Judy Halebsky

Judy Halebsky and Susan Briante

15 MARCH 2020 — sunday

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED. Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Judy Halebsky, Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged), and Susan Briante, The Market Wonders, East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, wheelchair accessible, 3:00 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)


MORE ABOUT THE READERS
This is a celebration for Judy Halebsky's new book of poems, Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged), a finalist for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize. Katy Peterson says, "Under the spell of Bashõ's haiku, but written in a voice entirely its own, Judy Halebsky's Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged) is the first book of poetry I've read in years that makes civilization look good. It makes me want to make dinner, make love, make noise." She's the author of three previous collections, the first of which, Sky=Empty, won the New Issues Poetry Prize. Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, she moved to the Bay Area to study poetry. Then, after college, she received a fellowship from the Japanese Ministry of Culture to study Japanese literature at Hosei University in Tokyo. She lives in Oakland and directs the low-residency MFA program at Dominican University.
Susan Briante's latest book of poems is The Market Wonders. Juliana Spahr said of it, "Poetry's conventions tend to assume that poetry does not need to bother itself with the economic machinations of something like the Dow. These conventions are wrong and Susan Briante's The Market Wonders proves it. This is poetry that is only the richer for how it weaves the economics that shape our daily lives into it." She's published two previous collections, Pioneers in the Study of Motion and Utopia Minus. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and coordinates the writing program Field Studies Southwest, which brings MFA students to the U.S.-Mexico border to work with community-based environmental and social justice groups. She also hosts the radio program "Speedway and Swan."