Jan Steckel

Bruce Isaacson, James Norman, Andrew Romanelli, Jan Steckel

2 MAY 2024 — thursday

Poetry Flash presents a Zeitgeist Press reading by Zeitgeist publisher, poet and novelist Bruce Isaacson, Anthems of the Damned; poet James Norman, A Monk with No Religion; poet Andrew Romanelli, Rotgut; and poet and fiction writer Jan Steckel, Ghosts and Oceans, stories, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 7:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).


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Featured books for this reading will be available for signing at the event. The video of this event will be posted on the Poetry Flash YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/channel/UClwdR-uPFNz7XxbBbLcnoEA.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS

Bruce Isaacson's new book of poems is Anthems of the Damned, in which the poet shows how it feels "to be human in an age of the ghosted soul." His most recent previous collection was Leningrad to Las Vegas. His new novel is Vegas Dirt, as he says, "These are human stories of the Great Recession—the salesman with two families, the mogul in misery, the erotic dancer who took the stage name America." Isaacson was the first Poet Laureate of Clark County, Nevada, which includes Las Vegas. He's also publisher of Zeitgeist Press. Recipient of degrees from Claremont McKenna, Dartmouth, and Brooklyn College, where he submitted a thesis to Allen Ginsberg, he has long been associated with the Café Babar readings, a San Francisco poetry and spoken word series that formed part of the '80s spoken word resurgence. Also known as a finalist in the inaugural Nuyorican Poetry Slam, he is a founder of Poetry Promise, Inc., a non-profit curator of poetry programs in Clark County, Nevada.

James Norman's new book of poems is How to Set Yourself on Fire and Call It Art, focusing on his relation to activism. His recent collections include A Monk with No Religion. Among his other previous titles are One Night the Buddha Drank Himself to Death and At the Point Where Gravity Finally Fails Us. Zeitgeist Press says, "James Norman assumes the open road would call his name. Musician, part-time lover—a heterodoxical historian of the forgotten, a half-assed Buddhist in his concrete monastery, a traveling freak show feeding LSD to a higher consciousness—Contradictions are the meat on the bones that construct him."

Andrew Romanelli's first book of poems is Rotgut. An IWW member and an activist for the disenfranchised, he's worked many jobs from busboy, debt collector, traveling salesman, deliverer of hair products, and much else. A teaching artist for the Alzheimer's Poetry Project, he's "the boy who cannot be pulled away from the beauty inherent in the discarded." His chapbook Supermarket Poems was published in 2023. Among his honors is a John Oliver Simon Award for a student poet of exceptional promise.

Jan Steckel's newest book is her debut short story collection, Ghosts and Oceans. Thaisa Frank says, "In Ghosts and Oceans, Jan Steckel has created her own magic realism, exploring fluid realms between rumor and myth. A woman becomes the color of a mango. An angel makes a hurried appearance at the hour of death. The sea is alternatively seductive and dangerous. The language is so musical; you can hear the book. Or—as one character says—'The words are one thing and the music another, but there comes a time in the imagination of the singer when the words are the music and the music the words.' Both the lush musicality and startling imagination invite the reader to travel in tilted and surprising worlds." Her latest poetry book is Like Flesh Covers Bone; her previous books include The Horizontal Poet, winner of the Lambda Literary Best Bisexual Book Award, her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks, and her poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital. She is a Harvard-Yale trained pediatrician, who worked in the Peace Corps and serviced poor communities. Nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize, she lives in Oakland, California.