Stephanie Strickland

Connie Post, Margo Taft Stever, Stephanie Strickland

21 FEBRUARY 2021 — sunday

Poetry Flash presents a virtual poetry reading by Connie Post, Prime Meridian, Margo Taft Stever, Cracked Piano, and Stephanie Strickland, How the Universe is Made: Poems New & Selected, online via Zoom, free, 3:00 pm PST (Register to attend: please click here; you will receive an email with a link to join the reading)


MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Please join us for a Poetry Flash virtual reading on Sunday, February 21 at 3:00 pm PST! We are excited to bring you poetry via Zoom. To register for this reading, please click on the link in the calendar listing above. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Thank you for continuing to support Poetry Flash and our reading series during these unprecedented times.

This reading is co-sponsored by Moe's Books in Berkeley, and the books will be available at https://bookshop.org/lists/poetry-flash-readings. (There may be additional book inks in the event chatbox.)

Connie Post's new book of poems is Prime Meridian. Dean Rader said, "I have been on fire / since the moment I walked / through this door." Thus begins one of the many burning poems in Connie Post's Prime Meridian. In fact, the work in this book is so good it is as though Post herself has been on fire since she walked through the door of poetry. In poems both personal and political, Post manages to connect physical and geological ailments by way of her spare but unsparing lyrics. This is an important collection everyone should be reading." Her first full-length book, Floodwater, won the Lyrebird Award; her chapbook, And When the Sun Drops, received the Aurorean's Editor's Chapbook Award. She's published seven collections. Her Awards include the Crab Creek Review Poetry Award, Liakoura Award, Caesura Poetry Award, and First Prize in the Prick of the Spindle Poetry Competition. Host of several reading series, most recently the Second Sunday Poetry Reading Series at the Valona Deli, she also served as the first Poet Laureate of Livermore, 2005-2009.

Margo Taft Stever's two new books of poems are Cracked Piano and Ghost Moose. Fred Marchant wrote, "The taut, unflinching lyricism of this work reminds us of the courage it takes to see our lives as they are. These are poems that affirm the saving grace that we remain ready and eager to sing in our sorrow, even if the accompaniment is only a cracked piano." Her other books include The Lunatic Ball, The Hudson Line, Frozen Spring (Mid-List Press First Series Award), and Reading the Night Sky (Riverstone Press Poetry Chapbook Competition). She co-authored Looking East: William Howard Taft and the 1905 U.S. Diplomatic Mission to China. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Verse Daily, Prairie Schooner; "poem-a-day" on poets.org, Academy of American Poets; Cincinnati Review; Plume, and Salamander. She's the founder of the Hudson Valley Writers Center as well as the founder and current co-editor of Slapering Hol Press and lives in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Stephanie Strickland's newest books of poems are How the Universe is Made: Poems New & Selected 1985-2019 and Ringing the Changes. Marjorie Perloff says of her, "One of contemporary poetry's polymaths, her poetry displays an astonishing command of scientific knowledge and unusual verbal virtuosity." Author of nine books of poems, her honors include a Pushcart, Brittingham, Sandeen, Boston Review, and Best of the Net Prizes. She has been granted National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, New York Foundation for the Arts, and New York Creative Artists Public Service fellowships. A member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Literature Organization, she co-edited Electronic Literature Collection/I. Her digital poems have been shown widely in Europe, Canadian, and the U.S. including at the Library of Congress and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. She lives in New York City.