
Jose Antonio Villarán
Jose Antonio Villarán and Sesshu Foster
20 NOVEMBER 2022 — sunday
Poetry Flash presents a reading by Jose Antonio Villarán, Open Pit, and Sesshu Foster, City of the Future, 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)
Please join us for a virtual reading on Sunday, November 20 at 3:00 pm PST. 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.
Featured books for this event are available at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash.
MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Jose Antonio Villarán's new collection is Open Pit. He is author of two previous collections, including la distancia es siempre la misma and el cerrajero. He is also author of one book of translation, Album of Fences, by Omar Pimienta. Sandra and Ben Doller say, "Jose Antonio Villarán's Open Pit affectively pits global addictions against personal extractions, calculating the enormous human and environmental weight of techno-privilege. Hurtling down the superhighway of forms—the ocean on one side, the desert on the other—the poems in this book accumulate into a desperate investigation of complicity, commodity, and heredity, as they swerve from Sacramento to San Diego to Lima to China to dust. The open pit of the title—of the exploited town of Morococha, of the raided earth itself—echoes and plumbs as it is stripped bare, as it is offered to the poet's young son Miqel, the future. This text is a necessary addition to the canon of disembordered political poetry which, here, honestly acknowledging its own limits, dilates the aperture." He holds an MFA in Writing from UC San Diego and is a PhD candidate in Literature at UC Santa Cruz.
Sesshu Foster is a poet, novelist, and veteran public school teacher. Foster's most recent poetry collection, City of the Future, is "the poetic soundtrack of a people and a place, of their history and their dreams." He is co-author, with artist Arturo Romo, of the surrealist, multigenre novel ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines. Ben Ehrenreich says "ELADATL is strong medicine against the erasures of history, a mega-vitamin for struggles yet to come." Foster has taught writing in East Los Angeles, at the University of Iowa, the California Institute for the Arts, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. His work has been published in The Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry, Language for a New Century: Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond, and State of the Union: 50 Political Poems. Foster earned his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He lives in Alhambra, California.


Daily Listings
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19 OCTOBER 2025 — sunday
20 OCTOBER 2025 — monday
21 OCTOBER 2025 — tuesday
22 OCTOBER 2025 — wednesday
23 OCTOBER 2025 — thursday
- City Arts and Lectures presents photographer Richard Misrach discusses his new book, Half-Baked Stories about My Dead Mom, photographs of cargo ships to and from the Port of Oakland, in conversation with award-winning author and historian Rebecca Solnit, Recollections of My Nonexistence, Sydney Goldstein Theater, 275 Hayes Street, San Francisco, $49, 7:30 (https://www.cityarts.net)
24 OCTOBER 2025 — friday
- Transit Books presents A Very Fine Fête, a fundraiser celebrating Transit's tenth anniversary, eat and drink among friends, enjoy Edward Gorey tarot readings, a book apothecary, special edition merch, a prize for best costume, and more, Edward Gorey-inspired dresswear encouraged: Edwardian costume, fur coats, top hats, fascinators, or something that's been calling in your closet, Cellar Maker Brewing Co., 940 Parker Street, Berkeley, $30-$10,000, 7:00-10:00 (www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/a-very-fine-fete)
25 OCTOBER 2025 — saturday
- Fourth Saturdays: Poetry at the Claremont Library presents a reading by Nicelle Davis and Chiwan Choi, Claremont Helen Renwick Library, 208 N. Harvard Avenue, in the Claremont Village, Claremont, free, 2:00 (909/621-4902, www.claremontlibrary.org/monthly-poetry-readings.html)
26 OCTOBER 2025 — sunday
- Poetry Flash presents Women in a Golden State, California Poets at 60 and Beyond, an anthology celebration and contributor's reading featuring poets Laurel Benjamin, Caroline Goodwin, Robin Michel, and Lisa Rosenberg, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 3:00 pm (poetryflash.org).
27 OCTOBER 2025 — monday
28 OCTOBER 2025 — tuesday
29 OCTOBER 2025 — wednesday
- Poetry reading by Marcia Falk, The Sky Will Overtake You, and Lucille Lang Day, Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place; she is publisher of Scarlet Tanager Books, reading introduced by Richard Silberg, homemade goodies will be served, sponsored by Temple Sinai's Fine Arts Committee on Culture and Community, Temple Sinai Chapel, 2808 Summit, at 28th Street between Webster and Summit, enter at gate in parking lot, Oakland, free, 7:00 (www.oaklandsinai.org/event/poetry-reading1.html)
- Sacramento Poetry Center presents "Dangerous Women," a poetry reading by Molly Fisk, Kim Shuck, Moira Magneson, and Tricia Caspers, open mic follows, Sacramento Poetry Center, 1719 25th Street, Sacramento, 7:30
30 OCTOBER 2025 — thursday
31 OCTOBER 2025 — friday
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