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Poetry Flash Reading Series


Fog and Light: Vince Gotera, Ken Haas, Kathleen McClung, Diane Frank, more

24 JUNE 2021 — thursday

Poetry Flash presents a virtual poetry reading to celebrate Fog and Light: San Francisco Through the Eyes of the Poets Who Live Here, a new anthology, with contributors Vince Gotera, Ken Haas, Jodi Hottel, Kathleen McClung, Gwynn O'Gara, and editor Diane Frank, online via Zoom, free, 7:00 pm PDT (Register to attend: please click here; you will receive an email with a link to join the reading)


Please join us for a Poetry Flash virtual reading on Thursday, June 24 at 7:00 pm PDT! We are excited to bring you this anthology celebration 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 event. 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; Fog and Light is available at bookshop.org/lists/poetry-flash-readings.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Many of these bio notes are from the Fog and Light anthology:
Vince Gotera's recent book is The Coolest Month, a collection of poems written everyday throughout April, in response to NaPoWriMo and Poem-a-Day prompts. Maureen Thorson says, "Vince Gotera's The Coolest Month leans into T. S. Eliot's bromide for April while turning it on its head.…An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but as Gotera shows, a poem a day can help chase away the blues." Now a professor in Iowa, Gotera was born and raised in San Francisco. He grew up in the Haight-Ashbury and was a teenager during the Summer of Love. "As a lead guitarist," Vince says, "I was influenced by the rock bands that played around The City: Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Charlatans, The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver, Santana, and many others. In fact, I fondly remember being an eighth grader at St. Agnes School on Ashbury and hearing The Dead rehearsing in their house across the street." Gotera left for grad school in the Midwest and hasn't lived in The City since. "But I am always excited to visit and enjoy the dazzling diversity, charming neighborhoods, and utter beauty of San Francisco, forever home."

Ken Haas's first full-length collection, Borrowed Light, won the 2020 Red Mountain Press Discovery Award. Ellen Bass said, "…Ken Haas's first collection of poems…is complex, vibrant, capacious and wildly imaginative. With affection and wonderful clarity, Haas describes a childhood of 'taking infield practice and shagging flies,' Atlantic City's 'sunburn and saltwater taffy,' a trip into Manhattan to see the legendary John Coltrane, who 'emptied his arms in a wave that even now speaks to the kind of man I could become.' But it would be a mistake to call this book nostalgic. Haas is keenly aware of the darker forces of history. The same Antisemitism that forced his grandparents to flee Nazi Germany is alive and well today—'we just forgot that shirt-wise brown is brown, words do burn, and we can see the rest from here.'" Haas's work has appeared in over fifty literary magazines, journals, and anthologies. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and received the Betsy Colquitt Poetry Award. He grew up in New York City, but has lived for the past forty-four years in San Francisco.

Jodi Hottel is a sansei, third generation Japanese American. She is author of the chapbooks Out of the Ashes, Voyeur, and Heart Mountain, her collection of poems about the Japanese American incarceration, winner of the 2012 Blue Light Press Poetry Prize. Most of those families were initially taken to a temporary detention site at the Tanforan race track in San Bruno, now the site of a shopping mall.

Kathleen McClung's books include Temporary Kin, Three Soul-Makers, A Juror Must Fold in on Herself, The Typists Play Monopoly, and Almost the Rowboat. Julie Kane wrote of Temporary Kin, " Kathleen McClung is a master of the sonnet crown. In her skilled hands, that venerable form expands to encompass active shooter drills, smartphones, and Lyft drivers, as well as songbirds, the sea, and the moon." She fell in love with San Francisco at age nine when she came with her mother on a Greyhound bus to see Carmen at the War Memorial Opera House. She cried when they had to leave at the intermission to catch the bus back to Sacramento. For over thirty years, Kathleen McClung has lived, taught, and written on the foggy west side of San Francisco.

Gwynn O'Gara's books include Snake Woman Poems, with a foreword by Nanos Valaoritis, and the chapbooks Fixer-Upper, Winter at Green Haven, Fruit of Life, and Sea Cradles. She grew up in San Francisco and left many times, almost always coming back. For twenty-five years she worked as a California Poet in the Schools and served as Sonoma County Poet Laureate 2010-2011.

Diane Frank is author of eight books of poems; her 2021 collection is While Listening to the Enigma Variations: New and Selected Poems. Los P. Jones said this of Frank's 2018 book, Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines: "In this new and startling collection, Diane Frank's poems transcend not just genres but entire dimensions. When she speaks to J.S. Bach, she really means it and when Bach speaks back, she listens—entirely—the way certain moths perceive sound via their whole body, even their wings. How is this accomplished? It will seem to come through the poems themselves—their music, tonal qualities and subjects, yet it goes even deeper as it pushes up like duende through the soles of your feet." She is also the author of Blackberries in the Dream House, winner of the Chelson Award for Fiction, two other novels, and a photo memoir of her 400-mile trek in the Himalayas. She teaches at San Francisco State University and Dominican University and lives in the Outer Sunset in San Francisco, where she dances, plays cello, and creates her life as an art form. She selected the poems for the Fog and Light anthology.




Daily Listings

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26 JULY 2024 — friday

  • Green Apple Books welcomes journalist Jesse Katz for the release of his book, The Rent Collectors: Exploitation, Murder, and Redemption in Immigrant LA, Green Apple Books, 1231 9th Avenue, San Francisco, free, 7:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: www.greenapplebooks.com/event/9th-ave-jesse-katz)

27 JULY 2024 — saturday

  • Calling all literary enthusiasts! The Beast Crawl Literary Festival showcases some of the Bay Area's most captivating voices throughout downtown Oakland, begin at 3:30 at COMMUNE, Beast Crawl information table: Leg 1 at 4:00 pm features readings by Poetry Flash, AfroSurrealist Writers Workshop, and Oakland Youth Poet Laureates; Leg 2 at 5:30 pm features readings by Black Freighter Press, Colossus Press, and Manic D Press; Leg 3 at 7:00 pm features readings by Paper Press, Celebration of Queer Poets, and Apocrypha Press; Leg 4 at 8:30 pm features an afterparty at COMMUNE and Binny's; there's an open mic at each Leg; start at Beast Crawl's headquarters for information, COMMUNE, 1716 Broadway, Oakland, free, 3:30 pm PDT (For more information, including maps, visit: www.beastcrawl.org/2024.html)
  • Beast Crawl Literary Festival presents a Poetry Flash 50+ Anniversary reading, featured readers include Sally Ashton, Listening to Mars; Judy Halebsky, Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged); Eliot Schain, The Distant Sound; and Rosalinda Monroy, Poetry Flash assistant editor and contributor; these are poets and writers who have all read for, worked on, or been published in Poetry Flash, hosted by Joyce Jenkins, editor, Poetry Flash, The Punchdown Wine Bar + Bottle Shop, 1737 Broadway, Oakland, free, Leg 1 at 4:00 pm sharp (For more information, including a map, visit: www.beastcrawl.org/blog/poetry-flash-2024)
  • Beast Crawl Literary Festival presents "The Erotic," a reading featuring Rusty Morrison, Risk, editor of Omnidawn Publishing; Richard Silberg, The Horses: New and Selected, associate editor of Poetry Flash; Steven Rood, Music from Behind a Stone Wall; Joyce Jenkins, Joy Road, editor of Poetry Flash, Feelmore Social Club, 1542 Broadway, Oakland, free, Leg 2 at 5:30 pm sharp (For more information, including a map, visit: www.beastcrawl.org/blog/the-erotic-2024)
  • Warwick's welcomes historical-fantasy novelist Deborah Harkness, A Discovery of Witches to discuss her latest in the All Souls series, The Black Bird Oracle, offsite at IPJ Theatre, Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice, 5555 Marian Way, San Diego, free, 2:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: www.warwicks.com/event/harkness-2024)
  • The Glendale Poet Laureate Program welcomes Summer Farah, I could die today and live again, Arthur Kayzakian, The Book of Redacted Paintings, and David Romero Diamond Bars 2, for a reading and workshop designed for all skill levels, Brand Library and Art Center, 1601 West Mountain Street, Glendale, free, 11:00 am PDT (For more information, visit: www.eventbrite.com/e/glendale-poet-laureate-poetry-workshop-reading-tickets-939958058857?aff=ebdssbdestsearch)
  • Marin Poetry Center's Traveling Show will visit Berkeley for an afternoon of poetry featuring readers: Judy Juanita, The High Price of Freeways, Judy Bertelsen, Susan Cohen, Democracy of Fire, Jeanne Wagner, Everything Turns Into Something Else, and Carol Dorf, Berkeley Public Library Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch, 1901 Russell Street, Berkeley, 2:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: marinpoetrycenter.org/programs/traveling-show-3)
  • The CODEX Foundation Logan Book Arts Center presents a two-day poetry printing workshop with Jonathan Gerkin; the class will honor Navajo poet Sherwin Bitsui, Flood Song, by teaching to print using one of his poems, CODEX Foundation, 1331 Seventh Street, Unit D, Berkeley, $320, 9:30 am PDT (For more information, visit: www.codexfoundation.org/events)
  • Westside Satellite for Writers presents a workshop, "Identity as an Act of Courage," participants will mine their history for ideas and learn how their personal identity informs the characters in their stories, hosted by writing coach Terrie Silverman and editor Robin Quinn, Virtual on Zoom, $15, 10:00 am PDT (For more information, visit: iwosc.org/events/westside-satellite-for-writers-identity-as-an-act-of-courage-a-writing-and-storytelling-interview-workshop/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=identity_as_an_act_of_courage_a_writing_and_storytelling_interview_workshop_on_saturday_july_27_part_of_wpn_education_series&utm_term=2024-07-17#iwosc-event-registration)

28 JULY 2024 — sunday

  • Marcus Books welcomes author Eisa Davis, Angela's Mixtape/the History of Light, for a discussion, reading, and book signing, Marcus Books, 3900 Martin L King Jr Way, Oakland, 1:30 pm PDT (For more information, visit: www.instagram.com/marcus.books/?hl=en)
  • The CODEX Foundation Logan Book Arts Center presents a two-day poetry printing workshop with Jonathan Gerkin; the class will honor Navajo poet Sherwin Bitsui, Flood Song, by teaching to print using one of his poems, CODEX Foundation, 1331 Seventh Street, Unit D, Berkeley, $320, 9:30 am PDT (For more information, visit: www.codexfoundation.org/events)
  • Join Genie Cartier and special guests for "the Curve!" a special show that combines spoken word poetry, comedy, and acrobatics, Circus Center Theater, 755 Frederick Street, San Francisco, $18, 6:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: www.eventbrite.com/e/the-curve-an-acro-poem-tickets-929837768797?aff=ebdssbdestsearch)

29 JULY 2024 — monday

30 JULY 2024 — tuesday

  • ZYZZYVA Magazine presents Movie Night at the Roxie with novelists Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Fruit of the Drunken Tree, and R.O. Kwon, Exhibit; the featured film will be Secretary, Roxie Theater, 3117 16th Street, San Francisco, $15, 6:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: roxie.com/film/zzyva-movie-night-secretary)

31 JULY 2024 — wednesday

  • City Lights Bookstore welcomes poet and translator Daniel Borzutzky, The Performance of Becoming Human, discussing his latest book, The Murmuring Grief of the Americas, in conversation with Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, The Life Assignment, virtual on Zoom, free, 6:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: citylights.com/events/daniel-borzutzky-in-conversation-with-ricardo-alberto-maldonado)
  • Lyrics & Dirges reading series presents Anastasia Lê, Taneesh Kaur, Linette Escobar, Jessica Ke'mani, Abby Bogomolny, hosted by MK Chávez and Sharon Coleman, curated by Sharon Coleman, Pegasus Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, refreshments, 7:00-9:00 pm PDT (www.pegasusbookstore.com)
  • Vroman's Bookstore welcomes Melissa Mogollon for a discussion of her new novel, Oye, in conversation with Greg Mania, Born to Be Public, Vroman's Bookstore, 695 East Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, 7:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: www.vromansbookstore.com/Melissa-Mogollon-discusses-Oye)
  • Green Apple Books welcomes author Willy Vlautin, The Night Always Comes, to celebrate the release of his new book, The Horse; Green Apple Books, 1231 9th Avenue, San Francisco, Free, 7:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: www.greenapplebooks.com/event/9th-ave-willy-vlautin)

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