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2014 Poetry Flash Reading Series


Poetry Flash readings take place at Moe's Books, Berkeley, and at Diesel, A Bookstore, Oakland.

To find out more about the Poetry Flash Reading Series, please email editor@poetryflash.org or call (510) 525-5476, weekday afternoons. ASL interpreters for the deaf and hearing impaired may be provided for these events with at least one week's notice. To request, email mbb@poetryflash.org, or editor@poetryflash.org. Our reading series venues are wheelchair accessible. Read more about the series on the Poetry Flash Reading Series page.


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16 JANUARY 2014 — thursday

Connie Post and Zara Raab

Poetry Flash presents a book launch reading by Connie Post, Floodwater, and Zara Raab, reading from Rumpelstiltskin, or What's in a Name, a finalist for the Dana Award, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

Connie Post's new book of poems is Floodwater. Ellen Bass says, "Connie Post writes 'there are lost fish swimming at our feet' and indeed these poems are filled with the losses of a lifetime. Yet time and again, Connie has the courage to reach for healing.… "Floodwater is a brave book full of lyric moments." She was Livermore's first Poet Laureate (2005-2009), creating two popular reading series during her term. Winner of the 2009 Caesura Poetry Award, she was short-listed for the Comstock Review's Muriel Craft Bailey Award five times.
Zara Raab's new book of poems is Fracas & Asylum. Jean Nordhaus says of it, "Her language is playful, even mischievous at times, always surprising and original. In her formal daring and thematic breadth, Raab bears witness to much that is broken and awry in the world and labors in her poetry towards a restoration of wholeness." Her first two collections are The Book of Gretel and Swimming the Eel. Her chapbook, a finalist for the Dana Award, Rumpelstiltskin, or What's in a Name, has just been published, and that is what she'll be reading from at this event. Her essays and reviews are widely published; she's also contributing editor to Redwood Coast Review and Poetry Flash.


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23 JANUARY 2014 — thursday

Janée J. Baugher and Patti Trimble

Poetry Flash presents poetry reading by poet Janée J. Baugher, The Body's Physics, and poet, writer, and visual artist Patti Trimble, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Janée J. Baugher's new book of poems is The Body's Physics. Peggy Shumaker says of it, "Her words praise 'what we see and can never see.' Her profound conversations with visual art, deep journeys of mind and body, remind us to be 'open in the manner that a sea opens.' Fine gifts, these poems." Her first collection is Coördinates of Yes. Widely published in nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, she's collaborated with visual artists, composers, and choreographers, and her work has been adapted for the stage and set to music at the University of Cincinnati, Interlochen Center for the Arts, Dance Now! Ensemble in Florida, and elsewhere.
Patti Trimble is a writer and visual artist who divides her time between northern California and Sicily. She often links her poetry and visual art as a personal response to landscape, myth, and environmental concerns, and is known for lyric performances of her poetry with music. Her poems are published in anthologies and journals, four chapbooks, and Small Craft Advisories, a spoken word CD. She has performed her poetry at hundreds of venues and was co-creator—and for a decade, featured poet—at the Tuolumne Poetry Festival in Yosemite National Park. Her writing has received grants from the Lannan Foundation; Poets & Writers; a Pushcart nomination; finalist awards from Glimmer Train literary journal, a P&W California Writer’s Award; and artist residencies at Djerassi Foundation.


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26 JANUARY 2014 — sunday

Stafford Tribute: Maxine Hong Kingston, Earll Kingston, more

Poetry Flash presents a Tribute to William Stafford, celebrating Ask Me: 100 Essential Poems, by the late William Stafford, edited by his son Kim Stafford, this event features readings of Stafford's work by Maxine Hong Kingston, Earll Kingston, Joseph Lease, and Tiffany Higgins, wheelchair accessible, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, dieselbookstore.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
This reading will celebrate the release of Ask Me: 100 Essential Poems, by William Stafford, a beloved American poet, winner of the National Book Award for his Traveling through the Dark and 1971-1972 Poetry Consultant for the Library of Congress (what is now U.S. Poet Laureate). The new collection is edited by his son, Kim Stafford. The readers will be Maxine Hong Kingston, whose latest book is the memoir-in-verse I Love a Broad Margin to My Life, and whose numerous prose works of fiction and nonfiction have won her both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award among many other honors; the actor Earll Kingston, who has been featured in many theatre productions with literary themes; Joseph Lease, whose latest book of poems, his fourth, is Testify and whose poetry has been featured on NPR and anthologized in Best American Poetry; and Tiffany Higgins, translator and author of the prize-winning Aeneas stares into her helmet.


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30 JANUARY 2014 — thursday

Roy Mash and Robert Sward

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Roy Mash, Buyer's Remorse, and Robert Sward, New and Selected Poems, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

Roy Mash's first full-length book of poems is Buyer's Remorse. Charles Harper Webb says, "Roy Mash's insightful, touching, and wholly delightful Buyer's Remorse is a celebration of the non-epic and unheroic, the bad decision, the finish out-of-the-money, the cannonball we do to spite the back flip that eludes us, the inglorious lives we seem to have wound up with by mistake.…" Widely published in such journals as Agni, Barrow Street, Nimrod, and River Styx, he is a long time board member of Marin Poetry Center.
Robert Sward's latest book is New and Selected Poems 1957-2011. Jack Foley says, "Robert Sward's poems are the result of a plunge into a never fully ironized, often hilarious sense of mysticism: they are the product of a restless, spiritually adventuresome sensibility masking itself as a stand-up comedian." Among his thirty books are Four Incarnations, Heavenly Sex, God is in the Cracks, and Rosicrucian in the Basement. He's served in the navy in the combat zone during the Korean War, worked for CBC radio, and been a book reviewer and a feature writer for The Toronto Star and the Globe & Mail among other exploits in his long and eventful life.


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6 FEBRUARY 2014 — thursday

Rusty Morrison, Norman Fischer, Maxine Chernoff

Poetry Flash presents a book launch and reading by Rusty Morrison, Norman Fischer, and Maxine Chernoff, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Rusty Morrison’s new book of poems is Beyond the Chainlink. Lisa Robertson says of it, “How do we continue to choose, speak and interpret given the weight of the end fact? Silence in Morrison’s new work is transformed from an absence to a concept, a potential translator of temporal givens; she tends silence’s conscious work with a measure and a subtle ear.” Her previous collections have been prize-winners: the true keeps calm biding its story won Ahsahta Press’s Sawtooth Prize, the Academy of American Poets James Laughlin Award, the Northern California Book Award, and the DiCastagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America. After Urgency won the Dorset Prize from Tupelo Press, and Whethering won the Colorado Prize for Poetry. She has been co-publisher of Omnidawn Publishing since 2001.
Norman Fischer’s new book of poems is The Strugglers. Joseph Lease says of it, “Elegy, philosophy, magic: the deepest and most playful awareness: simultaneity, love: human voices wake us and we drown in a world of flow and loss and damage: poetry was meant to be this…” A Zen Buddhist priest, former abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, he’s published many previous books of poems, including Conflict, Questions/ Places/ Voices/ Seasons, and I Was Blown Back. A co-founder of Makor Or, a Jewish meditation center in San Francisco, he translated the Hebrew psalms, his version titled Opening to You, which was published in 2002. Fischer is also the author of several books of prose.
Maxine Chernoff’s newest book of poems is Here, “a celebration of just that, the here and now—how we inhabit it affectively and visually, how we represent it and build small narratives from the scarcest of clues.” She’s the author of six books of fiction and fourteen books of poems, most recently Without and To Be Read in the Dark. She is co-editor of the journal New American Writing and co-translator of The Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin.


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20 FEBRUARY 2014 — thursday

Jack and Adelle Foley, Clara Hsu, Ivan Argüelles

Poetry Flash presents a Poetry Hotel Press reading, with Jack Foley and Adelle Foley, Clara Hsu, and Ivan Argüelles, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com, poetryhotelpress.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
This reading will be an inaugural celebration of Poetry Hotel Press, founded by Jack Foley and Clara Hsu.
Ivan Argüelles's new book of poems is Ars Poetica. Andrew Joron says, "One of the most visionary poets of our time, Ivan Argüelles is that rarest of poets: one who practices at the very precipice of being." He received the Poetry Society of Americaís William Carlos Williams Award in 1989, the Before Columbus Foundationís American Book Award in 2010, and their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013.
Jack Foley's new book of poems is EYES, his selected poems. Dana Gioia says, "Jack Foley's work represents that rare commodity—genuinely avant-garde poetry. He takes the polyphonic forms of Pound and Eliot and pushes them into possibilities open only to performance-based art." His Visions & Affiliations: A California Literary Timeline 1940-2005 has been acclaimed both in England and the USA. He's published eleven books of poetry, seven books of criticism, and a book of translations of the French singer/songwriter Georges Brassens. Foley has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Berkeley Poetry Festival, and June 5, 2010 was proclaimed Jack Foley Day in Berkeley.
Besides performing with Jack, Adelle Foley is a haiku poet; she has published a book of haiku, Along the Bloodline.
Clara Hsu's new book of short stories is Babouche Impromptu and Other Moroccan Sketches. Her first book of poems, Mystique, received Honorable Mention at the 2010 San Francisco Book Festival. She was the featured poet in the 33rd issue of the British poetry journal Erbacce. She's also a musician and a translator.


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6 MARCH 2014 — thursday

Robert McDowell and Terri Glass

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Robert McDowell, The World Next to This One, and Terri Glass, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Robert McDowell's new book of poems is The World Next to This One. He is the author, co-author, editor and translator of fifteen books, including Poetry as Spiritual Practice, The More We Get Together: The Sexual and Spiritual Practice of Love, and Sound and Form in Modern Poetry. His poetry has been anthologized in Best American Poetry and elsewhere. He is the founding editor/publisher (with Lysa McDowell and Mark Jarman) of Story Line Press and co-founder of The Poet’s Prize. Among his other projects, he co-founded and co-edited The Reaper magazine with Mark Jarman.
Terri Glass has published a book of nature poetry, The Song of Yes, about which Susan Wooldridge says, "I treasure these poems immersed in wild nature, taking us to where the starfish cling, following the fox path to a 'surprise of deer' in an experience of spirit and the hushed purity of 'the God hour.'" She’s done years of all kinds of poetry teaching and served as Program Director for California Poets in the Schools from 2008 to 2011. Her poems have been widely published in literary journals and anthologized in Shadow and Light, Mountains & In Between, and elsewhere.


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9 MARCH 2014 — sunday

Joan Naviyuk Kane, Wendy Chin-Tanner, and Danniel Schoonebeek

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Joan Naviyuk Kane, winner of the Donald Hall Prize in Poetry, Wendy Chin-Tanner, and Danniel Schoonebeek, all reading from their new books, wheelchair accessible, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, dieselbookstore.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Joan Naviyuk Kane's new book of poems is Hyperboreal, winner of the 2012 Donald Hall Prize in Poetry. Sherwin Bitsui says of the book, “I am mesmerized by these poems, their sonorous pathways across time and place; how they absorb and let me linger in their stark beauty.” Inupiaq from Alaska, her recent awards include the 2013 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Literature Fellowship. Her first book of poems, The Cormorant Hunter's Wife, received a Whiting Writers' Award.
Wendy Chin-Tanner’s debut poetry collection is Turn. “How do we forgive? How do we evolve? What makes us human? Turn wrestles with our ideas of race, gender, abuse, love, sex, motherhood, and death.” Garrett Hongo writes of it, "Once within the universe of these splendidly phrased and crafted poems, one recognizes that the force that gives a driving momentum to this collection is of one a unified and earthly eros." She’s a founding editor at Kin Poetry Journal and poetry editor at The Nervous Breakdown. She was educated at Cambridge University in the UK, and now lives in Portland, Oregon.
Danniel Schoonebeek's recent book is American Barricade. His work has appeared in Poetry, Tin House, Fence, Boston Review, BOMB, Indiana Review, jubilat, Guernica, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. A recipient of residencies and fellowships from Poets House, the Juniper Institute, Summer Literary Seminars, and Oregon State University, he writes a column on poetry for The American Reader, hosts the Hatchet Job reading series in Brooklyn, and edits the PEN Poetry Series.


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13 MARCH 2014 — thursday

Tung-Hui Hu and Benjamin Paloff

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Tung-Hui Hu, Greenhouses, Lighthouses, and Benjamin Paloff, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

Tung-Hui Hu’s new poetry collection is Greenhouses, Lighthouses; the James D. Phelan Literary Award Committee says, “Hu’s writing exhibits an alchemical yet materially sound sensibility that challenges what we think we know and undermines what we want to believe.” He is the author of two previous collections, The Book of Motion, winner of the Avery Hopwood Award, and Mine, winner of the Eisner Award.
Benjamin Paloff’s new book of poems is The Politics. D. A. Powell says, “In The Politics, Benjamin Paloff speaks from within some of the finest aspects of classical philosophical poetry’s tunics, without wearing any of the garments instructive-side out. He’s far more politic than that—nimble in wit, provocatively contemporary, and, foremost, a moving and imaginative new voice.” A poetry editor at Boston Review, he has published numerous translations from Polish and Russian.


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30 MARCH 2014 — sunday

Patrick Donnelly and Robert Thomas

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Patrick Donnelly and Robert Thomas, wheelchair accessible, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, dieselbookstore.com)

Patrick Donnelly's recent book of poems is Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin. Jane Hirshfield says of it, "Patrick Donnelly’s urgent and brilliant poems embrace the omnivorous bonfires of transience and desire; by that permeable vow, they enter the surety of the lasting." The book was a 2013 finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. His first collection is The Charge. Donnelly was also the co-translator of the 141 poems in The Wind from Vulture Peak: The Buddhification of Japanese Waka in the Heian Period. He is an associate editor for Poetry International.
Robert Thomas’s new book, a work of fiction tentatively titled Bridge, is forthcoming this fall. His first book of poems, Door to Door, was the winner of the 2001 Poets Out Loud Prize from Fordham University, chosen by Yusef Komunyakaa, and his second is Dragging the Lake. Chase Twichell said, "Thomas can enter another consciousness, century, or personal history with as much facility as he moves through his own life and world.…this is poetry written in the pure American English of the present moment. Dragging the Lake is smart, funny, moving, and profound." Thomas's poems have been widely published in magazines including The Atlantic Monthly, Field, and The Iowa Review.


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3 APRIL 2014 — thursday

Tiff Dressen, Todd Melicker, and Joseph Noble

Poetry Flash presents "3x3," a poetry reading by three poets with three new books: Tiff Dressen, Todd Melicker, and Joseph Noble, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Tiff Dressen's first full-length book of poems is Songs from the Astral Bestiary. Andrew Joron says, "Think of a deer, nervously alert, stepping into a meadow hushed with dawn light. That is the way language moves in Tiff Dressen's poetry. Every pause, every space in this work seems charged by a presence that holds both promise and danger." Her chapbooks include Keeper, Because Icarus-children and for Aeolus: variations on the element.
Todd Melicker's debut collection is Rendezvous. Gillian Conoley says, "In the rendezvous Melicker has so importunely invited us to, fantastic moments arise sudden as love and its psychic upheavals.…Something new seems to be going on with the abstract lyric here, in the exacting music of Melicker's work.…How bracing to have such a trusting guide as Melicker, since 'to swallow/ light there is/ no needle like me.'" His chapbooks include day collects, the immaculate autopsy, and king & queen.
Joseph Noble's new book of poems is Antiphonal Airs. David Meltzer says of it, "A sumptuous collection by poet-musician Joseph Noble. The certainty of his pitch & intonation reveals a distinct tender voice. Measured, graceful, his work sustains its depth throughout." His first collection was An Ives Set. His three essays on George Oppen have appeared in Talisman, Aufgabe, and Sagetrieb. In addition to writing poetry, he plays flute and saxophone in the quartets Ourobouros and Cloud Shepherd.


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6 APRIL 2014 — sunday

Miriam Bird Greenberg and Dennis Schmitz

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Miriam Bird Greenberg and Dennis Schmitz, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, dieselbookstore.com)

Miriam Bird Greenberg's first book of poems, All night in the new country, was the winner of the 2012 Sixteen Rivers Press Poets-Under-Forty Chapbook Contest. Camille T. Dungy says, “Though there is heat in this collection, fire and friction, all the energy is directed toward basic survival.…But each poem catalogs a truth both ravished and ravishing, with such stark and startling images that I could not put the pages down.” She's held fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, a Stegner at Stanford University, Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Dennis Schmitz's new book of poems is Animism. David St. John says of his work, "There is a radiant wisdom that has always infused the poetry of Dennis Schmitz, a remarkable light that is able to reflect precisely off even the most corrupted surfaces of our daily world. Since reading his very first collection, the astonishing We Weep for Our Strangeness, I have always thought of Schmitz's poems as the secular prayers of the sanest voice in an often insane world." He is the author of eight books of poems, including The Truth Squad and About Night: Selected and New Poems, and his honors include the Shelley Memorial Award, two Pushcart Prizes, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.


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17 APRIL 2014 — thursday

Noah Blaustein and Alan Soldofsky

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Noah Blaustein, Flirt, and Alan Soldofsky, In the Buddha Factory, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

Noah Blaustein's first book of poems is Flirt. Christopher Merrill says, “Like all great lovers, he promises the world—and then delivers, in poems that employ a range of forms to address the central issues of the heart: how we flirt before we think—and how we then discern order in the new dispensation in which we find ourselves.” Widely published in a variety of literary journals, he is also the editor of the anthology Motion: American Sports Poems.
Alan Soldofsky's new book is In the Buddha Factory. Dorianne Laux says, "This first collection from Alan Soldofsky reads like a fourth or fifth—dense with memorable imagery, the grit of experience, and a careful attention to language that together make it resonate with a captivating yogic hum." An important figure in Bay Area poetry, he's been a contributing editor of Poetry Flash and a co-host of a KPFA poetry show. "Planet on the Table." His poems have been published widely in magazines and journals including Poetry Daily, Grand Street, The Georgia Review, Rattle, The Rattling Wall, and The Rumpus. His essays, interviews, and reviews have also appeared in Chelsea, The Writer's Chronicle, and Narrative. He is Director of the MFA in Creative Writing program at San Jose State University.


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1 MAY 2014 — thursday

Kasey Jueds and Keetje Kuipers

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Keetje Kuipers and Kasey Jueds, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

Kasey Jueds's first book of poems, Keeper, is the winner of the 2012 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. Jean Valentine says, "This perceptive, sensual history of a soul grows more bold and mysterious as it unfolds: to show a life pondering what to keep, what to lose, what to leave, and what to find: and discovering that, as an old gravestone says, what we had, we have." Widely published in literary magazines, she's been awarded residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Soapstone, and the Ucross Foundation.
Keetje Kuipers's new book of poems is The Keys to the Jail. Elyse Fenton says, "Quietly ferocious, The Keys to the Jail is full of love and after-love poems that come clad with 'bell[ies] of rusted steel.' These poems are not afraid to feel, not afraid of desire or beauty or the inevitability of their respective undoings…" Her first book of poems is Beautiful in the Mouth.


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4 MAY 2014 — sunday

Melissa Stein, Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet, Susan Cohen, more

Poetry Flash presents a contributor's reading for Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry, featuring Susan Cohen, Lucille Lang Day, Julia B. Levine, Colleen McKee, Melissa Stein, and Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, dieselbookstore.com)

This celebration for the Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry features a reading by contributing poets Susan Cohen, author of Throat Singing; Lucille Lang Day, Curvature of Blue; Julia B. Levine, Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight; Colleen McKee, 9 Kinds of Wrong; Melissa Stein, Rough Honey; and Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet, Tulips, Water, Ash. The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry, edited by Deborah Ager and M. E. Silverman, includes the work of more than one hundred poets offering fascinating insights into Jewish culture, religion, and identity. Among the anthologies other contributors are Ellen Bass, Charles Bernstein, Edward Hirsch, Jane Hirshfield, David Lehman, Ira Sadoff, and Philip Schultz.


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15 MAY 2014 — thursday

Willis Barnstone and David Koehn

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Willis Barnstone and David Koehn, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

Willis Barnstone’s new book of poems is Moonbook and Sunbook. Andrei Codrescu says, “Willis Barnstone’s new book is a magnetic miracle that draws the solar and lunar magic of his immense learning into the space of marvelous poems. His language joins the mysteries of the sky with the enigmas of the heart in a music unmistakably his own.” He is a poet, memoirist, scholar and translator of the moderns and the ancients, author or editor of more than seventy books over six decades of publishing. He’s been nominated four times for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.
David Koehn’s new book of poetry is Twine, winner of the 2013 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize. Arthur Sze says, “‘A shadow of light passes through the room like a shark,’ writes David Koehn in this marvelous debut. In taut, fine-spun lines, these poems move through space with insight and verve.” Koehn’s poetry and translations were previously collected in two chapbooks, Tunic, a collection of his translations of Catullus, and Coil, winner of the Midnight Sun Chapbook Contest. His work has been widely published in literary journals, including VOLT, Painted Bride, The New York Quarterly, and New Millennium Writings.


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29 MAY 2014 — thursday

Jerome Rothenberg and Heriberto Yépez

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Jerome Rothenberg and Heriberto Yépez, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
This reading will be a celebration for Eye of Witness: A Jerome Rothenberg Reader, edited by the author in collaboration with Heriberto Yépez. One of the great spirits of our poetry, whose books of poems include Poems for the Game of Silence, Poland/1931, That Dada Strain, Vienna Blood. Khurbn & Other Poems, The Lorca Variations, and many more; who virtually created ethnopoetics in the process of editing such anthologies as Technicians of the Sacred, Shaking the Pumpkin, Symposium of the Whole, and many more; one of the guiding masters of the avant-garde, both in his own writing and through the editing of such anthologies as Revolution of the Word and Poems for the Millennium, Jerome Rothenberg has been one of the most staggeringly productive and profoundly generous of our poets, reaching out across time and national borders to bring poetries together and to unite poetry with other arts. Indeed, as he says in his “Pre-face,” “The work-and-life, as Heriberto Yépez and I present it here, traces on its poetics side a line from deep image to ethnopoetics to a poetry of witness (as I still struggle to define it), and to the idea of an omnipoetics that hopes to bring it all together.”


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19 JUNE 2014 — thursday

Tania Pryputniewicz, Ruth Thompson, Michelle Wing

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Tania Pryputniewicz, Ruth Thompson, and Michelle Wing, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

Tania Pryputniewicz's first book of poems is November Butterfly. A graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, she's the Managing Poetry Editor of The Fertile Source. A co-founding blogger for Mother, Writer, Mentor, she teaches poetry and Transformative Blogging for several different workshops, blogs for Feral Mom, Feral Writer, and creates award-winning micro movies and photo poem montages of her poetry for the Web.
Ruth Thompson's new book of poems (in a new, revised edition) is Woman with Crows. Frank X. Gaspar says, "There are many Zen-like moments of pure being in these poems, and there is also grief and questioning. Yet Ruth Thompson stares down her hungry ghosts and tames them…taken together, these poems accrue to a kind of wise triumph." Among her honors are the New Millennium Writings Poetry Award and the Harpur Palate Milton Kessler Memorial Award. Her chapbook Here Along Cazenovia Creek was the basis for a poetry and dance collaboration with Japanese dancer Shizuno Nasu.
Michelle Wing's debut poetry collection is Body on the Wall. Janet Fitch says of it, "These poems are like swallowed charcoal, purifying the toxins they've ingested. Brave, bracing, tender and true." Her poetry and creative nonfiction have been widely published. She writes a monthly literary column for a small chain of newspapers in Sonoma County.


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22 JUNE 2014 — sunday

Levertov Tribute: Al Young, Anita Barrows, more

Poetry Flash presents a tribute reading for The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov, with Al Young, Anita Barrows, Peter Dale Scott, and David Shaddock, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, dieselbookstore.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
New Directions has recently released The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov. Born in England in 1923, Levertov emigrated to the U.S. in 1948, and died in 1997. She was the author of more than twenty books of poetry along with books of criticism and translation; she was poetry editor for The Nation. She was one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, an environmentalist, and an antiwar activist. Kenneth Rexroth called her "the most subtly skillful poet of her generation, the most profound, the most modest, the most moving." At this tribute, her poems will be read with comments and stories. The readers will be:
Anita Barrows is a poet, translator, and clinical psychologist. Her books of poems include The Road Past the View, Quarterly Review of Literature Contemporary Poetry Series Award winner, 1992, and A Record, Riverstone Press Award winner, 1998. She's a prolific translator from French, Italian, and German, among which is her best-selling translation, with Joanna Macy, of Rilke’s Book of Hours.
Peter Dale Scott is a former Canadian diplomat and UC professor; he is a poet, writer, and reseacher. His latest book of poems is Tilting Point. His other poetry books include the three volumes of his trilogy Seculum: Coming to Jakarta: A Poem About Terror, Listening to the Candle: A Poem on Impulse, and Minding the Darkness: A Poem for the Year 2000. He was awarded the Lannan Poetry Award in 2002.
Poet and psychotherapist David Shaddock studied poetry with Levertov at UC Berkeley. Among his books of poems are This Place Where Something's Missing Lives and Dreams Are Another Set of Muscles. He's won the Ruah Magazine Power of Poetry Award and the International Peace Poem prize; his play, In a Company of Seekers, was performed at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy.
Al Young is an acclaimed novelist and poet. California Poet Laureate from 2005 to 2008, he's prodigiously published; recent books of poems are Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons and Something About the Blues. Among his honors are NEA, Fulbright, and Guggenheim fellowships, The Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, Northern California Book Reviewers' Fred Cody Award, and the 2011 Thomas Wolfe Award.


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17 JULY 2014 — thursday

Susan Browne, Donna Emerson, Adam David Miller, more

Poetry Flash presents an installment of the Marin Poetry Center Traveling Show, with a reading by Susan Cohen, Rafaella Del Bourgo, Jeanne Wagner, Adam David Miller, Donna Emerson, and Susan Browne, co-hosted by Poetry Flash's Richard Silberg and Rose Black, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

Poetry Flash hosts an installment of Marin Poetry Center’s Summer Traveling Show, introduced by Rose Black, former editor of the Marin Poetry Center Anthology, and Poetry Flash's Richard Silberg. The readers are:
Susan Browne is the author of Buddha's Dogs and, most recently, Zephyr.
Susan Cohen, poet and journalist, is the author of Throat Singing, her debut poetry collection.
Rafaella Del Bourgo's new book is Inexplicable Business: Poets Domestic and Wild.
Donna Emerson is a social worker, photographer, and poet. Her books are Body Rhymes, Wild Mercy, and Following Hay.
Adam David Miller, poet and memoirist; he is the author of The Sky is a Page: New & Selected Poems and Ticket to Exile, his memoir of growing up in the pre-civil rights South, a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in Creative Nonfiction.
Jeanne Wagner is the author of five books of poetry, most recently In the Body of Our Lives.


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24 JULY 2014 — thursday

Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Ann Pelletier, Barbara Tomash

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Ann Pelletier, and Barbara Tomash, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

Tsering Wangmo Dhompa’s recent book of poems is My rice tastes like the lake, finalist for the Northern California Independent Bookseller Award 2012. Anne Waldman says, “Dhompa’s potent suite of poems elucidates and vocalizes the humanness and adversities of the Tibetan diaspora…You enter the immigrant girl-child’s bifurcated world, coming and going, language to language, culture to culture, from childhood to sexuality, taking Dhompa’s ride in her elegantly adopted American-English poet’s ‘tongue.’” She has two previous collections, In the Absent Everydayand Rules of the House. Her non-fiction book, A Home in Tibet, was published by Penguin, India, in 2013. She teaches creative writing at UC Santa Cruz.
Ann Pelletier's manuscript, “Strange Invention,” was a finalist for the Black Lawrence St. Lawrence Prize and the Word Works Washington Prize and a semi-finalist for the Bauhan May Sarton, Blue Lynx, Brittingham, Pollak, and 42 Miles Press prizes. Her work has been published in The Antioch Review, Cider Press Review, Hunger Mountain, New American Writing, Spillway, Requited, VOLT, and other journals.
Barbara Tomash’s new book of poems is Arboreal. Maxine Chernoff says, “In Barbara Tomash’s exquisite new book, Arboreal, a narrator leads us through a set of deep questions about life and death and all that is in between, questions as to ‘whether a sentence can breathe or not.’ Our lamp is ‘the light in the fingertips,’ and the body and mind are on a search for what is of value and what is not.” Her two previous collections are Flying in Water, winner of the 2005 Winnow First Poetry Award, and The Secret of White. Her poems have appeared in Colorado Review, New American Writing, Verse, VOLT, Witness, and other journals. She teaches creative writing at San Francisco State University.


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27 JULY 2014 — sunday

Lynne Knight, Connie Post, Rose Black, more

Poetry Flash presents an installment of the Marin Poetry Center Traveling Show, with a reading by Connie Post, Lynne Knight, Nellie Hill, Adrienne Amundsen, and Rose Black, hosted by Richard Silberg, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, dieselbookstore.com)

Poetry Flash hosts an installment of Marin Poetry Center's Summer Traveling Show, introduced by Poetry Flash's Richard Silberg. The readers are:
Adrienne Amundsen, psychologist and world traveler, is the author of Cassandras Falling, poems, and Reclaiming the Apple: Poems from Afghanistan.
Rose Black is the previous editor of the Marin Poetry Anthology, and the author of Clearing, Winter Light, and Green Field.
Nellie Hill's poetry chapbooks include Winter Horse, My Daily Walk, and Geographies.
Lynne Knight is a poet and translator. I Know (Je
Sais)
by Ito Naga is her most recent translation, her poetry books include The Book of Common Betrayals, Night in the Shape of a Mirror, and Again.
Connie Post is the former Poet Laureate of Livermore; her new book is Floodwater.


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3 AUGUST 2014 — sunday

Julia B. Levine and Alison Luterman

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Julia B. Levine and Alison Luterman, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, dieselbookstore.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Julia B. Levine's new book of poems is Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight. Library Journal says of it, "A polished poet of extraordinary skill…Levine is caught between wholehearted love of the world’s beauty and sorrow at its unavoidable misery and suffering." She is the author of three previous books of poems, including Ask, winner of the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry and Practicing for Heaven, winner of the Anhinga Prize for Poetry. Among her other honors are a Discovery/The Nation award and the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry from Nimrod.
Alison Luterman's new book of poems is Desire Zoo. Bruce Weigl says of her work, "Out of the corner of her eye, Alison Luterman is a keen watcher of the tangled business of our lives, and in her heart, she is a storyteller whose power resides, as in all good storytellers' hearts, in her faith in the listener." Her previous collections are The Largest Possible Life, winner of the 2000 Cleveland State University Poetry Center Prize, and See How We Almost Fly. Also a playwright, Alison Luterman performs improvisational spoken word and dance with the Oakland-based performance ensemble Wing It!


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7 AUGUST 2014 — thursday

Beverly Burch and Katherine Hastings

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Beverly Burch and Katherine Hastings, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

Beverly Burch’s new book of poems is How a Mirage Works. Cyrus Cassells says, “How a Mirage Works [is] marked by a subtle, free-flowing music and an almost surgical attention to sensuous, definitive detail…Her work is blessedly sane and concise.” Her first book of poems, Sweet to Burn, won the Gival Poetry Prize and a Lambda Literary Award. A psychotherapist as well as a poet, she has also published two nonfiction books, On Intimate Terms and Other Women.
Katherine Hastings’s new book of poems is Nighthawks. Gerald Fleming says, “If there’s such a thing as fierce Buddhism, Katherine Hastings’ Nighthawks finds it. Here is nature in minutely observed, embroidered detail, juxtaposed with terse and stark observations keyed from Rexroth’s ‘holiness of the real.’” Her first full-length collection is Cloud Fire. She’s the editor of What Redwoods Know: Poems from California State Parks, which was sold to benefit the California State Parks Foundation. She’s also executive director of the nonprofit WordTemple, host of WordTemple on NPR affiliate KRCB FM, and curator of the WordTemple Poetry Series and WordTemple Arts and Lectures in Sonoma County, California.


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7 SEPTEMBER 2014 — sunday

Marcia Falk and Steven Rood

Poetry Flash presents a reading by poet, scholar, and translator from both Hebrew and Yiddish, Marcia Falk and poet Steven Rood, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, dieselbookstore.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Marcia Falk is a poet, a scholar, and a translator from both Hebrew and Yiddish. Her latest book is The Days Between: Blessings, Poems, and Directions of the Heart for the Jewish High Holiday Season, a volume for those seeking to connect more deeply with their Judaism, and for all readers in search of a contemplative approach to the themes of the fall season. Among her other publications are three books of poems, a translation of The Song of Songs praised by both Isaac Bashevis Singer and Adrienne Rich, a translation of the twentieth century mystic Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky from the Hebrew, and another of the Yiddish modernist Malka Heifetz Tussman.
Steven Rood’s book of poems I Say Your Name is devoted to the memory of two men, the great poet Jack Gilbert, and to Rood’s own late psychotherapist, poems of vivid, loving re-creation, humor, and profound empathy. He has been for many years a member of the workshop begun by the legendary poet Jack Gilbert at San Francisco State in 1967 and continuing to this day, and he was a primary caregiver to Gilbert during his last Alzheimer’s days. These two readers are husband and wife.


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11 SEPTEMBER 2014 — thursday

Peter Kline and Brittany Perham

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Peter Kline and Brittany Perham, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Peter Kline’s debut book of poems is Deviants. Eavan Boland says of it, “With craft, dark wit and an edgy honesty in every line, these poems unsettle our familiar world. There are no comfortable places left after these wonderful lyrics have done their work.” He is a former Stegner Fellow and Chace lecturer at Stanford University.
Brittany Perham’s book of poems is The Curiosities. D. A. Powell says, “With curatorial precision and a starling’s penchant for multiple threads in both song and shelter, Brittany Perham has fashioned a haven of curiosities captivating to the ear as well as the eye.” She was also a Stegner Fellow, 2009-2011, and is now a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University.


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18 SEPTEMBER 2014 — thursday

Jannie Dresser and Lester Graves Lennon

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Jannie Dresser and Lester Graves Lennon, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Jannie M. Dresser’s new book is Worker’s Compensation: Poems of Labor & the Working Life. She says of it, “…these are gut-level, rather direct language narratives attesting to the daily grind. I offer them in the spirit of poets who feel the need to testify to hard truths and uncomfortable feelings.…” She is the founder of Sugartown Publishing and the Bay Area Seasonal Review; she is also the editor of Between the Fault Lines: Eight East Bay Poets.
Lester Graves Lennon’s new book of poems is My Father Was a Poet. Dana Gioia says, “In Lester Graves Lennon’s new book personal history and national history become interwoven to remarkable effect. This is a collection of startling contradictions in which love and hate, peace and violence, light and dark not only clash but intermingle.” His first poetry collection is The Upward Curve of Earth and Heavens; an investment banker as well as a poet, he lives in Los Angeles where he serves on the Los Angeles Poet Laureate Task Force.


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2 OCTOBER 2014 — thursday

Marilyn Hacker and Deema K. Shehabi

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Palestinian-American poet Deema K. Shehabi and Jewish-American poet Marilyn Hacker from their new co-authored collection, Diaspo/Renga, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

The Israeli siege of Gaza in 2009—sadly, two sieges ago—moved Palestinian-American poet Deema K. Shehabi and Jewish-American poet Marilyn Hacker to begin a correspondence in poems, a dialogue that continued until 2012. The result is their collaborative book Diaspo/Renga. Annie Finch says of it, “Peace grows from the interweaving of voices, and it’s hard to imagine two more aware and unmistakable poetic voices on the subject of peace in the Middle East than these: Hacker and Shehabi, two brilliant witnesses, one infused with memory and dream, the other unswerving and crystalline.”
Marilyn Hacker has published twelve books of poetry, including Names, Essays on Departure, and Desesperanto; and an essay collection, Unauthorized Voices. A prolific translator from the French, she received the 2009 American PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for her rendering of Marie Etienne’s King of a Hundred Horsemen. Her honors for her own poetry include the Lenore Marshall Award, the Poet’s Prize for her Selected Poems, and the National Book Award for Presentation Piece. A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, she lives now in Paris and is an editor of the Journal Siecle 21.
Deema K. Shehabi is a poet, writer, and editor. The child of Palestinian parents, she grew up in the Middle East and moved to the United States in 1988. Her book of poems Thirteen Departures From the Moon was published in 2011. She is co-editor of Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, which received the Northern California Book Reviewers NCBR Recognition Award. She also served as Vice-President of the Radius of Arab-American Writers (RAWI) between 2007 and 2010.


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9 OCTOBER 2014 — thursday

Travis Mossotti and Kerry James Evans

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Travis Mossotti and Kerry James Evans, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

Kerry James Evans’s debut book of poems is Bangalore. Booklist calls it, “A strong contribution to wartime poetry composed by combatants…Given recent controversy over domestic surveillance and enlisted whistle-blowers, this is a necessary read, indeed.” He served six years in the Army National Guard as a combat engineer.
Travis Mossotti’s debut collection, About the Dead, is a May Swenson Award winner. Garrison Keillor, in his foreword, says, “…reading it was like following the poet up a steep climb on a rocky slope as he improvised his route, and at every step I was struck by the rightness of his choices, surprised by so many odd words that seemed so exactly right.” He was awarded the James Hearst Poetry Prize from the North American Review in 2009, and the book’s long opening poem, “Decampment,” was adapted as an animated film in 2010.


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18 OCTOBER 2014 — saturday

Poetry Flash at Lit Crawl: giovanni singleton, Judy Halebsky, more

The fifteenth annual Litquake, San Francisco’s Literary Festival, presents its tenth annual Lit Crawl in the Mission District’s Valencia Street corridor, featuring “Poetry Flash and Friends,” poetry by editors, and contributors Judy Halebsky, Stephen Kessler, Richard Silberg, giovanni singleton, and Alan Soldofsky, with host, editor and director Joyce Jenkins, Chrome, 962 Valencia Street, San Francisco, free, 7:15-8:15 (www.litquake.org)

Poetry Flash & Friends at Lit Crawl! Hear current/past editors and contributors to Poetry Flash, California's iconic online literary review and calendar, read from their work and tell stories about the Flash.
Featuring:
Judy Halebsky is author of Tree Line and Sky=Empty; she won the Sixteen Rivers Press Poets-Under-Forty Chapbook Contest for Space/Gap/Interval/Distance. She teaches at Dominican University in San Rafael.
Stephen Kessler’s recent books are Scratch Pegasus and Poems of Consummation by Vicente Aleixandre. He’s a poet, editor of The Redwood Coast Review, translator, and a Poetry Flash Contributing Editor.
Richard Silberg is Associate Editor of Poetryflash.org. His latest book is The Horses: New & Selected Poems; he hosts the Poetry Flash Reading Series.
giovanni singleton won the California Book Award for Ascension, which was reviewed in Poetry Flash. She is coordinator of the UC Berkeley Lunch Poems series.
Alan Soldofsky is author of In the Buddha Factory and Creative Writing Director at San Jose State University. He was an early Poetry Flash Contributing Editor.
Host: Joyce Jenkins, Editor-Director, Poetry Flash, Literary Review and Calendar for the West. Her poems appeared most recently in Burning the Midnight Oil, an anthology.
Photo by Bob Fischer at Poetry Flash, Berkeley.


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19 OCTOBER 2014 — sunday

Judy Halebsky and Jane Mead

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading and book launch by Judy Halebsky and Jane Mead, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, dieselbookstore.com)

Judy Halebsky’s new book is Tree Line. Susan Kelly-Dewitt says, “Moving between language/s, non-language and those countries in between, the poems in Tree Line function as a kind of lineated Noh theater…Every moment is a border-crossing, a tree line of sorts and a chance for enlightenment.” Her first collection, Sky=Empty, won the New Issues Prize and was a finalist for the California Book Award. Her chapbook, Space/Gap/Interval/Distance, won the Poets-Under-Forty Award from Sixteen Rivers Press.
Jane Mead’s new book is Money Money Money Water Water Water. Cole Swenson says, “It’s a beautiful, seamless book that never stops gathering force—one in which the strength, brilliance, and movement of the phrase is the ultimate ecosystem.” She’s the author of three previous collections, most recently The Usable Field, and she’s the recipient of grants and awards from the Whiting, Guggenheim, and Lannan foundations.


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23 OCTOBER 2014 — thursday

Ellen Bass and Robin Becker

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Ellen Bass and Robin Becker, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

Ellen Bass’s new book of poems is Like a Beggar. Toi Derricotte says, “Good poets help us to see the world in a new way; great ones open the mind to new ways of conceiving that world and our connections to it. Like a Beggar does this for me.” Among her previous collections are The Human Line and Mules of Love. She co-edited the groundbreaking anthology of women’s poetry, No More Masks! and her non-fiction includes the bestseller The Courage to Heal.
Robin Becker’s new book of poems is Tiger Heron. Ellen Bass says of it, “Robin Becker looks straight at the failures of our human species, yet never loses her compassion or reduces the complexities and paradoxes to easy conclusions. Deftly, precisely, these poems express their wisdom in lines that surprise and delight.” Author of seven poetry collections, including Domain of Perfect Affection, Giacometti’s Dog, and All-American Girl, which won the Lambda Literary Award, she is poetry editor and writes a column on poetry for the Women’s Review of Books. Among her honors are fellowships from the Bunting Institute, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and National Endowment for the Arts.


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25 OCTOBER 2014 — saturday

Alicia Suskin Ostriker, reading and reception

Poetry Flash reading and reception with poet and critic Alicia Suskin Ostriker, proceeds benefit Poetryflash.org and the Poetry Flash reading series, wine, cheese, and books, hosted at the home of Carl and Susan Landauer, 6028 Aspinwall Road, Oakland, admission with a suggested donation of $50 to Poetry Flash, tax deductible as allowed by law, $35 for each additional member of your party, please rsvp and bring a check to the reception, or donate at the link provided here, 3:00-6:00 (510/525-5476; rsvp: info@poetryflash.org; reception admission/donation: Donation Here



Alicia Suskin Ostriker is a major American poet and critic. Her new book is The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog. Tony Hoagland said of the collection, “The informal mastery of these poems is marvelous. Ostriker has devised a style that is offhand-seeming, a voice that is effortlessly concise, and a subject matter that has leapt far past the personal. Bawdy, ruthless, insightful, and compassionate, these poems feel like play, even as they take you through configuration after configuration of the mortal condition. Reading them, I feel like I’m encountering poetry translated from Eastern Europe, or written by some unknown brilliance in Argentina. Everyone should read them; they’re beautiful, and universal.”
Alicia Ostriker is the author of fifteen poetry collections, including The Book of Life: Selected Jewish Poems, 1979-2011 and The Book of Seventy. She has received the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement, the William Carlos Williams Award, the San Francisco State Poetry Center Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award. Ostricker is professor emerita of English at Rutgers University and teaches in the low-residency MFA program of Drew University.


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9 NOVEMBER 2014 — sunday

Suzanne Lummis and Howard Levy

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading and book launch by Howard Levy and Suzanne Lummis, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, dieselbookstore.com)

Howard Levy’s new book of poems is Spooky Action at a Distance, charting questions about human isolation and connection. His first full-length book of poems is A Day This Lit. His work has been published in such journals as Poetry, The Paris Review, The Threepenny Review, and American Poetry Review. He has been closely involved with Frost Place, Robert Frost’s home in Franconia, New Hampshire and its Festival of Poetry and has been a faculty member both for the festival and the Advanced Seminar. He has also taught at museums, particularly the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In the 1970s he founded Artist Teaching, an interdisciplinary group of artists (composers, dancers, painters, and poets) who developed a unique approach to museum teaching at the Metropolitan. He also did two residencies at Artpark in Lewiston, New York. Among his honors are a New York State Creative Artists Public Service grant in Poetry and finalist in the 92nd St. Y Poetry Center’s Discovery Award.
Suzanne Lummis’s new book of poems, Open Twenty-Four Hours, is the winner of the seventeenth annual Blue Lynx Prize competition; David St. John says of it, “With candor, power, and poignancy, Suzanne Lummis illuminates the glorious absurdities of our lives, especially the pride and paranoia that arise from living in an urban landscape. Nobody can ride a metaphor bareback better than this poet.” She’s been associated with the Los Angeles “Stand up Poets” of the 1980s who advocated a vibrant oral poetry, as well as strong attention to literary detail and value. She’s also grouped with the “Fresno poets” who studied with Philip Levine, Peter Everwine, and Charles Hanzlicek in the legendary Fresno State University writing program. Her poems have been or are forthcoming in the Knopf anthologies Poems of Murder and Mayhem, Poems of the American West, and Human and Inhuman Monstrous Verse. Her book of poems In Danger was published in the California Poetry Series (Heyday). In 2013, NPR’s “All Things Considered” featured her segment, “Writing Noir Poetry, with LA as a Backdrop.”


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11 NOVEMBER 2014 — tuesday

Tania Pryputniewicz, Ruth Thompson, Michelle Wing

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Tania Pryputniewicz, Ruth Thompson, and Michelle Wing, please note that this rescheduled reading is on a different day than the usual series, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

Tania Pryputniewicz's first book of poems is November Butterfly. A graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, she's the Managing Poetry Editor of The Fertile Source. A co-founding blogger for Mother, Writer, Mentor, she teaches poetry and Transformative Blogging for several different workshops, blogs for Feral Mom, Feral Writer, and creates award-winning micro movies and photo poem montages of her poetry for the Web.
Ruth Thompson's new book of poems (in a new, revised edition) is Woman with Crows. Frank X. Gaspar says, "There are many Zen-like moments of pure being in these poems, and there is also grief and questioning. Yet Ruth Thompson stares down her hungry ghosts and tames them…taken together, these poems accrue to a kind of wise triumph." Among her honors are the New Millennium Writings Poetry Award and the Harpur Palate Milton Kessler Memorial Award. Her chapbook Here Along Cazenovia Creek was the basis for a poetry and dance collaboration with Japanese dancer Shizuno Nasu.
Michelle Wing's debut poetry collection is Body on the Wall. Janet Fitch says of it, "These poems are like swallowed charcoal, purifying the toxins they've ingested. Brave, bracing, tender and true." Her poetry and creative nonfiction have been widely published. She writes a monthly literary column for a chain of newspapers in Sonoma County.
This reading is rescheduled from June 2014 and is on a different day than the usual Poetry Flash reading series events.


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16 NOVEMBER 2014 — sunday

Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet and Robert Thomas

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading and book launch by Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet and Robert Thomas, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, dieselbookstore.com)

Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet’s new book of poems, The Greenhouse, is the winner of the 2014 Frost Place Chapbook Prize. David Baker says, “The poems of The Greenhouse are profound, fundamental works, born of a deep interiority and making their intricate ways, phrase by phrase, toward a design both organic and artful.” Her first full-length book of poems is Tulips, Water, Ash, winner of the 2009 Morse Poetry Prize, selected and introduced by Jean Valentine. Among her awards are a Javits fellowship and a Phelan Award.
Robert Thomas’s first book of poems, Door to Door, was the winner of Fordham University’s Poets Out Loud Prize, selected by Yusef Komunyakaa, who said of it, “Often in a Robert Thomas poem, we are in this world and outside of it. The ordinary and the fantastic are one.…If these poems at times seem surreal, it is surrealism with a compelling voice, not as an embodiment of linguistic or imagistic tomfoolery, but as a way of unveiling mystery that redeems. When following the twists and turns through Door to Door, the reader knows that the last two lines of “The Ballad of Martin and Geraldine” are truly earned: “Let’s scorch the orchid with all our art. / Take on my bare, unfurnished heart.” His second book of poems is Dragging the Lake. His new book, Bridge, is fiction, set in contemporary San Francisco. Laura Kasischke says, “Robert Thomas has done the nearly impossible in this age. He has written something entirely new, shockingly strange, and strangely traditional. It is a gem of many facets, a collection of sharp glints and details that culminate in a shattering whole. Robert Thomas is a writer with a cosmic vision, who has managed to bring it to Earth in small domestic detail and psychological accuracy.” Among his honors are a Pushcart Prize and a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.


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15 JANUARY 2015 — thursday

Curt Anderson and Gail Rudd Entrekin

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Curt Anderson and Gail Rudd Entrekin, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Curt Anderson’s first full-length book of poems is The Occasionist. Al Young says, “In ways that dare, stun or delight, his watchful poems signal divinity. Again and again, they point to the vast outback of mysteries that occasion life-jammed moments that cry out or whisper.” His poems have appeared in Poetry, Exquisite Corpse, Barrow Street, and many other journals, and his poem “Platonic Love” was published in The Poetry Anthology, 1912-2002: Ninety Years of America’s Most Distinguished Verse.
Gail Rudd Entrekin’s latest book of poems is Rearrangement of the Invisible. Ellen Bass says, “Gail Rudd Entrekin’s Rearrangement of the Invisible is both praise and eulogy, a cherishing of the moments of our lives and a sorrow song for their passing. Through it all we feel the force of her love—for her family and for all of us. …An honest, intimate, and wise book.” She is also co-publisher and poetry editor of Hip Pocket Press and editor of the online literary magazine of the environment, Canary.


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22 JANUARY 2015 — thursday

John Oliver Simon and David Shaddock

Poetry Flash presents a double White Violet Press book launch by poets John Oliver Simon and David Shaddock, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
David Shaddock’s new book of poems is Vernal Pool. Al Young says, “Not only do these poems touch base with crucial human struggles and issues; they bust moves, they take risks. Throughout the tender, mindful pages of Vernal Pool, spring breaks 24/7.” A poet and a psychotherapist, David Shaddock studied poetry with Denise Levertov at UC Berkeley. Among his previous books of poetry are This Place Where Something’s Missing Lives and Dreams Are Another Set of Muscles. He won the Ruah Magazine Power of Poetry Award and the International Peace Poem prize. His play, In a Company of Seekers, was performed at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy.
John Oliver Simon’s new book of poems is Grandpa’s Syllables. Rebecca Foust says of it, “‘Some turbulent process related to language’ gave birth to this book, at once a paean to and elegy for the life force embodied in the speaker’s granddaughter and muse, Isabella. Working in 11-syllable lines, Simon trains his fierce focus on details small as a spider supping on dew and large as ‘a cathedral made of salt and bread.’” A poet, critic, and translator, he’s a contributing editor to Poetry Flash and a California Poets in the Schools poet-teacher. He’s also a National Endowment for the Arts fellow in literary translation and author of Caminante, a narrow road into the far south and Son Caminos, selected poems, published in Spanish.


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25 JANUARY 2015 — sunday

Ambush Review: Linda Norton, Sharon Coleman, Joseph Noble, more

Poetry Flash presents a celebration and reading for the Ambush Review, featuring contributors David Beckman, Sharon Coleman, Charles Entrekin, Grace Marie Grafton, Katherine Hastings, Joseph Noble, Linda Norton, and Angelo Sakkis, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, dieselbookstore.com)

A Celebration for Ambush Review, a literary journal based in the San Francisco Bay Area publishing poetry, including innovative and experimental poetry, short “flash” fiction, art, photography, and essays. Bob Booker and Patrick Cahill edit the journal, with striking design by Brendan Cahill. The contributors to read include:
David Beckman, author of Language Factory of the Mind (Finishing Line Press). Two of his poems were in Ambush Review #3. He was a 2012 and 2013 Pushcart Prize nominee.
Sharon Coleman co-curates the reading series Lyrics & Dirges, co-directs the Berkeley Poetry Festival, and is a Contributing Editor to Poetry Flash. Her chapbook is Half Circle (Finishing Line Press). She teaches poetry at Berkeley City College.
Charles Entrekin is the author of Listening: New & Selected Work and Red Mountain, Birmingham, Alabama, 1965, a novel.
Grace Marie Grafton’s newest book is Whimsy, Reticence and Laud, unruly sonnets (Poetic Matrix, 2012). Her book of prose poems, Other Clues, is from Latitude Press.
Katherine Hastings is Sonoma County Poet Laureate, author of Nighthawks (Spuyten Duyvil, 2014) and Cloud Fire. She is the host of “WordTemple” on NPR affiliate KRCB FM, and curator of the WordTemple Poetry Series and WordTemple Arts & Lectures.
Joseph Noble’s poetry and essays have appeared in Hambone, OR, New American Writing, Five Fingers Review, Eleven Eleven, Talisman, and other journals. His books include An Ives Set, Antiphonal Airs, and a chapbook Homage to the Gods.
Linda Norton is author of The Public Gardens: Poems and History (Pressed Wafer), a finalist for the 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry.
Angelos Sakkis is co-translator, with John Sakkis, of Greek poet and multimedia artist Demosthenes Agrafiotis. His own work appeared in the first issue of Ambush Review. His collections are Memory-of and Fictional Character.


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29 JANUARY 2015 — thursday

Ellery Akers and Randall Potts

Poetry Flash presents Ellery Akers and Randall Potts, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Ellery Akers’s new book of poems, Practicing the Truth, won the 2014 Autumn House Poetry Prize, selected by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, who says of it, “With the passion and determination of an abuse survivor, the exploring mind of a naturalist, and the soul energy of a language-loving poet, Akers gives us not one truth but layer on layer of overlapping truths.” A writer, artist, and naturalist, she is also the author of the previous poetry collection Knocking on the Earth and the children’s novel Sarah’s Waterfall. Her poetry has been featured on National Public Radio, and her many honors include the Poetry International Prize, the John Masefield Award, and Sierra magazine’s Nature Writing Award.
Randall Potts’s new book of poems is Trickster. Gerald Stern says of it, “I admire the clarity, the urgency, the invention, the intelligence, and the commitment of Randall Potts’s new book. A terrific book.” Previous collections by Randall Potts are Collision Center and a chapbook, Recant: (A Revision). A volunteer at a wildlife rehabilitation hospital, he has worked on and written about oil spill responses, some of which material appears in Trickster. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Five Fingers Review, Iowa Review, Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, The West Marin Review, Poetry Flash, and other publications.


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