Carolyn Miller

Dane Cervine, Carolyn Miller, Lenore Myers

29 MARCH 2026 — sunday

Poetry Flash presents a Sixteen Rivers Press Book Launch poetry reading by Dane Cervine, Children of Obscura: This Mysterious Human, Carolyn Miller, Random Universe, and Lenore Myers, Afterimages, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 3:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).


The featured books will be available for signing at the reading and at www.sixteenrivers.org. This event will be posted on the Poetry Flash YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UClwdR-uPFNz7XxbBbLcnoEA. Thank you for continuing to support Poetry Flash and our reading series.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS

Dane Cervine's new collection of prose poems is Children of Obscura: This Mysterious Human. Farnaz Fatemi says "…these are poems that unite the poets and scientists, about how knowledge helps and blinds us, written with a poet's delight in language." Dane Cervine is a therapist and writer from Santa Cruz. Through long association with Emerald Street Writers and Poetry Santa Cruz, Cervine has nurtured and been nurtured by the lively literary scene in the Monterey Bay and Greater San Francisco Bay Area. Cervine's poems have won awards from Adrienne Rich, Tony Hoagland, Atlanta Review, and Caesura, and have been nominated for multiple Pushcarts. His work has appeared in The Sun Magazine, The Hudson Review, Poetry Flash, Catamaran, Miramar, Rattle, Sycamore Review, and Pedestal Magazine, as well as in many anthologies. This is his second book of prose poems with Sixteen Rivers Press.

Carolyn Miller is a writer, painter, and freelance book editor. Her new collection of poems, Random Universe, covers an astonishing range of subjects—a reckless polka, a cemetery in Spoleto, the discovery of salvation in the paintings of Cy Twombly. Zack Rogow says, "The universe this book describes may be random, but it is also both gorgeous and familiar. The poet is in love with details of the world and brings them to the reader like a bouquet delivered right to your door. Julia B. Levine says, "…through it all, she shows her remarkable talent for writing about sensuous joy, joy that is earned, though haunted by history and the poet's place in it. I am glad to sit at the banquet table of her Random Universe and feast." Miller's previous books of poetry include After Cocteau, Light, Moving, and Route 66 and Its Sorrows. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Daily, The Writer's Almanac, Smartish Pace, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere, and in Garrison Keillor's Good Poems: American Places.

Poet and essayist Lenore Myers's new collection is Afterimages. The sections in Afterimages are aptly called galleries, for in them the reader will find a poet's explorations of paintings, sculptures, and other artworks (Balthus, DeFeo, Tarkovsky, and others). These artworks are deconstructed and reconstructed with originality and sharp-eyed linguistic grace as the poet reveals these artworks as collaborations among artists, subjects, and viewers. Afterimages offers the reader the pleasure, discomfort, and understanding to be gained through an artful response to life. Her previous chapbook, Regards to Balthus, was published by Seven Kitchens Press in 2023. Her poems and essays have appeared in a variety of literary journals.