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Barbara Ras

Barbara Hamby and Barbara Ras

28 MARCH 2021 — sunday

Poetry Flash presents a virtual poetry reading by Barbara Hamby, Holoholo, and Barbara Ras, The Blues of Heaven, online via Zoom, free, 3:00 pm PDT (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, March 28 at 3:00 pm PDT! We are excited to bring you Barbara Ras and Barbara Hamby 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; the featured books are available at bookshop.org/lists/poetry-flash-readings.

Barbara Ras's new book of poems is The Blues of Heaven, both personal, dealing with grief over the death of a brother and memories of growing up in a working-class neighborhood of Polish immigrants, and national, reflecting on gun violence, the climate crisis, and the fecklessness of an ignorant, corrupt government. Naomi Shihab Nye said, "The Blues of Heaven radiates with immense tenderness—here are poems of vivid painterly wonderment, perfect pacing and weight, elegantly woven counterpoints of shimmering imagery." Ras's previous collections include Bite Every Sorrow, winner of the Walt Whitman Award and a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, One Hidden Stuff, and The Lost Skin. Her poetry has been published in The New Yorker, Tin House, Granta, Orion, and elsewhere, and she's been awarded fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others. She lives in San Antonio, Texas, and is the founding director emerita of the Trinity University Press.

Barbara Hamby's new book of poems is Holoholo, the Hawaiian word for strolling without a fixed destination. A collage of one woman's consciousness, spoken in an American lingo, including Yiddish and street talk, its three sections motor across wars, racial tension, street violence, and other assorted national chaos. Billy Collins said, ""Barbara Hamby's poems are wild, outspoken, seriously funny, motor-mouth rambles that take us through hoops of association to places both unexpected and unimpeachable. This collection offers a generous helping of poems so crackling with references and busy with verbal energy you might feel them buzzing in your hands." She's the author of seven previous collections, most recently Bird Odyssey and On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems. Her book of linked stories, Lester Higata's 20th Century, was the winner of the 2010 University of Iowa John Simmons Award. A 2010 Guggenheim fellow, she is also co-editor, with her husband David Kirby, of Seriously Funny, an anthology of poetry.




Daily Listings

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1 MAY 2026 — friday

2 MAY 2026 — saturday

3 MAY 2026 — sunday

  • Poetry Flash presents a book launch for Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War, a new anthology, with readings by contributors Sean Mclain Brown, Lucille Lang Day, Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Claire Ortalda, and Andrena Zawinski, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 3:00 pm (poetryflash.org).

4 MAY 2026 — monday

5 MAY 2026 — tuesday

  • City Lights presents Cinco De Mayo with ZYZZYVA, the legendary literary journal, celebrating Issue 132, with essayist Sarah Matsui, a 2025-2026 Steinbeck Fellow, and story writer Anita Felicelli, How We Know Our Time Travelers, drinks, eats, and a short reading hosted by ZYZZYVA editor Oscar Villalon, in-store, City Lights Books, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, free, 7:00 pm (citylights.com/events/zyzzyva-issue-132-cinco-de-mayo-celebration)

6 MAY 2026 — wednesday

7 MAY 2026 — thursday

8 MAY 2026 — friday

9 MAY 2026 — saturday

10 MAY 2026 — sunday

11 MAY 2026 — monday

12 MAY 2026 — tuesday

13 MAY 2026 — wednesday

14 MAY 2026 — thursday

15 MAY 2026 — friday

16 MAY 2026 — saturday

17 MAY 2026 — sunday

  • Book Society presents "A Taste of the Land: Stories & Realities of Farming," an evening of conversation and farm fresh flavors with Jennifer Acker, Surrender, Andy Naja-Riese, CEO of the Agricultural Institute of Marin, and Tamara Hicks, Feast on the Farm, owner of Tomula Farms, Book Society, 2945 College Avenue, Berkeley, $45, members $30, 6:00-8:00 pm (www.booksociety.social/event-details/a-taste-of-the-land-stories-realities-of-farming)
  • Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Molly Fisk, Walking Wheel, a novel-in-verse, and poet and translator Francesca Bell, What Small Sound, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 3:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).

18 MAY 2026 — monday

19 MAY 2026 — tuesday

20 MAY 2026 — wednesday

21 MAY 2026 — thursday

22 MAY 2026 — friday

23 MAY 2026 — saturday

24 MAY 2026 — sunday

25 MAY 2026 — monday

26 MAY 2026 — tuesday

27 MAY 2026 — wednesday

28 MAY 2026 — thursday

29 MAY 2026 — friday

30 MAY 2026 — saturday

31 MAY 2026 — sunday


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