Ben Bloch and Kirsten Casey

2 DECEMBER 2012 — sunday

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Ben Bloch and Kirsten Casey, wheelchair accessible, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, dieselbookstore.com)

More about the readers
Ben Bloch's debut book of poems is Narrows. Stanley Moss says of it, "Ben Bloch makes poetry out of his dreams, hereness and distance, simplicity born in beautiful complications.…He may not carry the day for humanity, but he carries its flag." He works in the California prison system as a Clinical Psychologist. He also leads writing groups and facilitates an inmate-published newsletter, and his poetry recently appeared in Poetry Daily. He lives in the Monterey Bay Area, in Salinas.
Kirsten Casey's first book of poems is Ex Vivo (Out of the Living Body). Cheryl Dumesnil asks, "What could unify such a varied collection of narrators—inebriated monks, famous painters, suicides, bad girls, and a woman who feels no pain?…In this collection, the binding thread is language itself, which functions not only as an instrument of communication, but as character, as place, as metaphor, as architecture, as song." She lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills and writes a blog at outofthelivingbody.tumblr.com.