC Berkeley where the roots of the Disability Movement took place, solidifying her identity as a person with a disability, one she sees with cultural and political empowerment. She later received her doctoral degree and works toward access for people with disabilities. Nina strives not to overcome her disability but to overcome the attitudes about what people with disabilities can achieve.
Keith Bowers of the SF Weekly sums Nina up best, "Nina G. grew up with a stutter. A couple of times each minute, a certain syllable will hang her up. She'll stall, repeat the same sound a few times – like the word is literally trapped – but then she'll get it out and move on. All her life people have given condescending advice on how she can cure the condition if she just tries hard enough. Others haven't been so kind. To this day grown people mock her and laugh at her expense. But Nina G. doesn't hide. In fact she'll tell you stories about publicly embarrassing people who've laughed at her. She'll tell you these stories from the stage. See, Nina G. is a comedian, and she deals in comebacks. So if you meet her in a cafe or on a BART platform and want to put her down, think hard on that. (Really. We've seen her. She's fierce.)"
3/30/15 WAS: Workshop: Helpful Hints --
People attending brought 15-20 copies of their work which they read and then peoplel provided helpful comments about the work. Each Poet got 15 minutes (including the reading and comments) If (Please see menu at top of page and read http://poetryexpressberkeley.blogspot.com/p/maverick-nights-poetry-contest-and.html The nominated poet from this evening is Laura Schulkind
Some of the discussion included:
What was your intention when you started out to write this poem?
· How did it change as your wrote it?
· How did it change as you edited it?
· Did it, in the end, provide the content, thought, and feelings you intended?
· What is your usual method for writing?
· What is your usual method for editing?
· What do you look for in your own work?
· Do you have threads of common themes in your work?
· Do you have a poetry persona which differs from yourself in other circumstances?
· What voice do you like to write in?
· Do you like to use shifting metaphors or stay within narrower boundries?
· What structures do you like to use? Why?
· How does this poem relate to you – what is the back story behind it?
· Could you edit the poem to a shorter version and retain all the meaning?
3/23/15 Prompt: Ancestors, hosted by Nance (Please see menu at top of page and read http://poetryexpressberkeley.blogspot.com/p/maverick-nights-poetry-contest-and.html
The Nominated Poet from this evening was Alice Templeton for her pantoun (Please see menu at top of page and read http://poetryexpressberkeley.blogspot.com/p/maverick-nights-poetry-contest-and.htm
3/16/15 WAS: --- Adele Mendelson & Bruce Bagnell
Adele Mendelson had a long career as an ESL teacher at the University of California at Berkeley. She began writing poetry by accident and then devoted herself to it for many years. Now she is mostly writing fiction, but the poems keep coming anyway, for which she is thankful. She has produced several volumes of work and enjoys sharing her writing at venues around the Bay Area. She believes that writing should be sexy, there should be something at stake, and the dark side should be lurking just beneath the cover. This evening she will be reading some of her recent fiction.
Adele Mendelson had a long career as an ESL teacher at the University of California at Berkeley. She began writing poetry by accident and then devoted herself to it for many years. Now she is mostly writing fiction, but the poems keep coming anyway, for which she is thankful. She has produced several volumes of work and enjoys sharing her writing at venues around the Bay Area. She believes that writing should be sexy, there should be something at stake, and the dark side should be lurking just beneath the cover. This evening she will be reading some of her recent fiction.
3/9/15 WAS: Julia Vinograd hosted by Jim
Julia Vinograd is a Berkeley street poet. She has published over 59 books of poetry and won the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation. She has a B.A. from UC Berkeley and a M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. A Pushcart Prize winner for "The Young Men Who Died of AIDS," she has a Poetry Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Berkeley and is one of the editors of the anthology New American Poetry Vol. I: The Babarians of San Francisco -- Poets from Hell.
3/2/15 WAS: David Rosenthal hosted by Jan
David Rosenthal lives in Berkeley with his wife and two daughters.
He teaches kindergarten and first grade in the Oakland public
schools. His poems and translations have appeared in Rattle,
Raintown Review, Measure, Unsplendid, Birmingham Poetry Review,
Modern Haiku, Umbrella, and other journals. He has been a Pushcart
Nominee and a Nemerov Sonnet Award Finalist. His first book, The
Wild Geography of Misplaced Things, was released from White Violet
Press in 2013.
2/23/15 WAS: Prompt: Apples, Oranges & Pears hosted by Nance
read http://poetryexpressberkeley.blogspot.com/p/maverick-nights-poetry-contest-and.html
Grace Marie Grafton was the evening's election for her "Daily Miracles" poem. This poem and subsequent nominated poems read during our prompt and maverick nights will be published in our summer issue of the Poetry Express on-line magazine, PoeBerkMag.
http://poeberkmag.blogspot.com/
2/16/15 WAS: Jeremy Cantor
Jeremy Cantor began writing poetry shortly before retiring from a career in laboratory chemistry. He has cleared tables and washed dishes, made and tested detergents, pharmaceuticals and engine oil additives, spent time in a full-body acid-proof hazmat suit, tried to keep his fingers working in a walk-in freezer at -40°F, and worked behind radiation shielding. He prefers writing.
His first collection, Wisteria from Seed, was just released under Kelsay Books' Alabaster Leaves imprint.
In the book's foreword, Michael Manning, former Classical Music/Arts Correspondent for the Boston Globe writes: "Jeremy Cantor’s collection, Wisteria from Seed
Jeremy's work has appeared in Naugatuck River Review, Printer's Devil Review, Pirene's Fountain, The Bicycle Review, Convergence and other publications. His poem "The Nietzsche Contrapositive" won first prize in Grey Sparrow Press' 2014 Flash/Poetry competition. He has begun a blog at (jeremycantorpoet.com/blog/) with advice for poets whose work has never been published and are wondering what to do next.
The ideal he strives for in his writing is mathematician George Pólya's definition of "elegance": something that is both "directly proportional to the number of independent ideas one can see" and "inversely proportional to the effort it takes to see them.”
Jeremy was born and raised in Connecticut, and studied biology, mathematics, art history and music at the University of Michigan. Berkeley was the first place he came to when he arrived in California in 1975 after leaving Ann Arbor, and it still feels like home to him, though he now lives with his wife in Benicia. He is pleased to count poets Joel Fallon of Benicia and Connie Post of Livermore among his mentors.
More information about Wisteria from Seed, as well as a calendar of future readings, can be found at his website, jeremycantorpoet.com).
2/9/15 WAS: Amos White hosted by Jim
Amos White is an award winning American haiku poet and author, recognized for his vivid imagery and breathless interpretations. He was a Finalist in the NPR National Cherry Blossom haiku Contest 2013; and received First Place in "The Witt Literary Journal" Haiku Writing Contest. He is the author of the book, "The Sound of the Web: Haiku and Poetry on Facebook and Twitter" (CreateSpace, 2013). Living in San Francisco and Imperia, Italy, he can be found making olive oil and growing red wine grapes. http://youtu.be/9KOYyaYVRBU
2/2/15 WAS: Sherri Rose-Walker hosted by Jan
Sherri Rose-Walker is a life-long poet who wrote her first poem, a limerick, at the age of seven. Her poetry is principally concerned with deepening the inner life of the Feminine, and seasons of the soul. Her work has been published in the We'Moon datebook and wall calendars (and is included in the 2015 datebook and wall calendar), The Salt Reader, Echoes from the Heart, Blueprint, Bay Area Poet's Seasonal Review, San Francisco Peace and Hope (and is included in the forthcoming print edition of the 2014 issue), New Vision (U.K.), Poetalk, Marin Poetry Center Anthology, 2013 and 2014 editions, anthologies published by Bristol Banner Books, and her chapbook Two Trees. She is a member of the Ekphrastic Poetry Collective, a group that reads at A Woman’s Eye Gallery in San Francisco, and she hosts a monthly poetry reading series in Pacifica. She can be reached at sherrirose-walker@hotmail.com
1/26/15 WAS: Theme Night, BEING ALIVE hosted by Nance
Entire evening was devoted to your poems loosely related to the Theme. 5 min per poet per round
1/19/15 WAS: feature canceled, held open mic.
1/12/15 WAS: Lina Campopiano hosted by Jim
My Bio:
I am currently educating myself at Chabot College in Hayward; excited to learn, but also to get more involved with my community.
I work with a non-profit called Lunchbox International to involve high school students in the art of expression with poetry.
I am a lover knowledge and passion.
A daughter of a broken system and a community who is unconscious.
Always on the lookout for new opportunities and resources, and active to enlighten myself and others.
Anyone who has something beautiful to offer, whether it be wisdom or resource, let me buy you a cup of tea and we'll talk.
My Poem:
An interesting experience, it is
to look at a screen as if its a mirror
and let someone's voice propel your mind through time and memory
and the honest lies we tell ourselves to forget
Interesting how a body can't forget
how comforting it is too weep with your soul pouring out your eyes
Interesting how warm solitude feels
What beautiful loneliness..
Staying strong is hard when you don't have the strength to stay
But battles of the heart makes one resilient against more...
Maybe a little rough with callous
But here, nonetheless
For you don't dare give up the war.
1/5/15 WAS: Sandra Anfang hosted by Jan
Sande Anfang is a lifelong Sunday poet who began to write fervently about two years ago. She is an online poem-a-day junkie, and, aside from a few workshops here and there, is mostly self-taught. She hosts Rivetown Poets: A-Muse-ing Mondays, a monthly poetry series in Petaluma. Sande has self-published four collections of poetry and is now wading in the somewhat unsettling waters of poetry submission. Her poems have appeared in the The Shine Journal, Poetalk, San Francisco Peace and Hope, and West Trestle Review.
Sande is inspired by the mundane: animal, mineral, vegetable. She likes to explore oddities and malformed things, stripping them down to their humanity. She is also inspired by human foibles, especially her own.
The Dare
What do they have to do
to wake us
from the drug of blindness
excise our cataracts?
inertia jams the gate.
They die by billions
from hive collapse
disappear as contraband
stolen by men in inspectors’ clothing
make back-page news.
Listen to their warnings
buzzed out in a code
cracked by jeweled dwarves:
Save the flowers
berries
carrots
kale.
Save us from ourselves.
12/29/14 WAS: Malke Singer hosted by Odilia
Malke Singer a Jewitch lesbian who lives in Oakland, is currently experiencing a delicious if precariously balanced phase of great happiness living in Upper Peralta Creek neighborhood in her own little hundred year old Victorian cottage with her dog and tortoise. Loves heights and ladders. In her day job she works as an Occupational Therapist with preschoolers. She writes and is a student of drumming of the African Diaspora and Middle East.
12/22/14 was a holiday, no P.E.
12/15/2014 WAS: Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet hosted by Bruce
Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet's book The Greenhouse won the 2014 Frost Place Chapbook Contest and is forthcoming from by Bull City Press in September.
Lisa’s first book, Tulips, Water, Ash, was selected by Jean Valentine for the Morse Poetry Prize. She has been awarded a Javits fellowship and a Phelan Award; her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Quarterly West, The Iowa Review, and 32 Poems and in the anthologies Best New Poets and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry. (www.
CHIMERA
Microchimerism is the persistent presence of a few genetically distinct cells in
an organism... cells containing the male Y chromosome were found circulating
in the blood of women after pregnancy.
I want them out. I want
to be myself, my self
again. My old untethered,
young untied. I lie: I want
nothing more—or want
no more the point.
Dendritic, en-
twined, signed on
for the duration. Bright
tangle, snaking line
of fire. The crucible
does not ask
for want. Is. Tied in,
shot through. Fired.
12/8/14 WAS: David Partch hosted by Jim
David Eugene Partch, a native Californian who studied philosophy in Germany for 14 years, has been writing poetry for over 40 years, culminating in his new book of selected poems, The Hard and the Soft of It, available on Amazon.com. His poetry has been set to music in Australia, danced to and featured at several venues throughout Northern California. It covers a broad range of topics and perspectives and has been variously described by admirers as beautiful, poignant, powerful, full of good ideas, sublime, provocative, and “like drinking fresh spring water”. David is also a singer/songwriter, has been judged “the best espresso philosopher poet I know” by Marvin R. Hiemstra and is a self-ascribed permaculture poet and instructor.
Poem:
The Gift of Seed
what shall we do,
we
who have forgotten tradition
because tradition has forgotten us?
we
who have left the Garden –
the Garden of abundance ...
to be enslaved in our own forsaking,
left naked in our ignorance,
abandoned to meaningless drivel –
to the whims of a culture run amok.
the womb is broken, yes.
but these hands –
these hands are the medicine
that can heal the Earth’s sorrow.
and once again,
with the gift of Seed,
we will begin.
with the right conditions,
Seeds will grow.
with the right nutrients,
they will flourish.
with the right intentions,
we will prevail.
these hands
will return now
and caress the Earth’s skin –
explore every facet of her wealth,
search for the old
and build a new tradition
of love and patience,
of give and take:
a tradition
we pray
will be our future.
12/1/14 WAS: Paul Drabkin hosted by Jan
He was born in New York City to Yiddish-speaking immigrant parents who came to the U.S. more than 100 years ago from different parts of the old Russian empire. He has lived in the Bay Area for over 50 years, Paul was a ³red diaper² baby of the Stalinist variety, which, oddly blended with a kind of Victorian puritanism, proved to be a major toxin poisoning his childhood, and which took several decades to partially overcome. This largely accounts for his present discomfort with lefter-than-thou Berkeley politics and with ideology in general. Despite his two History degrees and three California teaching credentials, and varied teaching experience, Paul¹s longest gig was his over twenty years as a self-employed furniture refinisher. (Among other abortive careers, for several years he had worked as a taxi driver on the graveyard shift in Hollywood, and later in the East Bay.) He presently supplements his meager retirement income teaching English to adult immigrants in West Contra Costa County. Paul wrote his first poem in 1967, while coming down from an acid high. (Fortunately it has been lost to posterity.) He wrote little more until 2007, when he entered a local slam contest, winning fourth place with a decidedly un-slammy poem. Since then he has been serious about writing, although much of his output has been frivolous in the extreme. For months Paul shared his gifts with an alter-ego, Nikos Rhapsodòs, born of a rather labored series of puns on his last name. Nikos, like Paul, has the chutzpah to identify with Odysseus, and is perhaps even more enamored of the mystery and beauty of human language. Paul¹s favorite muse is the goddess Sarasvati, who used to be a river.
One Cool Dude, or Burnt Out on Intensive Caring
These spectacles are not for me;
my peers are grownups who refuse
to see the world in shades of rose
or other less auspicious hues:
we do not drown ourselves in blues!
Long years have passed since you might hear
me rooting for this team or that
or exercised by coups d¹état
while frantic news of global heat
now leaves me cool as Arctic frost.
I choose to waste my energies
on stuff that bores most people stiff:
such vast reserves of obscure verse,
such speculations on the sighs
of God, are quite enough for me.
Paul Drabkin March 2013
11/24/14 WAS: Theme Night, topic MYSTERY hosted by Nance
11/17/14 WAS scheduled for Sharon Elliot hosted by Odilia but due to unexpected events Sharon was unable to feature and we hope to reschedule her soon.
Sharon Elliott was born and raised in Seattle and lives in Oakland. Four years in
the Peace Corps in Nicaragua and Ecuador laid the foundation for her activism
in multicultural women’s issues. Her book, Jaguar Unfinished was published in
2012. She was an awardee of the Best Poem of 2012, The Day of Little Comfort,
by La Bloga On-Line Floricanto; and has been featured in poetry readings in
the Bay Area. She is an initiated Lukumi priest of Scot/Sámi/African Carribbean
ancestry; ally to people of color and to the earth.
11/10/14 WAS: Roy Mash hosted by Jim
Roy Mash is a long time board member of Marin Poetry Center in San Rafael. In a previous life he collected degrees in English, Philosophy, and Computer Science, but currently doodles his brief time away staring out of café windows, dabbing up the seeds that have fallen from an everything bagel, and mentally thumbing over his poems that have appeared widely in journals such as Agni, Atlanta Review, Barrow Street, The Evansville Review, Nimrod, Passages North, Poetry East, Rhino, and River Styx. Roy’s new book, , Buyer's Remorse, is now available at Barnes & Nobile, Amazon, or for direct purchase from the author at www.roymash.com, or at Rebound Bookstore, 1611 4th St, San Rafael, CA. (415) 482-0550
Roy Mash writes a deliciously engaging and clever sort of object poem....It would not be surprising if memorable gems like “Love of Slapstick,” “The Untouchables,” and “Buyer’s Remorse” eventually find their way into contemporary anthologies and become part of our poetic canon.
Buyer's Remorse is a celebration of the small, the overlooked, the underrated. Doggedly anti-lofty, reveling in the This-Worldly, the poems caper around the themes of the body, of mathematics and rationality, adolescence and middle-age, love and fear and death. The tone ranges from the irreverent to the wistful – the spritz of seltzer in the face of the Creature from the Black Lagoon to the lover standing in one sock. Drawing on sources from The Three Stooges to Archimedes, Lavoisier to Tweety Bird, Mash is a latter day Anti-Oracle, a nail in the tire of post-modernity, an incorrigible wag who’s smuggled his pea shooter into the Church of Poetry.
Be ready to duck.
11/3/14 WAS: Bill Rowen hosted by Jan
.
Bill is in what he calls his "second poetry phase." He began writing poetry in the early 1980's, often reading at the Coffee Mill in Oakland, but after several years he dropped out of the poetry scene. After major cancer surgery in 2009, which was successful, he began writing again. Now living in Alameda, he is active in poetry groups there and throughout the Bay Area. He has won prizes at the Benicia Love Poetry contest, CFCP, Poets Dinner (although he didn't show up to collect his prize) and Mary Rudge's Site Write contest. He has been a lawyer for 37 years. This is his first featured reading at Poetry Express.
10/27/14 WAS: Theme Night, topic: UNREQUITED LOVE, hosted by Nance
10/20/14 WAS: Harold Tzn hosted by Odilia
Harold Terezón is an educator and poet from Pacoima, CA. He received the San Francisco Foundation's James D. Phelan Literary Award in 2013. He served as a teaching artist for WritersCorps from 2011-2013, helping San Francisco youth find their voice through poetry and writing. His work has appeared in POECOLOGY, Puerto del Sol, PALABRA, Rushing Waters Rising Dreams: How the Arts Are Transforming a Community, and The Acentos Review, among other publications. He is currently teaching poetry at City College of San Francisco and working on Hunting Izotes, a collection of poems inspired
by his family's immigrant experience.
10/13/14 WAS: Laura Schulkind hosted by Odilia
Poet and writer Laura Schulkind is an attorney by day, where she is entrusted with others’ stories. Through fiction and poetry she tells her own. She and her husband divide their time between Berkeley and Big Sur California, and her two grown sons continue to inspire her. Her published work can be seen atwww.lauraschulkind.com
Snake and Toad
(Forge Journal, Fall 2012)
Braided into the scrub brush,
I saw them,
snake and toad,
black garter slender as my beckoning finger,
except for its bulging jaw
stretched madly around half the toad,
head already gone,
belly the blue-white of fern tendrils still curled underground,
motionless except for the ripple of skin
stretched thin across its still-beating heart.
10/6/14 WAS: Anthony Adrian Xavier Pino hosted by Jan
Anthony Adrian Xavier Pino was born and raised in California, the oldest of 11 children. He was educated in Jesuit schools, Bellarmine Prep and Santa Clara University. He holds two masters degrees. His writing ---both stories and poetry--- reflects the topography and ethnicity of California and other exposures. He has worked in Germany, Northern Virginia and the San Francisco Bay Area. He was employed by the US government and Stanford University and currently teaches English at Ohlone and San Jose City colleges. He is active in the California Writers Club and the Alameda Island Poets. He has been competitively published in several print and online journals and has won awards for his poetry. Hiis book, A Hidden River, contains both shorty stories and Poetry.
Red Cadillac
There was a calling came out of the south
and out of Kansas City, Philadelphia and Boston,
out of the big sprawling cities and ailing, unpainted houses
the abandoned brick-faced factories,
and those hot, lively, jumping churches.
The call went out over littered rail track beds,
and through the drifting, high-rising clouds, the plumes of the mid-west,
over country roads quilting Oklahoma and stitching up Texas,
arid endless deserts, ax-hard, baked and cracked,
and the sharp-edged granite and soft, soaring alpine trees of western Nevada;
and down it came, falling cherry-sweet on California,
cherry-sweet on its country towns sleeping on the edges of earthly abundance,
towns by the wheat, the lettuce, corn and thick-armed orchards where we kids lived,
braggin’ and singin’, growin’ up, gettin’ big, cuttin’ through secret fields,
and talkin’ big of hot rods, hidden loves, high schools, ball games and girls.
And there, in the fields and orchards of our valleys, the soft earth of our youth,
we heard the call of the too-sweet music crackling on tired radios,
young and fresh voices in a stale, rigid world,
music sung by the blackest of angels, boys of carefully pomaded hair,
slick Sunday suits and big smiles, the Doo-Wop singers who sang for us
and fell hard for those hucksters with the small checks,
big needles and bad business deals; those kids always in their Cadillacs ---
a love of flash which I never fully fathomed,
but come to grasp fifty years later, when a growth, a cyst, a pod,
a secret pocket of sweet understanding broke open in my throat
and flooded my thoughts, lifting my head and giving me enlightenment;
it was then I beheld the truth.
Now I understand the red Cadillac,
understand the hunger for the beatific and early arrival of a great burnished car
the need for dark sunglasses for the overload of light
the cashmere suits for the tenderness of feeling not found in others.
Now I understand about singing the sacred,
the hard, hungry longing for angelic love,
and the dirt-low humiliation of not having her
that girl, that girl, that girl with the name oracular,
and having only to make and re-make her song:
“Gloria, Gloria, Gloria
She doesn’t love me,
No, she doesn’t love me.”
****
It all comes to me now that many were called
but most were frozen --- iced on the blistering, killing white.
Now listen to me, Cadillac boys,
I’m getting old, so look for me soon, will you?
You’ll laugh to see me comin’ through the clouds.
I’ll wear a red sequined jacket
and drive up in a green Pontiac, top down,
“Sha-boom” on the license plate.
I didn’t earn a Cadillac.
I didn’t earn a Cadillac.
9/29/14 WAS: Scott Riley hosted by bruce
Scott Riley is a PhD Candidate in Literature at UC Santa Cruz specializing in twentieth-century American poetry. He holds a BA in Rhetoric from UC Berkeley, a MA from the Graduate Theological Union and a MFA in poetry from Saint Mary's College of California. His poetry has been published in the Berkeley Poetry Review, Palooka Journal and NANO Fiction. He lives with his wife, the Reverend Elizabeth Riley, in Menlo Park, CA.
9/22/14 WAS: Marvin Spector hosted by Nance
Marvin lived and traveled abroad from 1964-75. Educated in
physics, he became a world traveler for 10 years. Then he
settled in the bay area and has spent the last 15 years writing
his memoirs in the form of an adventure novel.
9/15/14 WAS:Sara Mithra hosted by Bruce
With powerful strangeness, Sara Anika Mithra narrates tales of spinstresses, buffalo, and hunters to tease out desire and syncretic voices of the margins. Often troubling and folkloric, her poems cover terrain like spiderwebs. See what’s caught come morning.
Her handmade chapbooks and zines include The Better to Teeth You With, DIG, Neither Thirst, and Wood: A Handbook. She records performances to share on Soundcloud and creates poem-videos from found footage.
9/8/14 WAS: Iris De Anda hosted by Odilia
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 WAS: Theme Night: Entire evening devoted to your poems loosely arranged around the theme of FOOD. hosted by Nance
8/18/14 WAS: 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.
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.
Elsewhere, yes.
who weaves in and out of
said secrets
Denver, 2/3/14 David Welper
8/11/14 WAS 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.
8/4/14 WAS: 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 llustrated 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.
Julia Vinograd is a Berkeley street poet. She has published over 59 books of poetry and won the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation. She has a B.A. from UC Berkeley and a M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. A Pushcart Prize winner for "The Young Men Who Died of AIDS," she has a Poetry Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Berkeley and is one of the editors of the anthology New American Poetry Vol. I: The Babarians of San Francisco -- Poets from Hell.
David Rosenthal lives in Berkeley with his wife and two daughters.
He teaches kindergarten and first grade in the Oakland public
schools. His poems and translations have appeared in Rattle,
Raintown Review, Measure, Unsplendid, Birmingham Poetry Review,
Modern Haiku, Umbrella, and other journals. He has been a Pushcart
Nominee and a Nemerov Sonnet Award Finalist. His first book, The
Wild Geography of Misplaced Things, was released from White Violet
Press in 2013.
2/23/15 WAS: Prompt: Apples, Oranges & Pears hosted by Nance
read http://poetryexpressberkeley.blogspot.com/p/maverick-nights-poetry-contest-and.html
Grace Marie Grafton was the evening's election for her "Daily Miracles" poem. This poem and subsequent nominated poems read during our prompt and maverick nights will be published in our summer issue of the Poetry Express on-line magazine, PoeBerkMag.
http://poeberkmag.blogspot.com/
2/16/15 WAS: Jeremy Cantor
Jeremy Cantor began writing poetry shortly before retiring from a career in laboratory chemistry. He has cleared tables and washed dishes, made and tested detergents, pharmaceuticals and engine oil additives, spent time in a full-body acid-proof hazmat suit, tried to keep his fingers working in a walk-in freezer at -40°F, and worked behind radiation shielding. He prefers writing.
His first collection, Wisteria from Seed, was just released under Kelsay Books' Alabaster Leaves imprint.
In the book's foreword, Michael Manning, former Classical Music/Arts Correspondent for the Boston Globe writes: "Jeremy Cantor’s collection, Wisteria from Seed
Jeremy's work has appeared in Naugatuck River Review, Printer's Devil Review, Pirene's Fountain, The Bicycle Review, Convergence and other publications. His poem "The Nietzsche Contrapositive" won first prize in Grey Sparrow Press' 2014 Flash/Poetry competition. He has begun a blog at (jeremycantorpoet.com/blog/) with advice for poets whose work has never been published and are wondering what to do next.
The ideal he strives for in his writing is mathematician George Pólya's definition of "elegance": something that is both "directly proportional to the number of independent ideas one can see" and "inversely proportional to the effort it takes to see them.”
Jeremy was born and raised in Connecticut, and studied biology, mathematics, art history and music at the University of Michigan. Berkeley was the first place he came to when he arrived in California in 1975 after leaving Ann Arbor, and it still feels like home to him, though he now lives with his wife in Benicia. He is pleased to count poets Joel Fallon of Benicia and Connie Post of Livermore among his mentors.
More information about Wisteria from Seed, as well as a calendar of future readings, can be found at his website, jeremycantorpoet.com).
2/9/15 WAS: Amos White hosted by Jim
Amos White is an award winning American haiku poet and author, recognized for his vivid imagery and breathless interpretations. He was a Finalist in the NPR National Cherry Blossom haiku Contest 2013; and received First Place in "The Witt Literary Journal" Haiku Writing Contest. He is the author of the book, "The Sound of the Web: Haiku and Poetry on Facebook and Twitter" (CreateSpace, 2013). Living in San Francisco and Imperia, Italy, he can be found making olive oil and growing red wine grapes. http://youtu.be/9KOYyaYVRBU
http://about.me/amoswhitehaiku He is a native of Columbus, Ohio.
2/2/15 WAS: Sherri Rose-Walker hosted by Jan
Sherri Rose-Walker is a life-long poet who wrote her first poem, a limerick, at the age of seven. Her poetry is principally concerned with deepening the inner life of the Feminine, and seasons of the soul. Her work has been published in the We'Moon datebook and wall calendars (and is included in the 2015 datebook and wall calendar), The Salt Reader, Echoes from the Heart, Blueprint, Bay Area Poet's Seasonal Review, San Francisco Peace and Hope (and is included in the forthcoming print edition of the 2014 issue), New Vision (U.K.), Poetalk, Marin Poetry Center Anthology, 2013 and 2014 editions, anthologies published by Bristol Banner Books, and her chapbook Two Trees. She is a member of the Ekphrastic Poetry Collective, a group that reads at A Woman’s Eye Gallery in San Francisco, and she hosts a monthly poetry reading series in Pacifica. She can be reached at sherrirose-walker@hotmail.com
1/26/15 WAS: Theme Night, BEING ALIVE hosted by Nance
Entire evening was devoted to your poems loosely related to the Theme. 5 min per poet per round
1/19/15 WAS: feature canceled, held open mic.
1/12/15 WAS: Lina Campopiano hosted by Jim
My Bio:I am currently educating myself at Chabot College in Hayward; excited to learn, but also to get more involved with my community.I work with a non-profit called Lunchbox International to involve high school students in the art of expression with poetry.I am a lover knowledge and passion.A daughter of a broken system and a community who is unconscious.Always on the lookout for new opportunities and resources, and active to enlighten myself and others.Anyone who has something beautiful to offer, whether it be wisdom or resource, let me buy you a cup of tea and we'll talk.
My Poem:An interesting experience, it isto look at a screen as if its a mirrorand let someone's voice propel your mind through time and memoryand the honest lies we tell ourselves to forgetInteresting how a body can't forgethow comforting it is too weep with your soul pouring out your eyesInteresting how warm solitude feelsWhat beautiful loneliness..Staying strong is hard when you don't have the strength to stayBut battles of the heart makes one resilient against more...Maybe a little rough with callousBut here, nonetheless
For you don't dare give up the war.
1/5/15 WAS: Sandra Anfang hosted by Jan
Sande Anfang is a lifelong Sunday poet who began to write fervently about two years ago. She is an online poem-a-day junkie, and, aside from a few workshops here and there, is mostly self-taught. She hosts Rivetown Poets: A-Muse-ing Mondays, a monthly poetry series in Petaluma. Sande has self-published four collections of poetry and is now wading in the somewhat unsettling waters of poetry submission. Her poems have appeared in the The Shine Journal, Poetalk, San Francisco Peace and Hope, and West Trestle Review.
Sande is inspired by the mundane: animal, mineral, vegetable. She likes to explore oddities and malformed things, stripping them down to their humanity. She is also inspired by human foibles, especially her own.
The Dare
The Dare
What do they have to do
to wake us
from the drug of blindness
excise our cataracts?
inertia jams the gate.
They die by billions
from hive collapse
disappear as contraband
stolen by men in inspectors’ clothing
make back-page news.
Listen to their warnings
buzzed out in a code
cracked by jeweled dwarves:
Save the flowers
berries
carrots
kale.
Save us from ourselves.
12/29/14 WAS: Malke Singer hosted by Odilia
Malke Singer a Jewitch lesbian who lives in Oakland, is currently experiencing a delicious if precariously balanced phase of great happiness living in Upper Peralta Creek neighborhood in her own little hundred year old Victorian cottage with her dog and tortoise. Loves heights and ladders. In her day job she works as an Occupational Therapist with preschoolers. She writes and is a student of drumming of the African Diaspora and Middle East.
12/22/14 was a holiday, no P.E.
12/15/2014 WAS: Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet hosted by Bruce
I want them out. I want
young untied. I lie: I want
nothing more—or want
twined, signed on
of fire. The crucible
does not ask
Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet's book The Greenhouse won the 2014 Frost Place Chapbook Contest and is forthcoming from by Bull City Press in September.Lisa’s first book, Tulips, Water, Ash, was selected by Jean Valentine for the Morse Poetry Prize. She has been awarded a Javits fellowship and a Phelan Award; her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Quarterly West, The Iowa Review, and 32 Poems and in the anthologies Best New Poets and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry. (www.lisagluskinstonestreet.com) Judge David Baker praised The Greenhouse “for its interplay of restlessness and patience, its mapping of an interiority both shared and dearly personal, and its lyric and maternal primacy. Primacy is the circumstance, yet doubleness is the story, the double birth of the poet’s infant son and her own coming-back-to-language. The poems of The Greenhouse are profound, fundamental works, born of a deep interiority and making their intricate ways, phrase by phrase, toward a design both organic and artful.”
CHIMERA
Microchimerism is the persistent presence of a few genetically distinct cells in
an organism... cells containing the male Y chromosome were found circulating
in the blood of women after pregnancy.
I want them out. I want
to be myself, my self
again. My old untethered,
young untied. I lie: I want
nothing more—or want
no more the point.
Dendritic, en-
twined, signed on
for the duration. Bright
tangle, snaking line
of fire. The crucible
does not ask
for want. Is. Tied in,
shot through. Fired.
12/8/14 WAS: David Partch hosted by Jim
David Eugene Partch, a native Californian who studied philosophy in Germany for 14 years, has been writing poetry for over 40 years, culminating in his new book of selected poems, The Hard and the Soft of It, available on Amazon.com. His poetry has been set to music in Australia, danced to and featured at several venues throughout Northern California. It covers a broad range of topics and perspectives and has been variously described by admirers as beautiful, poignant, powerful, full of good ideas, sublime, provocative, and “like drinking fresh spring water”. David is also a singer/songwriter, has been judged “the best espresso philosopher poet I know” by Marvin R. Hiemstra and is a self-ascribed permaculture poet and instructor.Poem:The Gift of Seedwhat shall we do,
we
who have forgotten traditionbecause tradition has forgotten us?we
who have left the Garden –
the Garden of abundance ...
to be enslaved in our own forsaking,left naked in our ignorance,abandoned to meaningless drivel –to the whims of a culture run amok.the womb is broken, yes.
but these hands –
these hands are the medicinethat can heal the Earth’s sorrow.and once again,with the gift of Seed,we will begin.with the right conditions,Seeds will grow.
with the right nutrients,they will flourish.with the right intentions,we will prevail.these hands
will return now
and caress the Earth’s skin –explore every facet of her wealth,search for the oldand build a new traditionof love and patience,
of give and take:a tradition
we pray
will be our future.
12/1/14 WAS: Paul Drabkin hosted by Jan
He was born in New York City to Yiddish-speaking immigrant parents who came to the U.S. more than 100 years ago from different parts of the old Russian empire. He has lived in the Bay Area for over 50 years, Paul was a ³red diaper² baby of the Stalinist variety, which, oddly blended with a kind of Victorian puritanism, proved to be a major toxin poisoning his childhood, and which took several decades to partially overcome. This largely accounts for his present discomfort with lefter-than-thou Berkeley politics and with ideology in general. Despite his two History degrees and three California teaching credentials, and varied teaching experience, Paul¹s longest gig was his over twenty years as a self-employed furniture refinisher. (Among other abortive careers, for several years he had worked as a taxi driver on the graveyard shift in Hollywood, and later in the East Bay.) He presently supplements his meager retirement income teaching English to adult immigrants in West Contra Costa County. Paul wrote his first poem in 1967, while coming down from an acid high. (Fortunately it has been lost to posterity.) He wrote little more until 2007, when he entered a local slam contest, winning fourth place with a decidedly un-slammy poem. Since then he has been serious about writing, although much of his output has been frivolous in the extreme. For months Paul shared his gifts with an alter-ego, Nikos Rhapsodòs, born of a rather labored series of puns on his last name. Nikos, like Paul, has the chutzpah to identify with Odysseus, and is perhaps even more enamored of the mystery and beauty of human language. Paul¹s favorite muse is the goddess Sarasvati, who used to be a river.
One Cool Dude, or Burnt Out on Intensive Caring
These spectacles are not for me;
my peers are grownups who refuse
to see the world in shades of rose
or other less auspicious hues:
we do not drown ourselves in blues!
Long years have passed since you might hear
me rooting for this team or that
or exercised by coups d¹état
while frantic news of global heat
now leaves me cool as Arctic frost.
I choose to waste my energies
on stuff that bores most people stiff:
such vast reserves of obscure verse,
such speculations on the sighs
of God, are quite enough for me.
Paul Drabkin March 2013
These spectacles are not for me;
my peers are grownups who refuse
to see the world in shades of rose
or other less auspicious hues:
we do not drown ourselves in blues!
Long years have passed since you might hear
me rooting for this team or that
or exercised by coups d¹état
while frantic news of global heat
now leaves me cool as Arctic frost.
I choose to waste my energies
on stuff that bores most people stiff:
such vast reserves of obscure verse,
such speculations on the sighs
of God, are quite enough for me.
Paul Drabkin March 2013
11/24/14 WAS: Theme Night, topic MYSTERY hosted by Nance
11/17/14 WAS scheduled for Sharon Elliot hosted by Odilia but due to unexpected events Sharon was unable to feature and we hope to reschedule her soon.
the Peace Corps in Nicaragua and Ecuador laid the foundation for her activism
in multicultural women’s issues. Her book, Jaguar Unfinished was published in
2012. She was an awardee of the Best Poem of 2012, The Day of Little Comfort,
by La Bloga On-Line Floricanto; and has been featured in poetry readings in
the Bay Area. She is an initiated Lukumi priest of Scot/Sámi/African Carribbean
ancestry; ally to people of color and to the earth.
11/10/14 WAS: Roy Mash hosted by Jim
Roy Mash is a long time board member of Marin Poetry Center in San Rafael. In a previous life he collected degrees in English, Philosophy, and Computer Science, but currently doodles his brief time away staring out of café windows, dabbing up the seeds that have fallen from an everything bagel, and mentally thumbing over his poems that have appeared widely in journals such as Agni, Atlanta Review, Barrow Street, The Evansville Review, Nimrod, Passages North, Poetry East, Rhino, and River Styx. Roy’s new book, , Buyer's Remorse, is now available at Barnes & Nobile, Amazon, or for direct purchase from the author at www.roymash.com, or at Rebound Bookstore, 1611 4th St, San Rafael, CA. (415) 482-0550
All author proceeds will be donated to Doctors Without Borders.
BUYER'S REMORSE
From Cherry Grove Collections
Roy Mash writes a deliciously engaging and clever sort of object poem....It would not be surprising if memorable gems like “Love of Slapstick,” “The Untouchables,” and “Buyer’s Remorse” eventually find their way into contemporary anthologies and become part of our poetic canon.
— Steve Kowit
Roy Mash’s insightful, touching, and wholly delightful Buyer’s Remorse is a celebration of the non-epic and unheroic, the bad decision, the finish out-of-the-money ... the inglorious lives we seem to have wound up with by mistake—not at all what we’d have chosen, but ... all in all, pretty damned fine.
— Charles Harper Webb
In Buyer’s Remorse, Roy Mash shows us a poet who has perfect pitch—never a wrong note or missed step. The poems, full of wry humor and tongue-in-cheek self-deprecating commentary, force us to look at ourselves with the poet’s jaundiced and almost forgiving eye. This is a book not to be missed.
— Maria Mazziotti Gillan
| |
Buyer's Remorse is a celebration of the small, the overlooked, the underrated. Doggedly anti-lofty, reveling in the This-Worldly, the poems caper around the themes of the body, of mathematics and rationality, adolescence and middle-age, love and fear and death. The tone ranges from the irreverent to the wistful – the spritz of seltzer in the face of the Creature from the Black Lagoon to the lover standing in one sock. Drawing on sources from The Three Stooges to Archimedes, Lavoisier to Tweety Bird, Mash is a latter day Anti-Oracle, a nail in the tire of post-modernity, an incorrigible wag who’s smuggled his pea shooter into the Church of Poetry.
Be ready to duck.
Be ready to duck.
11/3/14 WAS: Bill Rowen hosted by Jan
.
Bill is in what he calls his "second poetry phase." He began writing poetry in the early 1980's, often reading at the Coffee Mill in Oakland, but after several years he dropped out of the poetry scene. After major cancer surgery in 2009, which was successful, he began writing again. Now living in Alameda, he is active in poetry groups there and throughout the Bay Area. He has won prizes at the Benicia Love Poetry contest, CFCP, Poets Dinner (although he didn't show up to collect his prize) and Mary Rudge's Site Write contest. He has been a lawyer for 37 years. This is his first featured reading at Poetry Express.
10/27/14 WAS: Theme Night, topic: UNREQUITED LOVE, hosted by Nance
10/20/14 WAS: Harold Tzn hosted by Odilia
Harold Terezón is an educator and poet from Pacoima, CA. He received the San Francisco Foundation's James D. Phelan Literary Award in 2013. He served as a teaching artist for WritersCorps from 2011-2013, helping San Francisco youth find their voice through poetry and writing. His work has appeared in POECOLOGY, Puerto del Sol, PALABRA, Rushing Waters Rising Dreams: How the Arts Are Transforming a Community, and The Acentos Review, among other publications. He is currently teaching poetry at City College of San Francisco and working on Hunting Izotes, a collection of poems inspired by his family's immigrant experience.
10/13/14 WAS: Laura Schulkind hosted by Odilia
Poet and writer Laura Schulkind is an attorney by day, where she is entrusted with others’ stories. Through fiction and poetry she tells her own. She and her husband divide their time between Berkeley and Big Sur California, and her two grown sons continue to inspire her. Her published work can be seen atwww.lauraschulkind.com
Snake and Toad(Forge Journal, Fall 2012)Braided into the scrub brush,I saw them,snake and toad,black garter slender as my beckoning finger,except for its bulging jawstretched madly around half the toad,head already gone,belly the blue-white of fern tendrils still curled underground,motionless except for the ripple of skinstretched thin across its still-beating heart.
10/6/14 WAS: Anthony Adrian Xavier Pino hosted by Jan
Anthony Adrian Xavier Pino was born and raised in California, the oldest of 11 children. He was educated in Jesuit schools, Bellarmine Prep and Santa Clara University. He holds two masters degrees. His writing ---both stories and poetry--- reflects the topography and ethnicity of California and other exposures. He has worked in Germany, Northern Virginia and the San Francisco Bay Area. He was employed by the US government and Stanford University and currently teaches English at Ohlone and San Jose City colleges. He is active in the California Writers Club and the Alameda Island Poets. He has been competitively published in several print and online journals and has won awards for his poetry. Hiis book, A Hidden River, contains both shorty stories and Poetry.
Red Cadillac
There was a calling came out of the south
and out of Kansas City, Philadelphia and Boston,
out of the big sprawling cities and ailing, unpainted houses
the abandoned brick-faced factories,
and those hot, lively, jumping churches.
The call went out over littered rail track beds,
and through the drifting, high-rising clouds, the plumes of the mid-west,
over country roads quilting Oklahoma and stitching up Texas,
arid endless deserts, ax-hard, baked and cracked,
and the sharp-edged granite and soft, soaring alpine trees of western Nevada;
and down it came, falling cherry-sweet on California,
cherry-sweet on its country towns sleeping on the edges of earthly abundance,
towns by the wheat, the lettuce, corn and thick-armed orchards where we kids lived,
braggin’ and singin’, growin’ up, gettin’ big, cuttin’ through secret fields,
and talkin’ big of hot rods, hidden loves, high schools, ball games and girls.
And there, in the fields and orchards of our valleys, the soft earth of our youth,
we heard the call of the too-sweet music crackling on tired radios,
young and fresh voices in a stale, rigid world,
music sung by the blackest of angels, boys of carefully pomaded hair,
slick Sunday suits and big smiles, the Doo-Wop singers who sang for us
and fell hard for those hucksters with the small checks,
big needles and bad business deals; those kids always in their Cadillacs ---
a love of flash which I never fully fathomed,
but come to grasp fifty years later, when a growth, a cyst, a pod,
a secret pocket of sweet understanding broke open in my throat
and flooded my thoughts, lifting my head and giving me enlightenment;
it was then I beheld the truth.
Now I understand the red Cadillac,
understand the hunger for the beatific and early arrival of a great burnished car
the need for dark sunglasses for the overload of light
the cashmere suits for the tenderness of feeling not found in others.
Now I understand about singing the sacred,
the hard, hungry longing for angelic love,
and the dirt-low humiliation of not having her
that girl, that girl, that girl with the name oracular,
and having only to make and re-make her song:
“Gloria, Gloria, Gloria
She doesn’t love me,
No, she doesn’t love me.”
****
It all comes to me now that many were called
but most were frozen --- iced on the blistering, killing white.
Now listen to me, Cadillac boys,
I’m getting old, so look for me soon, will you?
You’ll laugh to see me comin’ through the clouds.
I’ll wear a red sequined jacket
and drive up in a green Pontiac, top down,
“Sha-boom” on the license plate.
I didn’t earn a Cadillac.
I didn’t earn a Cadillac.
9/29/14 WAS: Scott Riley hosted by bruce
Scott Riley is a PhD Candidate in Literature at UC Santa Cruz specializing in twentieth-century American poetry. He holds a BA in Rhetoric from UC Berkeley, a MA from the Graduate Theological Union and a MFA in poetry from Saint Mary's College of California. His poetry has been published in the Berkeley Poetry Review, Palooka Journal and NANO Fiction. He lives with his wife, the Reverend Elizabeth Riley, in Menlo Park, CA.
9/22/14 WAS: Marvin Spector hosted by Nance
Marvin lived and traveled abroad from 1964-75. Educated in
physics, he became a world traveler for 10 years. Then he
settled in the bay area and has spent the last 15 years writing
his memoirs in the form of an adventure novel.
physics, he became a world traveler for 10 years. Then he
settled in the bay area and has spent the last 15 years writing
his memoirs in the form of an adventure novel.
9/15/14 WAS:Sara Mithra hosted by Bruce
With powerful strangeness, Sara Anika Mithra narrates tales of spinstresses, buffalo, and hunters to tease out desire and syncretic voices of the margins. Often troubling and folkloric, her poems cover terrain like spiderwebs. See what’s caught come morning.
Her handmade chapbooks and zines include The Better to Teeth You With, DIG, Neither Thirst, and Wood: A Handbook. She records performances to share on Soundcloud and creates poem-videos from found footage.
9/8/14 WAS: Iris De Anda hosted by Odilia
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 WAS: Theme Night: Entire evening devoted to your poems loosely arranged around the theme of FOOD. hosted by Nance
8/18/14 WAS: 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.
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.
Elsewhere, yes.
Just ask the barber
who weaves in and out of
said secrets
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 WAS 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.
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 llustrated 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.
7/28/14 WAS: Theme Night: Trees -- Open Mic whole evening devoted to poetry or short prose loosely related to Tree theme.
7/21/14 WAS: Cassanda Dallett
Cassandra Dallett lives in Oakland, CA. Cassandra writes of a counter culture childhood in Vermont and her punk rock adolescence in the San Francisco Bay Area. She hasbeen published
Baby I Was Born To Run
As soon as I learned to walk stripped my clothes off
into the woods I’d go
my nakedness on the mossy rocks
and the needle pine beds
My parents were high a kitchen full of fools
with six packs and joints to smoke
and I would be out there
in the leaves the dappled light
I knew the names of jack in the pulpits and columbine
the places where trees grew close around me
played in empty hunting camps and abandoned cars
my runaway episodes were legend
a crowd of long hairs fanning out calling my name
down the road and through the trees
they’d find me
curled in sleep under the ferns by the pond.
7/14/14 WAS: Nancy Gonzalez
Nancy Aidé González is a Chicana poet and educator. She graduated from California State
University, Sacramento with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature. She attended Las Dos Brujas Writer’s Workshop in 2012. Her work has appeared in Mujeres De Maiz Zine, Huizache The magazine of Latino literature, DoveTales, Tule Review, Seeds of Resistance Flor y Canto:Tortilla Warrior, La Bloga, and several other literary journals. Her work is featured in the Sacramento Voices: Foam at the Mouth Anthology (2013). She is a participating member of Escritores del Nuevo Sol, a writing group based in Sacramento, California which honors the literary traditions of Chicano, Latino, Indigenous and Spanish-language peoples.
La Virgen de Las Calles
Pink Sentinels
Mujeres Del Maíz
Kites
La Pulga
Tapestry of Dawn
La Virgen de Las Calles
She stands on the
busy street corner
selling delicate red
and white roses
hugged by baby's -breath
and luminous cellophane
resting in a
once discarded
plastic bucket.
She understands the innate
beauty of roses,
their fragility
their fragrant hope
as they grow slowly
from bud to
emerge
embracing change,
as they flush into
full bloom.
She knows of
piercing thorns
and truth,
of crossing
barbed wire
borders.
She understands
the prickling sting,
the aculeus
of being an outsider.
She wears a large
sweatshirt with USA
emblazoned in block
print across her chest
but she misses
Mexico and the
small town she was
raised in .
A red and green
rebozo hangs down
upon her head shielding
her from the flugent sun,
a gift from her mother,
a reminder of home.
People stride past her
lost in their own thoughts
hustling to work,
on pressing errands,
wandering down the tangle
of the Los Angeles
landscape.
She is La Virgen de las Calles,
waiting with a
heavy heart,
full of yearning,
dreaming of
new horizons,
a fountain of
humble tenderness
and abounding love.
La Virgen de las Calles
comprehends the
nature of roses,
their vulnerability
their need for nettle.
7/7/14 WAS: Elana Levy
Elana Levy is a recent transplant to the land of her daughter, of avocadoes and redwoods, from the northeast, of snow, lakes and green. She will read her latest poems, as well as poems from her recent collection, Legacies and Heresies with blessings. Elana will also read from her translations of much heralded 20th century German Jewish poet, Rose Ausländer, book available this fall. Elana taught math in community college for two decades. First photographed by FBI in 1959. Student and teacher of Jewish meditation and Kabbala; factory worker, social justice activist, radio producer, video director; embraces silence one month yearly. Still studying hard, knowing there's no easy answers.
6/30/14 WAS: Adele Mendelson
Adele Mendelson had a long career as an ESL teacher at the University of California at Berkeley. She began writing poetry by accident and then devoted herself to it for many years. Now she is mostly writing fiction, but the poems keep coming anyway, for which she is thankful. She has produced several volumes of work and enjoys sharing her writing at venues around the Bay Area. She believes that writing should be sexy, there should be something at stake, and the dark side should be lurking just beneath the cover.
Cassandra Dallett lives in Oakland, CA. Cassandra writes of a counter culture childhood in Vermont and her punk rock adolescence in the San Francisco Bay Area. She hasbeen published
Baby I Was Born To Run
As soon as I learned to walk stripped my clothes off
into the woods I’d go
my nakedness on the mossy rocks
and the needle pine beds
My parents were high a kitchen full of fools
with six packs and joints to smoke
and I would be out there
in the leaves the dappled light
I knew the names of jack in the pulpits and columbine
the places where trees grew close around me
played in empty hunting camps and abandoned cars
my runaway episodes were legend
a crowd of long hairs fanning out calling my name
down the road and through the trees
they’d find me
curled in sleep under the ferns by the pond.
Nancy Aidé González is a Chicana poet and educator. She graduated from California State
University, Sacramento with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature. She attended Las Dos Brujas Writer’s Workshop in 2012. Her work has appeared in Mujeres De Maiz Zine, Huizache The magazine of Latino literature, DoveTales, Tule Review, Seeds of Resistance Flor y Canto:Tortilla Warrior, La Bloga, and several other literary journals. Her work is featured in the Sacramento Voices: Foam at the Mouth Anthology (2013). She is a participating member of Escritores del Nuevo Sol, a writing group based in Sacramento, California which honors the literary traditions of Chicano, Latino, Indigenous and Spanish-language peoples.
La Virgen de Las Calles
Pink Sentinels
Mujeres Del Maíz
Kites
La Pulga
Tapestry of Dawn
University, Sacramento with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature. She attended Las Dos Brujas Writer’s Workshop in 2012. Her work has appeared in Mujeres De Maiz Zine, Huizache The magazine of Latino literature, DoveTales, Tule Review, Seeds of Resistance Flor y Canto:Tortilla Warrior, La Bloga, and several other literary journals. Her work is featured in the Sacramento Voices: Foam at the Mouth Anthology (2013). She is a participating member of Escritores del Nuevo Sol, a writing group based in Sacramento, California which honors the literary traditions of Chicano, Latino, Indigenous and Spanish-language peoples.
La Virgen de Las Calles
Pink Sentinels
Mujeres Del Maíz
Kites
La Pulga
Tapestry of Dawn
La Virgen de Las Calles
She stands on the
busy street corner
selling delicate red
and white roses
hugged by baby's -breath
and luminous cellophane
resting in a
once discarded
plastic bucket.
She understands the innate
beauty of roses,
their fragility
their fragrant hope
as they grow slowly
from bud to
emerge
embracing change,
as they flush into
full bloom.
She knows of
piercing thorns
and truth,
of crossing
barbed wire
borders.
She understands
the prickling sting,
the aculeus
of being an outsider.
She wears a large
sweatshirt with USA
emblazoned in block
print across her chest
but she misses
Mexico and the
small town she was
raised in .
A red and green
rebozo hangs down
upon her head shielding
her from the flugent sun,
a gift from her mother,
a reminder of home.
People stride past her
lost in their own thoughts
hustling to work,
on pressing errands,
wandering down the tangle
of the Los Angeles
landscape.
She is La Virgen de las Calles,
waiting with a
heavy heart,
full of yearning,
dreaming of
new horizons,
a fountain of
humble tenderness
and abounding love.
La Virgen de las Calles
comprehends the
nature of roses,
their vulnerability
their need for nettle.
She stands on the
busy street corner
selling delicate red
and white roses
hugged by baby's -breath
and luminous cellophane
resting in a
once discarded
plastic bucket.
She understands the innate
beauty of roses,
their fragility
their fragrant hope
as they grow slowly
from bud to
emerge
embracing change,
as they flush into
full bloom.
She knows of
piercing thorns
and truth,
of crossing
barbed wire
borders.
She understands
the prickling sting,
the aculeus
of being an outsider.
She wears a large
sweatshirt with USA
emblazoned in block
print across her chest
but she misses
Mexico and the
small town she was
raised in .
A red and green
rebozo hangs down
upon her head shielding
her from the flugent sun,
a gift from her mother,
a reminder of home.
People stride past her
lost in their own thoughts
hustling to work,
on pressing errands,
wandering down the tangle
of the Los Angeles
landscape.
She is La Virgen de las Calles,
waiting with a
heavy heart,
full of yearning,
dreaming of
new horizons,
a fountain of
humble tenderness
and abounding love.
La Virgen de las Calles
comprehends the
nature of roses,
their vulnerability
their need for nettle.
7/7/14 WAS: Elana Levy
Elana Levy is a recent transplant to the land of her daughter, of avocadoes and redwoods, from the northeast, of snow, lakes and green. She will read her latest poems, as well as poems from her recent collection, Legacies and Heresies with blessings. Elana will also read from her translations of much heralded 20th century German Jewish poet, Rose Ausländer, book available this fall. Elana taught math in community college for two decades. First photographed by FBI in 1959. Student and teacher of Jewish meditation and Kabbala; factory worker, social justice activist, radio producer, video director; embraces silence one month yearly. Still studying hard, knowing there's no easy answers.
Adele Mendelson had a long career as an ESL teacher at the University of California at Berkeley. She began writing poetry by accident and then devoted herself to it for many years. Now she is mostly writing fiction, but the poems keep coming anyway, for which she is thankful. She has produced several volumes of work and enjoys sharing her writing at venues around the Bay Area. She believes that writing should be sexy, there should be something at stake, and the dark side should be lurking just beneath the cover.
Monday, June 23rd, was Fun Night
6/23/14 Theme Night Other People’s Poems – bring a poem (or 2) on paper without your name, someone else will read it and we will attempt to guess authorship.
6/16/14 WAS: Sally Elesby
Sally Elesby is a writer and artist who lives in Oakland. Her poetry has been published in OccuPoetry, and will appear in future issues of The Main Street Rag and The Lyric. Elesby comes out of a visual arts background. Her paintings were featured in solo exhibitions at Suzanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects and Karen Golden Fine Art in New York. Elesby taught painting at California College of the Arts until her retirement in 2012.
INFRASTRUCTURE
That pothole
6/9/14 WAS: Jessie Bouchard
J.R. Bouchard grew up in upstate New York, but has since relocated all over the U.S. for school, teaching, and love. She received her MFA from Rosemont in Bryn Mawr, PA and has been teaching middle school and college English the last several years. She currently works for America SCORES, a non-profit centered around teaching youth poetry and soccer-- quite the combo, we know! Her poetry can be found in WordRiot, Foundling Review, Melee Live, Camroc Press Review, and others. When she's not writing, she's probably baking a babka or watching cat videos.
A glimpse
He is quietly curled on one
hip, one elbow. A man curled in half,
Twenty-eight. I rub his bottom
leaving all of my touch, soothing his near-sleep.
I didn’t know him then, but grin at his imagined
baby body, still rubbing. As his mother set him afloat
her river to mine, like Moses never orphaned.
Her first son. My first of all firsts. I accept
him over and over. Let the river pour over
my head, let it take over me—
let me drown in this moment.
6/23/14 Theme Night Other People’s Poems – bring a poem (or 2) on paper without your name, someone else will read it and we will attempt to guess authorship.
6/16/14 WAS: Sally Elesby
Sally Elesby is a writer and artist who lives in Oakland. Her poetry has been published in OccuPoetry, and will appear in future issues of The Main Street Rag and The Lyric. Elesby comes out of a visual arts background. Her paintings were featured in solo exhibitions at Suzanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects and Karen Golden Fine Art in New York. Elesby taught painting at California College of the Arts until her retirement in 2012.
INFRASTRUCTURE
That pothole
under the bridge that's
being retrofitted behind
concrete Jersey barriers tagged
with black graffiti and
an eight foot construction wall painted
baby blue, which
redirects traffic into
one lane so dump trucks can
come and go except
during rush hours when
gridlock quickly
frustrates commuters whose
tires chew into asphalt with
stops and start-ups day
after day--two times a day--for
almost one year,
has doubled in size.
J.R. Bouchard grew up in upstate New York, but has since relocated all over the U.S. for school, teaching, and love. She received her MFA from Rosemont in Bryn Mawr, PA and has been teaching middle school and college English the last several years. She currently works for America SCORES, a non-profit centered around teaching youth poetry and soccer-- quite the combo, we know! Her poetry can be found in WordRiot, Foundling Review, Melee Live, Camroc Press Review, and others. When she's not writing, she's probably baking a babka or watching cat videos.
A glimpse
He is quietly curled on one
hip, one elbow. A man curled in half,
Twenty-eight. I rub his bottom
leaving all of my touch, soothing his near-sleep.
I didn’t know him then, but grin at his imagined
baby body, still rubbing. As his mother set him afloat
her river to mine, like Moses never orphaned.
Her first son. My first of all firsts. I accept
him over and over. Let the river pour over
my head, let it take over me—
let me drown in this moment.
6/2/14 WAS: John B. Rowe
Author of At My Wit's Beginning (Eventuality Press, 2003/2007) and Winsome Losesome(Eventuality Press, 2010)
Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in: Bay Area Poets Seasonal Review, Brevities,Carquinez Poetry Review, The Crazy Child Scribbler, GRRRRR--A Collection of Poems About Bears (Arctos Press), Minotaur, Out of Our, Poetry Depth Quarterly, Remembering (anthology of Poets' Dinner contest winners), San Francisco Peace & Hope (online) and elsewhere.
Frequent award-winner in Artists Embassy International's Annual Dancing Poetry Festival Contests, including a Grand Prize (2002) and a First Prize (2010).
Grand Prize winner in the first Bay Area Poets Seasonal Review Contest 2010.
In 2008, served on the selection committee for the first poet laureate of Albany, California: Christina Hutchins.
Co-host of the monthly (2nd Fridays) Last Word Poetry Reading Series, held at Nefeli Caffe in Berkeley.
Long-time President of the Bay Area Poets Coalition and co-editor of Poetalk magazine.
5/26/14 WAS: Long Poetry Night: Open Mic by lottery order, writers read from their longer works.
5/19/14 WAS: Indira Allegra
Indira Allegra is a poet and artist exploring intimacy, intertextuality, affect and endurance through performance, video works and handwoven textiles. Indira has contributed works to 25 for 25: An Anthology of Works by 25 Outstanding Contemporary LGTB Authors,Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art and Thought, Dear Sister: Letters From Survivors of Sexual Violence and Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two Spirit Literature among others. In 2013, she was interviewed by BBC Radio 4 for Poetry of Gold and Angels, a segment on poetry in the San Francisco Bay Area. Indira's experimental videopoems Blue Covers and Weep Willow: The Blues for Lady Day have screened at film festivals such as MIX NYC, Perlen Hannover LGBT Festival, Visible Verse Festival and Fusion. She is currently completing her first collection of poems entitled Indigo Season. indiraallegra.com
5/12/14 WAS: Tom Odegard:
Tom Odegard (aka Tom/Ms.G) arrived in the Bay Area from Portland when he was eight, in 1948. When he was 12 he set about writing a science book but soon discovered that he only knew enough to write the introduction at
which point he switched to poetry. Since then he’s lived in many places in multiple states of mind, and written too many pages of words some of which he’s read at venues around the Bay or put into chapbooks.
He’s published two books: Friends Well Met – a collection of poems - and Past Lives Led – a poetic memoir both from Beatitude Press in Berkeley.
He shuttles back and forth between Friday Harbor Washington and Oakland spending four months in California where he reads and writes and polishes his nest eggs. His poems have been published in a number of collections
including, Spasso’s, Sacred Grounds, and Living in the Land of the Dead a production of Faithful Fools.
In 2005 he discovered he was intersex and came out as a “Two Spirit”, Tom/Ms.G. He takes great delight in sharing his double gendered points of view with anyone who’ll listen. Mark States favorably compared his poetry to e.e. cummings, to which accolade he remarked, “Yikes!”
He shuttles back and forth between Friday Harbor Washington and Oakland spending four months in California where he reads and writes and polishes his nest eggs. His poems have been published in a number of collections
including, Spasso’s, Sacred Grounds, and Living in the Land of the Dead a production of Faithful Fools.
In 2005 he discovered he was intersex and came out as a “Two Spirit”, Tom/Ms.G. He takes great delight in sharing his double gendered points of view with anyone who’ll listen. Mark States favorably compared his poetry to e.e. cummings, to which accolade he remarked, “Yikes!”
Herewith three samples:
To Mel C.
We were mezmerized this evening by the Coronor's office
that turned down the air conditioning to save on power
that resulted in a bad smell issuing from the morgue
that gave the lie to Justice in it's greek geek form
where the homeless classic a**hole rates a burial at a dump
...and the cosmic lassie gets laid out on a pyroclastic slump
but it all fell down when we saw sirens at the door
and the fuzz came in and nailed the poet to the floor...
Muh, muh, muh, mel we love you...
you and that saucy little sweetums under your too cute hat.
Mind Quest 2013
we open our mind and find
a bearded horseman bending down
to talk to Ms. G – she grips his arm
and horse-leather-sweat fills the air
she says, “we have to take him – he’s the body”,
he barely nods his head
then turns impossibly far in his saddle
grabs my shoulder lifts me onto the grey mare,
saying, “Mount up!”
So, we flow into vistas of circular star bales
in yellow fields outlined by dry stone fences.
Ms. G easily snugs up behind me whispering,
“You’ll love it, we’re going on another quest.
There are valleys to explore
abandoned villages from childhood and
teenage angst demanding attention.”
Circus Song © tom odegard –
Don’t be kiddin’ me honey ain’t no Circus in the Real
the mind’s full of candy canes and money on the wheel
grandiloquent magnanimity makes Bozos of us all
so the Zoot Suit Leader like the rest of us will fall.
Soon the muzak squeaks Jimi’s Star Spangled tunes
while the horses jump arabesques upon poltroons
there’ll be mind slaughtered veterans waving the flag
as the carnies run the marks through a flat for a gag.
Yes you can’t beat illusions for entertainment’s sake
you can’t deny beliefs by reasonable restraints
you might take a flyer at tyranny and shame
but the odds say you’ll fail ‘cause everyone’s insane.
Refrain:
You can search this weird from stem to stern
you can be a patriot, a tea man, perhaps a turd
but you’ll never find the outside of this circus train
‘les you look inside your bias and trim your brain.
5/5/14 WAS: Simon Rogghe with Zarina Zabrisky
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. Simon read with his collaborator,
Zarina Zabrisky
The room was packed -- a most entertaining evening.
(Carol Hogan regrets that she was not be able to feature with Simon at this time.)
4/28/14 WAS: 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 was open mic on this theme.
4/21 WAS: Carl Kopman -- and the room was packed!
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.
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.
4/14/14 WAS: Adam Cornford
Adam Cornford immigrated to the United States 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.
4/7/14 WAS: 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-
4/7/14 WAS: 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-
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.
March 31 WAS: -Theme Night: Bring Poem in Style of Poet You Love: Read Both your poem and the reference work.
.
Entire evening open mic on topic.
3/24 WAS: Ambrose Mohler
Ambrose Mohler lived in the Sunset district of San Francisco for seven years during which time he wandered the streets and various neighborhoods of the city. He spent a great deal of that time in the Tenderloin, the Mission and the Richmond districts drinking, fighting and whoring. For most of these seven years he was jobless, with the exception of a brief stint as a ticket seller and another as a bookseller at The Booksmith on Haight Street. He tried to pursue a career as a street heckler but found he wasn't cut out for the work. He did, however, make a career of getting thrown out of virtually every bar in the city. Since moving to the East Bay in 2010, he has spent his time painting, writing poetry and teaching himself various aspects of world cuisine.
Morning still blue
and dark and damp and cool-
not yet begun.
food warms the belly first,
pork bun
from the bakery, brought home
and enjoyed,
just one,
a diollar feast...
and water for the thirstand now the sun
peers over rooftops
in the window
facing east
glinting off the bottle,
empty
as another one.
ArithmeticDrinking through to the other sideand sober after eight.six was troublebut by nine and tenI was doing double duty,drinking one hereand one across the streetat the same time.I drank ten firstand I still don't understandhow I could have beentipsy by fiveand sober enough by thirteenthat when she yelled'we're closing!'directly into my face,without a second's passingI smiled, and responded well,the well no longer responding.I must have closed three barsthat night-it's strangehow they set their clocks
like time goes backward.
3/17/14 Was: Richard Silberg
Richard Silberg, Associate Editor of Poetry Flash, hosts the Poetry Flash reading series. He is author of The Horses, New and Selected Poems (Red Hen Press, 2012). His previous poetry collections include Deconstruction of the Blues (Red Hen Press, 2006), which received the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award. His poetry has also appeared in American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, VOLT, New American Writing, Catamaran Literary Reader, and other journals. His co-translation of Korean poet Ko Un, The Three Way Tavern: Selected Poems (University of California Press, 2006), received a Northern California Book Award for Translation. His most recent co-translation is This Side of Time, poems by Ko Un (White Pine Press, 2012). His books also include Doubleness (Heyday, 2000) and a collection of his Poetry Flash essays, Reading the Sphere: A Geography of Contemporary American Poetry (Berkeley Hills, 2002). Robert Hass said of Reading the Sphere: "No one is writing about poetry with more vividness, particularity, intelligence, and range, than Richard Silberg."Prior Features
3/10/14 Was: Hao Tran
Hao (pronounced HOW) is writing passionately about post-war Vietnam
with his real experiences and those from friends and family. He
travels often and mixes business with flyfishing, photography, and
creative writing.
with his real experiences and those from friends and family. He
travels often and mixes business with flyfishing, photography, and
creative writing.
Rumpelstiltskin, or What's in a Name? is an imaginative recasting of the age-old
folktale of Rumpelstiltskin into a modern comedy of lust and madness. By going online and ordering a copy for yourself or a friend, you'll help bring to life this story of the Miller who boasts to the King that his daughter can spin straw into gold. To order now, go to Finishing Line Press and click on "Bookstore."
A finalist for the Dana Award and called "magic" by editor Kit Duane, Rumpelstiltskin follows my 2010 Book of Gretel, which Jean Nordhaus praised as "beautiful, unsettling poems proceed[ing] with dreamlike assurance through a landscape fully imagined and brilliantly described." Rumpelstiltskin takes a romp through a different landscape altogether, but with the verve--I hope you'll agree!--of my full-length collection Swimming the Eel, praised by Athena Kildegaard for its "delicious music."
Like WordTech, my publisher for Swimming the Eel, Finishing Line Press offers a different model of publishing from the big New York houses by asking for the up front support of the author's community of readers and friends. Please join me in supporting this and other small presses endeavors.
2/24/14 WAS: Theme Night: Fruits & Vegetables -- attending poets read poems loosely associated with the theme with off-the-wall work mashing plants to a pulp.
2/17/14 WAS: Jeanne Lupton
Jeanne Lupton is a poet and performer well known in the Bay Area, especially for her tanka. She hosts a Poetry and Prose reading serices at the Frank Bette Center in Alameda on 2nd and 4th Saturdays of each month as well as being deeply involved in many other groups. Her reviews speak for themselves:
"The sensuous work of Jeanne Lupton deeply touches the secret center of things. From the mystic tradition we know that there are a thousand paths, yet but one destination. Love, and its consequences, reverberate in these brief, evocative lines. For those with whom they do not resound we can only shake our heads at life unlived. Standing on the shoulders of her sisters before her, Jeanne Lupton enriches the centuries old traditon of the tanka; in these illuminating pages, the Way of the Lover is revealed." (Don Wentworth of the Lilliput Review)
"Lupton's keenly observed details of her life serve as a lens focusing greater human truths; she is not just a woman, but Everywoman. She journeys through her life with the intensely emotional but never sentimental heart of a poet, faithfully recording her truths that speak to all women." (M. Kei)
Jeanne has won many awards and prizes and has a number of books. See www.JeanneLupton.com for more.
Poetry Express thanks Jeanne for stepping in quickly to substitute for Jeanie Shaterian, who unfortunately could not make it on this date. We hope to hear her soon.
2/10 WAS: Julia Vinograd
Julia Vinograd is a Berkeley street poet. She has published over 59 books of poetry and won the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation. She has a B.A. from UC Berkeley and a M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. A Pushcart Prize winner for "The Young Men Who Died of AIDS," she has a Poetry Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Berkeley and is one of the editors of the anthology New American Poetry Vol. I: The Babarians of San Francisco -- Poets from Hell.
2/3/14 WAS: Bruce Fessenden
Bruce Fessenden is best known in the Bay Area community as the owner of Fessenden Firewood. He has been skiing and climbing his whole life, and is best known for the first American ski descent (and 2nd overall) of Denali, highest peak in the North American continent, in 1977. He is still actively climbing and skiing, as well as mountain biking.
He has struggled with depression much of his adult life, and his writing was born from that. He is interested in the relationship between spirit and the earth. He views woundedness more as an invitation or entryway into soul life than an obstacle to be overcome.
1/27/2013 WAS Theme Night: HOPE: Attending poets read poems loosely based upon the theme -- it was a great evening with very enjoyable work.
1/20/14 WAS: William Landis
William Landis weaned at Oberlin College and St. Louis Univ. By stretching the shoestring, has resided in Andalusia, Amsterdam, Mykonos, Puerto Vallarta, and rural France. Has two chapbooks, Noguchi et al. & Takes and several prizes. Published in Runes, Spillway, Pudding House, Poetalk, riverbabble. Ekphrastic poetry and many-headed paintings. willlandis.blogspot.com
Blogs: William Landis writes a kind of dynamics of the soul. Everything here is in color and in motion. Many of these poems are about other art forms, paintings, sculptures,
Maria Callas, Baryshnikov. Landis's words bridge these media, moving like wind through the world, spreading not just joy but wisdom too. As he asks in one of his
poems, "without shadow after all, how would longing make a living" Richard Silberg
William Landis has a gift for writing about art, film, dance, and music in a way that is not merely ekphrastic
but probing and intimate. The poems in TAKES are unpunctuated free verse but they possess an elegance
of line, phrase, and vision. Whether Landis is writing of Marie Callas, Winslow Homer, or Baryshnikov, his poetic voice suprises, makes us feel something new. "you ask how to seize Monet," he writes, "then you back up fourteen feet and sing again". In this book, William Landis is the singer. --Susan Terris
1/13/14 WAS: Judy Wells and Dale Jensen
This was the biggest draw so far with appx 50 people attending.
Judy Wells received her B.A .from Stanford and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley. She taught writing in Bay Area colleges before a career as an Academic Counselor for adults at St. Mary’s College of California and as a faculty member of St. Mary’s Graduate Liberal Studies Program. She now teaches writing atUC Berkeley Extension in a special program for freshmen. She lives in Berkeley. Judy has published nine collections of poetry: I Dream of Circus Characters: A Berkeley Chronicle (2010), Little Lulu Talks with Vincent Van Gogh (2007), Call Home (2005), Everything Irish (1999), The Calling: Twentieth Century Women Artists (1994), The Part-time Teacher (1991), Jane, Jane (1981), Albuquerque Winter (1980), I Have Berkeley, (1979). Her tenth, The Glass Ship is due to be published in early 2014.
Dale Jensen was born in Oakland, California, graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, and received a master’s degree in experimental psychology from the University of Toronto, with which he said goodbye to academia forever. In 1999, when he took early retirement from a twenty-five year career with Social Security. He lives in Berkeley. Dale’s poetry, which is heavily influenced by the Surrealists and such cut-up writers as William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, has appeared in many magazines, journals, and anthologies. He published and edited the experimental poetry magazine Malthus from 1986 through 1989 and published several books through Malthus Press. He also has published five books and three chapbooks of poetry: Thebes (1991), Bar Room Ballads (1992), The Troubles (1993), Twisted History(1999), Purgatorial (2004), Cyclone Fence (2007), Oedipus’ First Lover (2009) and Auto Bio (2010). His tenth collection, Yew Nork, is due
1/6/14 Was: Kathleen McClung
Kathleen McClung lives in San Francisco and teaches at Skyline College and the Writing Salon. Author of Almost the Rowboat (Finishing Line Press, 2013), she is the recipient of the 2012 Rita Dove Poetry Award and the 2012 National Poetry Prize from the Cultural Center of Cape Cod. Her work appears in Unsplendid, Bloodroot, The Healing Muse, PMS: poemmemoirstory, Ekphrasis, A Bird Black as the Sun: California Poets on Crows and Ravens, and elsewhere. She serves as the sponsor/judge of the sonnet category for the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition and reviewer for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, sponsored by the Stanford UniversityLibraries.www.kathleenmcclung.com
12/30/13 Was: The Eve of New Year's Eve and we took the night off.
12/23/13 Was: Theme Night: Truth & Beauty -- attending poets read work loosely associated with the theme.
12/16/13 WAS: Gail Peterson
Having put many years, many words into promoting the San Francisco Chronicle, technical publications, educational products, and children’s literature, Gail Peterson stepped gingerly into the field of poetry — territory she always deemed far beyond the practical output of “snappy patter” (advertising copy). Now, encouraged by first prize in two regional contests, some publication, poetry workshops she hosts and attends, she enjoys turning out a highly impractical poem.
Mercy
Charlie’s beginning to smell like an old man —
he’s worn that flannel shirt one week too long.
She doesn’t mind —
she likes the blue-green plaid,
how it serves his frame, the softness.
Anyway, she knows she needs her Listerine.
Charlie’s not a talker.
All these years, she’s mostly only had
the sight, the smell, the feel of him.
She doesn’t mind, really.
A look, a pat, a grin set the meter of her moods,
provide the iambs, regular as heartbeats,
more reliable than poetry.
A silent man. Saint or simpleton?
She once put too much stock in talk
and walked a lie into a bramble.
She knows she’s been forgiven
more than Charlie’s ever bothered to let on.
12/9/13 WAS: David Erdreich
David Erdrich was a truck driver for 18 years, a psychiatric social worker for 10 years, a street vendor/airbrush artist for 14 years. Add to those endeavors a singer, alto sax player, and, all the while, a poet.
David Erdrich was a truck driver for 18 years, a psychiatric social worker for 10 years, a street vendor/airbrush artist for 14 years. Add to those endeavors a singer, alto sax player, and, all the while, a poet.
Bad pix? Blame Bruce's cell phone!
12/2/13 WAS: Stephen Kopel & Nancy Wakeman
Nancy grew up on the rocky coast of Massachusetts where she witnessed the power and beauty of earth, sky and sea. After graduating from college she left New England and traveled west -- eager to explore the world. Like so many dreamers and seakers she settled in San Francisco. Nancy writes to give form to thoughts, feelings, ideas. To connect her inner and outer worlds, to connect with something larger than herself. She writes poetry to give pleasure to herself and others, and is surprised, but pleased that her words sometimes inspire laughter. She hosts a monthly writing salon. She is the author of BABE DIDRIKSON ZAHARIAS:Driven to Win (a biography of the famous golfer -- written for young people), and SHOOTING ARROWS AT THE MOON, a book of poetry and prose poems. Her writing has appeared in Ambush Review, Bay Area Poets Seasonal Review, The Alembic and other journals.
Stephen Kopel -- Think your head's attic can shakerattleroll? If yes, then consider cramming Kopel's verses upstairs - they crackle. This punstateer holds dear the myriad possibilities tickling our lingua's taut tummy so listeners/readers might feast on helpings of FUN. Kopel's "tender absurdities" - witty wordplay, double meanings, metaphoric mayhem - execute end-runs around the staid and stolid. Check out Picnic Poetry (amazon.com) for a hands-on feast everyone can enjoy. This writer, performer, presenter, civic philanthropist invests in the 'I take stock' market with assets divided between straight-talk, gratitude and kindness.
11/25/13 WAS:
Poets distributed copies of the poems to be heard and then the listeners were invited to write comments on the work and return it to the poet later in the evening. Poets brought about 20 copies of work to be read; include some extra poems for second round opportunities. After reading helpful feedback of any nature was given and comments turned in to the poets before leaving.
11/18/13 was: Patricia Bulitt
Some of the discussion included:
What was your intention when you started out to write this poem?
· How did it change as your wrote it?
· How did it change as you edited it?
· Did it, in the end, provide the content, thought, and feelings you intended?
· What is your usual method for writing?
· What is your usual method for editing?
· What do you look for in your own work?
· Do you have threads of common themes in your work?
· Do you have a poetry persona which differs from yourself in other circumstances?
· What voice do you like to write in?
· Do you like to use shifting metaphors or stay within narrower boundries?
· What structures do you like to use? Why?
· How does this poem relate to you – what is the back story behind it?
· Could you edit the poem to a shorter version and retain all the meaning?
Patricia Bulitt is a dancer, poet, and interdisciplinary artist residing in Berkeley, CA.
Awarded numerous grants and awards from National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, City of Berkeley, Outstanding Woman Award, Alaska Humanities Forum, California Greenways, she has toured throughout US, Japan, Canada, and New Zealand as a solo artist.
Often a maker of site specific performances in landscape, she composes text that are sung by vocalists or as taped prose accompaniment. Also featured as the cover story in SFCHRONICLE ( October 27, 2013, East Bay Section) for her paper dresses, original text floats amongst the collaged imagery on her wearable paper dresses. Patricia was also recently featured in the Watershed Poetry Festival in Berkeley In the reading in November, she plans to read and wear A Paper Dress of Apology for a Young Iraqi Girl to cello music by Gretchen Yanover.
Pictured : A Paper Dress of Apology for a Young Iraqi Girl--Photo by Raymond Holdbert
“I sew the words,” she told her Mother, now gazing at the fire.
In her left hand was the bowl, wrapped from paper, layering words over
words, over words, over words.
Her daughter’s favorite time was when her Mother knew.
When knowing the place for the plot is what her Mother knew.
For what the plot carried.
That is when the paint brushes
Would be dipped into its right color.
“I hope its gold this time, Mother. I hope its gold, this time.”
Her mother’s stare kept the silence,
Her mother’s stare kept the listening in the house.
The nickel harp player lay by the stone in the garden.
The woman with the love in her eyes,
Carried the box to her child.
Soon, the circle of stones, all placed by she and her daughter,
Made an opening for the nickel harp player to be
Perched on a rock, as if to be a dragonfly,
So lightly there, the nickel harp player began to hum.
So lightly, there.
11/11/2013 WAS: Chris Chandler
Poet and storyteller Chris Chandler is as hilarious and entertaining as he is provocative and rabble-rousing, delivering vignettes about politics and modern culture with the fire of a Baptist Preacher. His appearances are insightful tales of a world gone slightly mad, accompanied by a wide variety of musical styles. He has performed on thousands of stages across North America, working with such legendary figures as Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Mojo Nixon and Ani DiFranco. The late great Utah Phillips called Chris "the best performance poet I have ever seen." see more at chrischandler.org
Nov 4 WAS: Kirston Koths
Kirston began collecting subject material for his poems when he was four years old. After a brief hiatus to get a PhD and spend a few decades developing cancer pharmaceuticals in the biotech industry, he got
back to his life-long passion, the arts. His poems reflect on childhood, explore the perspective gained from world travel, and touch gently on social commentary. In 2001, he co-founded Poets Across the Bay, a workshop of highly motivated poets who also help him present a popular, "Garden Poetry and Music" event at his home in El Cerrito. Kirston's poems have appeared recently in Plainsongs and Askew Poetry Journal, and he is featured in a section of a special anthology from Blue Light Press, "River of Earth and Sky: Poems for the 21st Century". Kirston knows that a given poem is finished when he can read it out loud and his golden retriever, Bella, does not leave the room.
10/28/13 WAS: Theme Night
Attending poets had evening to read poems loosely related to the theme “Senseless;” surely everyone has been to that town….
10/21/13 WAS: Frank Dixon Graham
Frank Dixon Graham founded the ongoing Literary Lecture series and the Fifth Mondays charity benefit reading series with the Sacramento Poetry Center, where he has been a board member since 2007. The poet worked as an editor for Poetry Now for thirty-six issues, and is currently an editor for Pitkin Review and Tule Review. His poems appear in Hawaii Pacific Review, Clackamas Review, Evansville Review, Harvard Scriptorium, and over twenty-five other publications. His chapbooks are titled, The Infinite In Between and Out On the Reach. Graham is organizing the California State Colloquium on Social Justice Poetry, while completing his MFA at Goddard College in Port Townsend, Washington.
Frank Dixon Graham founded the ongoing Literary Lecture series and the Fifth Mondays charity benefit reading series with the Sacramento Poetry Center, where he has been a board member since 2007. The poet worked as an editor for Poetry Now for thirty-six issues, and is currently an editor for Pitkin Review and Tule Review. His poems appear in Hawaii Pacific Review, Clackamas Review, Evansville Review, Harvard Scriptorium, and over twenty-five other publications. His chapbooks are titled, The Infinite In Between and Out On the Reach. Graham is organizing the California State Colloquium on Social Justice Poetry, while completing his MFA at Goddard College in Port Townsend, Washington.
http://fdgrahampoetry.blogspot.com/
She was awesome! Check her out on line as above.
We will also had a guest from far away reading during open Mic:
In 2012, Tami Sussman threw herself into the Spoken Word scene and wrote and performed her first one-woman show “My Furry Heart”. The show was a tremendous success attracting hundreds of audience members across a series of 5 shows. Tami has since been invited on various radio programs and to MC and perform at a range of festivals and events around Australia and New Zealand. Now a very recognisable face within the Sydney poetry community, Tami is venturing to San Francisco and NYC (for the very first time!!!) to connect with her artistic roots. http://sussmania.wordpress.com/tamis-work/
She was awesome! Check her out on line as above.
10/14/13 was:
Claude Convers was born and raised in Switzerland. She is a poet, a visual artist and a Private French Teacher. French is her first language, German her second, and English her third; she primarily writes in the English language. Her work has been published in Adobe Walls, Chronogram, The Literary Gazette and WriterAdvice.com. She has appeared on radio shows and performed readings throughout the United States. Her website is www.frenchonthenet.com
10/7/13 was: Larry DiCostanzo
Lawrence DiCostanzo has been writing poetry consistently and seriously since 2005. Early training in Latin and Greek gave him a love of language. He appreciates the discipline and assistance that
form and rhyme provide, but he also likes to write poems that have a "conversational ring". He has won the Maggi H. Myer Memorial Prize of the Bay Area Poets Coalition, and his work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
9/30/13 was: Theme Night: FOG
Attending poets had the whole evening to read open mic on poems loosely related to the theme. Each poet hS 3 to 5 min for each round and there was time for more than one round.
9/23/13 Terry McCarty
Terry McCarty was born on July 31, 1959 in Electra, Texas.He moved to Southern California in 1988.
Terry began writing poetry in the summer of 1997.From 1998 to 1999, he was a member of the Midnight Special Bookstore poetry workshop in Santa Monica.He has been a featured poet in several Southern California venues. Terry has also featured at readings in Las Vegas, NV, San Francisco, CA, Santa Cruz, CA, Berkeley, CA, Oakland, CA and Seattle, WA. Terry has also appeared in Lynda and Lisa LaRose’s THE POETRY SPIRAL at Luna Sol Café (Los Angeles), Roni Walter’s BAKSTREEET COMETRI
at the Comedy Store (West Hollywood) and last July's SPARRING WITH BEATNIK GHOSTS reading at The Last Bookstore (Los Angeles) Published in these anthologies:
BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE CONTEMPORARY POETS (VCP Press 2001 edition)
SO LUMINOUS THE WILDFLOWERS (Tebot Bach)
THE LONG WAY HOME: THE BEST OF THE LITTLE RED BOOKS SERIES 1998-2008 (Lummox Press)
Other books include:
I SAW IT ON TV (Lummox Press)
20 GREATEST HITS: POEMS 1997-2004 (e-book available on iTunes and Amazon Kindle)
IMPERFECTIONIST (Meridien PressWorks)
HOLLYWOOD POETRY: 2001-2013 (Xlibris)
9/16/13 Jannie Dresser
Jannie Dresser is a Bay Area poet with Central Valley roots, who disdains long lists of poetry publication credits and awards, believing that her poems should stand on their own feet and leaves it to Readers/listeners to judge whether or not they are any good.
9/9/13 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.
And still older prior features:
8/26/13 Theme Night -- Childhood
7/22/13 Deborah Janke
7/15/13 David Rosenthal
7/8/13 Naomi Lowinsky
7/1/13 Robert Shelby
6/24/13 Theme Night - Spontaneous poems from themes suggested by the audience
6/17/13 Nancy Schimmel
6/10/13 Richard Lonranger
5/20/13 Alice Jones and Yoo-Chong Wong
5/13/13 Jeane Lupton
5/6/13 Claire J. Baker
4/29/13 Theme Night - Beauty
4/22/13 Marvin Spector
4/15/13 Gary Hicks
4/8/13 Glen Meisenheimer
4/1/13 Maggie Morley
3/25/13 Theme Night - Loyalty
3/18/13 Gary Turchin
3/11/13 Leah Steinberg
3/4/13 Casey Fitzsimmons
2/25/143 Theme Night - Flowers
2/15/13 Avotcja
2/8/13 Larry Chryspin
2/1/13 Sherry Sheehan
1/28/13 Milvia Street Literary Journal: Feature Poets — Hao Tran, Shanna Hullaby, G.S. Scott, Sharmini
Wijeyesekera, and Michael Noel
1/21/13 Susan Cohen
1/14/13 Barbara Atkinson
1/7/13 Nanette Deetz
