
John Sibley Williams
John Sibley Williams, Rusty Morrison, Alexis Sears
12 JUNE 2022 — sunday
Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Rusty Morrison, Beyond the Chainlink, John Sibley Williams, Scale Model of a Country at Dawn, Cider Press Review Book Award-winner and The Drowning House, Elixir Press Poetry Award-winner, with Alexis Sears, Out of Order, Donald Justice Poetry Prize-winner, 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)
Please join us for a Poetry Flash virtual reading on Sunday, June 12 at 3:00 pm PDT. We are excited to bring you this event 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.
This reading is co-sponsored by Moe's Books in Berkeley. Featured books for this reading are available at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash.
MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Rusty Morrison's most recent collection, Beyond the Chainlink, was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. Library Journal wrote, "As these eloquent, perfectly faceted poems attest, life is at heart our burningly patient negotiation with the everyday. We're followed by 'dangerous ideas,' risk the 'little hurt' of impulse, attempt to construct meaning (even in the backyard), and always, always desire ('This wanting, a pocket mirror I'll rub / until the silver backing rubs off.') James Laughlin Award-winner Morrison delivers poetry that feels affirmative, radiant, and lived." Her previous books include After Urgency, Tupelo's Dorset Prize-winner, the true keeps calm biding its story, winner of the Ahsahta Press Sawtooth Prize, James Laughlin Award, Northern California Book Award, and DiCastagnola Award. She is a recipient of a Civitella Ranieri fellowship, and other artist retreat fellowships. She was one of eight fellows in the 2020 UC Berkeley Art Research Center's Poetry and the Senses Program. Co-publisher of Omnidawn Publishers, she teaches and offers writing consultations.
Alexis Sears's debut collection is Out of Order, winner of the 2021 Donald Justice Poetry Prize. David Yezzi says, "If you have never read Alexis Sears, prepare yourself. Her poems draw blood. It's hard to think of a debut collection since Heart's Needle [by W.D Snodgrass] that is at once so deeply felt and so finely tuned. In her hands, form is the fist that delivers the blow, conveying the pure force of language. With so much at stake—identity, melancholia, a father's suicide in a distant place—feeling could easily overwhelm and blur, but Sears's poems remain precise and richly textured. Her poems do not succumb; they triumph, as we do, thrillingly, through them." She earned her BA in Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and her MFA in poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work has appeared in the Birmingham Poetry Review, Cortland Review, Northwest Review, Poet Lore, E-verse Radio, Hopkins Review, Literary Matters, Best American Poetry 2022, minnesota review, Cimarron Review, Able Muse, and elsewhere. She is poetry editor of the online literary journal, Up North Lit.
John Sibley Williams is the author of nine poetry collections, including Scale Model of a Country at Dawn (Cider Press Review Poetry Award). Susan Rich says, "To conjure is a recurring theme in this impressive collection—as if language holds the power to reconfigure a past, a mother, a child. And perhaps it can. Williams's words are that convincing." His books include The Drowning House (Elixir Press Poetry Award), As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press), and Summon (JuxtaProse Chapbook Prize). His collection, Sky Burial: New & Selected Poems, is forthcoming in translated form by the Portuguese press do lado esquerdo. A twenty-seven-time Pushcart nominee, Williams is the winner of numerous other awards, including the Laux/Millar Prize. He serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review and is founder of the Caesura Poetry Workshop series. His work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Yale Review, Verse Daily, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and TriQuarterly.


Daily Listings
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5 DECEMBER 2023 — tuesday
6 DECEMBER 2023 — wednesday
7 DECEMBER 2023 — thursday
- Lunch Poems, UC Berkeley's noontime reading series, presents poet Jesse Nathan, Eggtooth, Morrison Library inside Doe Library, 101 Library Ct., University of California campus, Berkeley, free, 12:10-12:50 pm PST (More information here: www.lib.berkeley.edu/visit/lunch-poems)
8 DECEMBER 2023 — friday
9 DECEMBER 2023 — saturday
- Sacramento Poetry Alliance presents a poetry reading by Molly Fisk, The More Difficult Beauty, and Tricia Caspers, Some Flawed Magic, Sacramento Poetry Alliance, 1169 Perkins Way, Sacramento, free, 4:00 pm PDT (More information here: www.facebook.com/sacramentopoetryalliance)
- The Poetry Center presents poet Divya Victor, CURB, winner of the PEN America Open Book Award and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, reading from her work and joining in conversation with poet Tonya M. Foster, A Swarm of Bees in High Court, part of Undisciplining the Fields, a conversation and reading series that emphasizes artists and writers from a range of fields and cross-disciplinary practices, free, East Bay Media Center, 1939 Addison Street, Berkeley, 2:00-4:00 pm PST (More information here: poetry.sfsu.edu/event/undisciplining-fields-divya-victor-reading-and-conversation-tonya-m-foster)
10 DECEMBER 2023 — sunday
11 DECEMBER 2023 — monday
- City Lights Books presents a reading with four Black Lawrence Press authors, poet Lisa Dordal, Writer-in-Residence at Vanderbilt University and author of Mosaic of the Dark, finalist for the 2019 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry, short story writers Nancy Welch, The Road from Prosperity, and JoeAnn Hart, Highwire Act & Other Tales of Survival, and novelist Sara Johnson Allen, Down Here We Come Up, winner of the Big Moose Prize from Black Lawrence Press, City Lights Books, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, free, 6:00 pm PST (Register to attend: citylights.com/events)
12 DECEMBER 2023 — tuesday
- L.A. Times Book Club presents California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick, Scar and Flower, finalist for the 2020 Northern California Book Award, in conversation with Steve Padilla, editor of the Los Angeles Times, online, free, 6:00 pm PST (RSVP to attend: www.eventbrite.com/e/la-times-dec-book-club-with-california-poet-laureate-lee-herrick-tickets-746414865957?aff=ebdssbdestsearch)
- Cobalt Poets presents a reading with featured poet Leslie Sainz, Have You Been Long Enough at Table, followed by an open mic, online via Zoom, free, 7:30 pm PST (Register to attend: www.poetrysuperhighway.com/cobalt/calendar.html)
13 DECEMBER 2023 — wednesday
- City Lights Books celebrates the 90th birthday of the late Jack Hirschman (1933-2021), poet, translator, editor, and activist, former Poet Laureate of San Francisco, and prolific author of poetry and essays including All That's Left and Lyripol, with tributes by Agneta Falk, joined by Scott Bird, Dimitri Charalambou, Neeli Cherkovski, Mauro Ffortissimo, Celia Hirschman, Matt Gonzales, devorah major, Sarah Menefee, Alejandro Murguia, and Byron Spooner, online via Zoom, free, 6:00 pm PST (Register to attend: citylights.com/events)
14 DECEMBER 2023 — thursday
- San Francisco Public Library presents Kim Shuck, former San Francisco Poet Laureate and author of several collections including What Unseen Things Blow Wishes Across My Surface?, celebrating the publication of her new book, Pick a Garnet to Sleep In, Latino/Hispanic Meeting Room A, Main Library, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco, free, 6:00-7:30 pm PST (More information here: sfpl.org/events/2023/12/14/performance-kim-shucks-poem-jam-celebrates-pick-garnet-sleep)
15 DECEMBER 2023 — friday
16 DECEMBER 2023 — saturday
17 DECEMBER 2023 — sunday
18 DECEMBER 2023 — monday
19 DECEMBER 2023 — tuesday
20 DECEMBER 2023 — wednesday
21 DECEMBER 2023 — thursday
22 DECEMBER 2023 — friday
23 DECEMBER 2023 — saturday
24 DECEMBER 2023 — sunday
25 DECEMBER 2023 — monday
26 DECEMBER 2023 — tuesday
27 DECEMBER 2023 — wednesday
28 DECEMBER 2023 — thursday
29 DECEMBER 2023 — friday
30 DECEMBER 2023 — saturday
31 DECEMBER 2023 — sunday
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