2017 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.

26 JANUARY 2017 — thursday

Rachel Richardson and Martin Rock

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Rachel Richardson, Hundred-Year Wave, and Martin Rock, Residuum, request ASL interpreters one week in advance at editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Rachel Richardson's new book of poems is Hundred-Year Wave. Her first collection was Copperhead. Victoria Chang says, "Hundred-Year Wave is a gorgeous book that borrows its vast subject matter from new parenthood, marriage, the ocean, whales, and Sylvia Plath.…Her gifts are wide and deep like the ocean, as she shows us that 'we are not lost/ in the vast expanse of lostness.'" A former Stegner fellow at Stanford and a recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, she is a contributing editor at Memorious, coordinates poetry programming for the Bay Area Book Festival and co-directs Left Margin Lit, a new literary arts center in Berkeley.
Martin Rock's collection Residuum was chosen for the Cleveland State Poetry Center's 2015 First Book Award. Erin Belieu says, "Martin Rock's remarkable debut collection, Residuum, takes on nothing less than making the unsayable (as Heidegger perceives it) 'legible.' I find the partial erasure form of this book dynamic, and lyrically fluid. Residuum is also genuinely moving and funny in spots." He's also the author of the chapbook Dear Mark, a response to the work of Mark Rothko; and with Kevin Prufer and Martha Collins he edited the Unsung Masters volume Catherine Breese Davis: On the Life and Work of an American Master. A translator from the Japanese widely published in literary journals, he has held senior editorial positions at several journals and is Founding Editor of Loaded Bicycle, an online journal of poetry, art, and translation. Poet-in-Residence at Texas Children's Hospital, he helps young patients express themselves through writing.

29 JANUARY 2017 — sunday

Chana Bloch, Lucille Lang Day, Sandra Gilbert, more

Poetry Flash presents a reading and celebration for the anthology Far Out: Poems of the '60s, with contributing poets Chana Bloch, Lucille Lang Day, Sandra Gilbert, and Kathleen Winter, 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
Far Out: Poems of the '60s includes poems by over eighty poets remembering that seminal decade from all their unique angles. Not just vamping on sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll, the anthology, edited by Wendy Barker and Dave Parsons, reflects on the history and politics of the time as well: the Vietnam War and its protesters, the emergence of Black and Chicano power, Second-Wave feminism, the assassinations of JFK, MLK, Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers, the Civil Rights movement, the Apollo 11 moon landing, and much more.
The readers will be:
Chana Bloch, poet and translator, whose new Swimming in the Rain: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2015 includes poems from her four previous books, The Secrets of the Tribe, The Past Keeps Changing, Mrs. Dumpty, and Blood Honey. She is co-translator of the biblical Song of Songs and of the Israeli poets Yehuda Amichai and Dalia Ravikovitch.
Lucille Lang Day, whose ten books of poems include Becoming an Ancestor, Dreaming of Sunflowers: Museum Poems, The Curvature of Blue, Infinities, Wild One, and Self-Portrait with Hand Microscope. She's also the author of two children's books, The Rainbow Zoo and Chain Letter, and a memoir, Married at Fourteen. She is co-editor of Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California.
Sandra Gilbert, poet and critic, who co-authored the acclaimed book of feminist criticism The Madwoman in the Attic and other critical volumes. Most recent of her eight poetry collections is Aftermath. Her prose books include Wrongful Death, Death's Door, Rereading Women, The Culinary Imagination: From Myth to Modernity, and she is co-editor of Eating Words: A Norton Anthology of Food Writing.
Kathleen Winter, author of the poetry collection Nostalgia for the Criminal Past.

2 FEBRUARY 2017 — thursday

Sandra Hunter and Ruth Thompson

Poetry Flash presents a reading by fiction writer Sandra Hunter, celebrating her short stories in Small Change, and poet Ruth Thompson, request ASL interpreters one week in advance at editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Sandra Hunter's new book, Small Change, is three short stories. David Treuer says, "Small Change does what great fiction should do. Rather than strive for newness for the sake of novelty, or reinvent language to showcase the writer's chops, it approaches language in a new way because the material—struggling for life and love in the Middle East—demands it." Her novel, Losing Touch, was published in 2014. Her honors include a 2014 Africa Book Club Award, a 2014 H.E. Francis Fiction Award, and a 2012 Cobalt Fiction Prize.
Ruth Thompson is the author of three poetry collections Crazing, Woman With Crows, and Here Along Cazenovia Creek. That last collection inspired choreography and a performance by the Japanese dancer Shizuno Nasu. She currently lives in Hilo, Hawai'i where she is creating poetry and dance videos with dancer Jenn Eng and videographer Don Mitchell. She travels to perform and teach workshops on writing from the body, and she owns and operates Saddle Road Press.

16 FEBRUARY 2017 — thursday

Gregory Mahrer and Kathleen Winter

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Kathleen Winter, Nostalgia for the Criminal Past, and Gregory Mahrer, A Provisional Map of the Lost Continent, request ASL interpreters one week in advance at editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

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Gregory Mahrer's new book of poems is A Provisional Map of the Lost Continent, winner of the POL prize from Fordham University. Jane Hirshfield says, "With high-wire imagination and hybrid language, A Provisional Map of the Lost Continent surveys a world post-catastrophic, elasticized, semi-mythic yet founded in the real…at the center of every sentence is an irreversible, prophetic, and utterly accurate grief." The foreword to the book is by John Yau.
Kathleen Winter's debut book of poems is Nostalgia for the Criminal Past. Her work is also included in Far Out: Poems of the '60s. Norman Dubie says, "Kathleen Winter's first collection of poems is formally brilliant, life-hurtling, and volunteers language with a quick edge that advances ideas almost with abandon." She graduated from law school and worked some years as a lawyer before returning to poetry.

19 FEBRUARY 2017 — sunday

Raina J. León and Michael McLaughlin

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Raina J. León, sombra: (dis)locate, and Michael McLaughlin, Countless Cinemas, 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
Raina J. León’s new book of poems is sombra: (dis)locate. Tara Betts says, “…León’s new collection…hints at the shadows within history, languages, sexuality, loss, grief, and violence unveiled in poems that span countries, the enigmatic specter of Josephine Baker flouting conventions of respectability and race, and the brutalities that split peoples emotional cares like simple apples.” Her previous collections include Canticle of Idols and Boogeyman Dawn. She also has a 2016 chapbook, profeta without refuge. She is a Cave Canem graduate fellow, CantoMundo fellow, and a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly promoting and publishing LatinX arts. She teaches at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California.
Michael McLaughlin’s debut book of poems is Countless Cinemas. Connie Post says, “These poems are honest and hard-hitting, sensual and erotic.…Find a quiet seat in the theatre of your mind and absorb the carefully created cinematography of each script.” Also the author of two novels and two poetry chapbooks, he is, along with much else, artist-in-residence at Atascadero State Hospital, a maximum security forensic facility, and San Luis Obispo County Coordinator for California Poets in the Schools. A former Poet Laureate of San Obispo County, he runs the Central Coast’s Live from the Core poetry/performance series and is the founding editor of USC’s The Southern California Poetry Anthology.

23 FEBRUARY 2017 — thursday

Alicia Ostriker and Anita Barrows

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, Small Change, and Anita Barrows, We are the Hunger, request ASL interpreters one week in advance at editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

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Alicia Suskin Ostriker's new book of poems is Waiting for the Light. Daisy Fried says of it, "Ostriker so loves the world, its griefs, traumas, praises, mysteries, and joys, that she teaches us to love the world with her—sometimes desperately, heartbrokenly, never despairingly." She is a key American poet and critic; her recent poetry collections include The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog; The Book of Life: Selected Jewish Poems, 1979-2011, and The Book of Seventy. Currently a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, her honors include the Paterson Poetry Prize, San Francisco State Poetry Center Award, and William Carlos Williams Award. She is also a two-time finalist for the National Book Award.
Anita Barrows's new book of poems is We are the Hunger. Susan Griffin says, "An extraordinary collection. Truth telling, and truly pitched, resonant poems telling intimate and necessary stories set in the harshest landscapes of our times, with insight and compassion." She is the author of Exile and a number of other books of poetry. She's also a translator of poetry, plays, fiction, and nonfiction from French, Italian, and German, most recently three volumes of Rilke's work co-translated with Joanna Macy. She's a practicing psychotherapist and lives in Berkeley.

5 MARCH 2017 — sunday

Susan Sibbet's "Great Blue": Nina Lindsay, Carolyn Miller, more

Poetry Flash presents a reading for Susan Herron Sibbet's posthumously published poetry collection, Great Blue, with Terry Ehret, Steve Gilmartin, and the book's editors, Nina Lindsay, Carolyn Miller, and LeeAnn Pickrell, 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
Great Blue by Susan Herron Sibbet is a posthumous collection of poems, from Sixteen Rivers Press, across the three decades from her first published poems to her death in 2013. A founding member of Sixteen Rivers Press and a devoted participant in California Poets in the Schools as a teacher as well as turns as acting director and president of the board, she published one previous book of poems, No Easy Light, and several chapbooks. Her fictional memoir by Theodora Bosanquet, amanuensis to Henry James, The Constant Listener, was published in 2016. Susan Wooldridge says of No Easy Light, "What a gorgeous book of poems! Wide spaces and sprinkles of stars surround the most intimate details of life in kitchens and gardens…No Easy Light is a playful, brilliant song to life, with one woman's love the glowing circle around it all." The readers will be:

Terry Ehret is one of the founders of Sixteen Rivers Press. She has published four collections of poetry, most recently Night Sky Journey. Her awards include the National Poetry Series, California Book Award, Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize, a nomination for the Northern California Book Award, and five Pushcart Prize nominations. From 2004-2006, she served as the poet laureate of Sonoma County.

Steve Gilmartin is the author of a chapbook of mistranslations of Emily Dickinson from the German, Comes Up to Face the Skies. His fiction and poetry have appeared in many print and online journals, including and/or, Big Bridge, Café Irreal, Concis, Drunken Boat, Eleven Eleven, Mad Hatters' Review, Otoliths, Rivet, and Unlikely Stories.

Nina Lindsay has published two books of poems with Sixteen Rivers Press, Today's Special Dish and her new collection Because. She's been awarded the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize. She is one of the three editors of Great Blue.

Carolyn Miller's new book of poems is Route 66 and Its Sorrows. She's published two previous collections with Sixteen Rivers Press, After Cocteau and Light, Moving. Her poems have been featured on Poetry Daily and The Writer's Almanac and anthologized in Garrison Keillor's Good Poems, American Places and elsewhere. She is one of the three editors of Great Blue.

LeeAnn Pickrell works as a freelance editor and writes poetry and prose. She is also the managing editor of Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche. Her work recently appeared in Eclectica Magazine's anthology of best poetry. Currently, she is working on a long essay about her experience in the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. She is one of the three editors of Great Blue.

16 MARCH 2017 — thursday

Raphael Block and Thanasis Maskaleris

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Raphael Block, with guitar music by David Field, to celebrate Strings of Shining Silence: Earth-Love Poems, and Thanasis Maskaleris reads from My Life on the Ragged Paths of Pan: Selected Poems and Translations, request ASL interpreters one week in advance at editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Raphael Block's new book of poems is Strings of Shining Silence: Earth-Love Poems. Mirabai Starr says, "This luminous collection of poetry is a love song to the Holy. Each piece is a droplet of dew reflecting the rising sun and radiating through the heart, awakening wonder." Raphael Block's poetry gives voice to a heartfelt response to our global environmental crisis. Born on a kibbutz, he spent his boyhood playing on the hills of Haifa. His family returned to London as he turned nine, where learning British English shaped his ear for sound. His previous collections are Songs from a Small Universe and Spangling Darkness. He will be accompanied by guitar instrumentalist David Field.
Thanasis Maskaleris's new collection is My Life on the Ragged Paths of Pan: Selected Poems and Translations. Born in Arkadia, Greece, he immigrated to the U.S. at the age of seventeen. He's written poetry in both Greek and English and translated extensively from the Greek. He is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, Classics, and Creative Writing at San Francisco State. His previous book is The Terrestrial Gospel of Nikos Kazantzakis: Will the Humans Be Saviors of the Earth?

30 MARCH 2017 — thursday

Katherine Hastings and G.P. Skratz

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Katherine Hastings, Shakespeare & Stein Walk Into a Bar, and a poetry performance by G.P. Skratz, Sundae Missile: the Mass of the Church of the Center that will not Hold, request ASL interpreters one week in advance at editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Katherine Hastings's new book of poems is Shakespeare & Stein Walk Into a Bar. Annie Finch says, "Katherine Hastings' poems play with consciousness on many levels. Nature, literature, and human experience catch memorably within the threads of their dense and startling webs." Her two previous full-length collections are Nighthawks and Cloud Fire. A former poet laureate of Sonoma County, she is the curator of WordTemple Poetry Series and host of WordTemple on NPR affiliate KRCB FM.
G. P. Skratz's new book of poems is Sundae Missile: the Mass of the Church of the Center that will not Hold, a homophonic translation of the "pre-Vatican Council Latin version" of the Roman Catholic Mass. Andrei Codrescu says, "Until they ever improve the wine and put some jam in the wafers, Catholics will have to be content with GP Skratz' sound translation of the Mass. It doesn't beat Bach but it would work for Sinatra." His previous publications are The Gates of Disappearance and Fun, and Everything Else with the late poet Darrell Gray. With a long history as a poet performer, he is probably most noted for his production of "The Actualist Conventions" with Darrell Gray, Jim Nisbet, and David Schein. He currently performs poetry and music with Arundo and "twisted roots" music with Smooth Toad.

6 APRIL 2017 — thursday

Lola Haskins and Carolyn Miller

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Lola Haskins, How Small, Confronting Morning, and Carolyn Miller, Route 66 and Its Sorrows, request ASL interpreters one week in advance at editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Lola Haskins's new book of poems is How Small, Confronting Morning. W. S. Merwin has said, "She writes with the startling freedom and grace of a kite flying, and with the variety and assurance of invention that reveal, in image after image, the dream behind the waking world." She has published nine books of poetry, including The Grace to Leave and Still. Recently named Honorary Chancellor of the Florida State Poetry Association, she has also won the Iowa Poetry Prize, the Emily Dickinson prize from the Poetry Society of America, two Florida Book Awards, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Carolyn Miller's new book of poems is Route 66 and Its Sorrows. Philip Levine has said of her poems, "Their music and vocabulary draw their strength from the best that has endured in poetry in English from Wyatt to Williams, and while they are original, they are also as ordinary as bread or wine." Her previous collections are After Cocteau and Light, Moving as well as four limited-edition letterpress chapbooks. Her poems have been featured on Poetry Daily and The Writer's Almanac, and they have been anthologized in Garrison Keillor's Good Poems, American Places, among other publications and honors.

9 APRIL 2017 — sunday

Martha Rhodes and Bruce Willard

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Martha Rhodes, The Thin Wall, and Bruce Willard, Violent Blues, 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)

Martha Rhodes's new book of poems is The Thin Wall. Susan Wheeler says, "The Thin Wall—between care and resentment, protectiveness and rage, betrayal and abandonment—marks the furious, vital poems in Martha Rhodes's fifth collection…Martha Rhodes has long been one of our finest poets, and now she has written her best and most moving book." Her previous collections are At the Gate, Perfect Disappearance, Mother Quiet, and The Beds. She directs the summer Conference on Poetry at the Frost Place and is the director of Four Way Books in New York City.
Bruce Willard's new book of poems is Violent Blues. Juan Felipe Herrera says, "Willard plays the notes in-between—the awakenings, loves and losses, the slippages between two blurred bodies of life, of sending and receiving¬ that is the 'ununderstandable,' perhaps like Thelonius Monk's fractured piano, the one that flames in the center of being, meaning, and enlightenment." His earlier collection is Holding Ground. He spends his time in Maine, Colorado, and California and runs several clothing businesses.

13 APRIL 2017 — thursday

Laura Hinton and Angela Hume

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by New York poet Laura Hinton, Ubermütter's Death Dance, and Angela Hume, Middle Time, request ASL interpreters one week in advance at editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Laura Hinton's new book of poems is Ubermütter's Death Dance. Elizabeth Frost asks, "How do we survive grief—let alone write it? Shattered by the inexplicable death of her only child at 32, Laura Hinton miraculously gives us this lacerating work of witness, "am I still a mother?" she asks, refusing any answer…I feel privileged to read—to be—in these words." She is a scholar, editor, literary critic, and multi-media poet. Among her many scholarly books is the edited collection Jayne Cortez, Adrienne Rich, and the Feminist Superhero: Voice, Vision, Politics and Performance in U.S. Contemporary Women's Poetics. Her previous book of poems is Sisyphus My Love (To Record a Dream in a Bathtub). She maintains a blog on hybrid poetics, "Chant de la Sirene" (www.chantdelasirene.com). Her readings are performances, often including dance.
Angela Hume's new full-length book of poems is Middle Time. Evelyn Reilly says, "Mid-stream, mid-era, mid-construction of the notion of an Anthropocene extending into a multitude of future absences, Hume is writing poetry that is both symptom and diagnosis. Querying vocabularies of mitigation, of damage, of 'rage's junk effects,' these intelligent, visually and sonically acute fragments set forth an almost impossible lyric of a 'possible earth capsizing toward you' or, rather, us." Widely published in literary journals, she is also the author of the chapbooks Melos, The Middle, and Second Story of Your Body.

20 APRIL 2017 — thursday

Jan Beatty and Kendra Tanacea

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Jan Beatty, Ubermütter's Death Dance, and Kendra Tanacea, A Filament Burns in Blue Degrees, request ASL interpreters one week in advance at editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Jan Beatty's new book is Jackknife: New and Selected Poems. David Trinidad says, "At the heart of Jan Beatty's body of work is desire for recognition from the birth father, the artist in prisons and homeless shelters, tales of hardcore sex…One of our most fearless poets, Beatty tends to the monsters inside her. And we are all the better for it." Her previous collections include The Switching/Yard, Red Sugar, Boneshaker, and Mad River, winner of the 1994 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. Her poems were anthologized in Best American Poetry 2013 and many other volumes. The managing editor of MadBooks, a small press publishing a series of books and chapbooks by women, for the past twenty years she has also hosted and produced Prosody, a public radio show on NPR affiliate WESA-FM, featuring the work of national writers. Among her honors are the Creative Achievement Award from the Heinz Foundation, an Artists Grant from The Pittsburgh Foundation, and the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry.
Kendra Tanacea's debut book of poems is A Filament Burns in Blue Degrees. Amy Gerstler says, "The passions and quiet violences that bind us and drive us apart fuel these poems. Tanacea writes with uncluttered immediacy and incandescent candor about domesticity, drugs, family, memory, divorce, sex as spirituality, fertility, horses and more." Her collection was a semifinalist for the Washington Prize and a finalist for the Idaho Prize for Poetry. She is an attorney in San Francisco.

27 APRIL 2017 — thursday

Deema K. Shehabi and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Deema K. Shehabi, author of an email collaboration, DIASPOR/RENGA, with the poet Marilyn Hacker, and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Walter & Salt, request ASL interpreters one week in advance at editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Deema K. Shehabi is a Palestinian-American poet, writer, and editor. Author of the poetry collection Thirteen Departures from the Moon, she also collaborated with Marilyn Hacker on DIASPOR/RENGA, an email exchange between the two poets, of Palestinian and Jewish heritage respectively, sparked by the 2009 Israeli siege of Gaza, published as a single long poetic dialogue. Another of her collaborative publications is Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, co-edited with Beau Beausoleil for which she won the Northern California Book Reviewers Special Recognition Award.
An American poet of Palestinian, Jordanian and Syrian heritage, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha's debut book of poems is Water & Salt. Oliver de La Paz says, "The poems in Water & Salt are fearless and frank. They speak of a place where a phone call announces doom and where 'portraits find their frames.' But always, despite the violence and war, in the music of Tuffaha's poetry there is a clear summons, beckoning us to join her in the feast of her language." Widely published in literary journals, she is also the winner of the 2016 Two Sylvias Chapbook Prize for Arab in Newsland.

18 MAY 2017 — thursday

Dawn McGuire and David Watts

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Dawn McGuire, American Dream with Exit Wound, and David Watts, Having and Keeping, request ASL interpreters one week in advance at editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Dawn McGuire's new book of poems is American Dream with Exit Wound. Carol Muske-Dukes says, "McGuire is inspired by her work with post 9/11 vets, by her brain research as a neurologist and her immersion in myth. You will take your life in your hands as you read these super-charged poems—and you will…'come to' with an exit wound…" Both a neuro-scientist and a poet, she has published three collections, including The Aphasia Café, which won the 2013 Indie Book Award for Poetry. Born in the Appalachian region of Kentucky, her graduate education was in Theology and in Medicine.
David Watts is both a physician and a poet. His new book of poems is Having and Keeping. Al Young says, "…Watts' quiet poems couple with their subjects in an intimacy so strong, you can smell their crackle and spark. When it comes to singing the uncontrollable messiness of family life, growing pain and growth; the stickiness of love life, the clumsiness of loss, the pleasures of cranky togetherness, this little book takes the cake." His literary credits include seven books of poetry, two collections of short stories, a mystery novel, a bestselling western and essays. He has received numerous awards in academics, literature, and television production.

25 MAY 2017 — thursday

Dan Bellm and Ann Pelletier

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Dan Bellm, Deep Well, and Ann Pelletier, Letter That Never, request ASL interpreters one week in advance at editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Dan Bellm's new book of poems is Deep Well. Alicia Ostriker says, "With a touch on the keys of language as light as the air we breathe, Dan Bellm traces his mother's death, and abides her continuing presence…Deep Well is a book of the purest poetry I have read in a long time. I am grateful for it." He's published three previous collections, including Practice, which won the 2009 California Book Award. He's also a translator, whose books include Speaking in Song by Mexican poet Pura López Colomé, Description of a Flash of Cobalt Blue by Mexican poet Jorge Esquinca, and The Song of the Dead by French poet Pierre Reverdy. His honors include a prize from the Cleveland State University Poetry Center and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council.
Ann Pelletier's debut full-length book of poems is Letter That Never. Carol Snow says, "With each of these 'imagined autobiographies'—unnamed, evocative, formally inventive—Ann Pelletier seeks, seeks to offer, a haunting solace at the edge of forgetting and being forgotten." Raised in upstate New York; Madrid, Spain; and New Hampshire, she has been published in The Antioch Review, New American Writing, Volt, and elsewhere.

22 JUNE 2017 — thursday

Janet Hamill and Cal Freeman

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Janet Hamill, Knock, and Cal Freeman, Brother of Leaving, request ASL interpreters one week in advance at editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Cal Freeman's latest book of poems is Brother of Leaving. Alan Michael Parker says, "Cal Freeman's a poet who measures the world and constructs, at angles, a whole shining city, a self-portrait he calls Detroit. With a bardic poignancy Brother of Leaving hums the sorrowful anthem of capitalism and its discontents. Pretty as a trash fire, and sad as a mirror, these are poems to remember." He is the author of the chapbook Heard Among the Windbreak, and his second full-length collection, Fight Songs, is forthcoming in the fall.
Janet Hamill's new book of poems is Knock. Patti Smith says, "Janet Hamill's Knock is intensely visual and invigorating…This is an ambitious work, rich with unexpected juxtapositions—Casanova and the Huns, Rothko and Goat's Head Soup. A bounteous world into which we're drawn by one of our true poets." Among her six published books of poetry and fiction are Nostalgia of the Infinite, Lost Ceilings, Body of Water, and The Eternal Café. Widely published in literary journals, her work has been anthologized in Up Late: American Poetry Since 1970, Bowery Women Poems, and elsewhere. A strong proponent of spoken word, she's read at The Poetry Project at St. Marks Church, CBGB's Gallery, Seatle's Bumbershoot Festival, Patti Smith's Meltdown Festival in London, and many other festivals and venues. In collaboration with the band Lost Ceilings she's released two CDs of spoken word and music, Flying Nowhere and Genie of the Alphabet.

25 JUNE 2017 — sunday

Cathleen Calbert and Andrena Zawinski

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Andrena Zawinski, Landings, and Cathleen Calbert, The Afflicted Girls, 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)

Andrena Zawinski's new book of poems is Landings. Rebecca Foust says, "These poignant, plainspoken poems span lifetimes and continents, chronicling a childhood in Pennsylvania when Coal (or Steel) was King and furnaces glowed the night skies red and an adulthood in California where stunning natural beauty paints a chiaroscuro with the daily news…Part paean and elegy to what was, part lyric and dirge to what is. Landings asks the question of what remains—where we land—after great loss." Her previous full-length collections are Something About, which won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and Traveling in Reflected Light, winner of a Kenneth Patchen competition. Features Editor at PoetyMagazine.com and founder of the San Francisco Bay Area Women's Poetry Salon, she edited Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women's Poetry.
Cathleen Calbert's new book is The Afflicted Girls, winner of the Vernice Quebodeaux "Pathways" Prize for Women. Thomas Lux calls it "a book filled with powerful voices. The poems are lush and textured, subtle yet fierce…Cathleen Calbert is a poet who has learned her trade, and her music is sure and original." Her previous collections are Lessons in Space, Bad Judgment, and Sleeping with a Famous Poet. Her poetry and prose have appeared in such publications as The New Republic and The New York Times, and her honors include The Nation Discovery Award, a Pushcart Prize, and Gordon Barber Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.

9 JULY 2017 — sunday

Don Bogen and Joseph Di Prisco

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Don Bogen, An Algebra, and Joseph Di Prisco, Sight Lines from the Cheap Seats, 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)

Don Bogen's most recent book of poems is An Algebra. D. A. Powell says, "Don Bogen is a wise and playful poet who manages the personal and the political with equal aplomb. He takes hold of poetry, the shape-shifting god, and in his hands it twists, morphs, relinquishes. Bogen reinvigorates the art by defining its limits, then pushing bravely past." His previous collections include The Known World and Luster. He is also a translator, notably of Europa: Selected Poems by Julio Martinez Mesanca, a key Spanish poet of the generation that came to prominence after the death of Franco. He is Poetry Editor for The Cincinnati Review.
Joseph Di Prisco's new book of poems is Sight Lines from the Cheap Seats. Dean Young writes that "addressing unquenchable longing and the shadows of death and failure, the lyric engines of [his] poems propel us with vital combustion…a large, funny, and indefatigable spirit." He is a novelist and a memoirist, the most recent being The Pope of Brooklyn, sequel to the celebrated Subway to California. Di Prisco is also Chair of the Simpson Family Literary Project, a partnership between the Lafayette Library/Learning Center Foundation and the UC Berkeley English Department.

20 JULY 2017 — thursday

Noah Blaustein, Kathryn Nuernberger, Jacques J. Rancourt

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Noah Blaustein, Flirt, Kathryn Nuernberger, The End of Pink, and Jacques J. Rancourt, Novena, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Noah Blaustein's book of poems is Flirt. Christopher Merrill says, "Like all great lovers, he promises the world—and then delivers, in poems that…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 literary journals, he is the editor of the anthology Motion: American Sports Poems, which was an editor's pick of National Public Radio and a Librarian's pick of the New York Public Library.
Kathryn Nuernberger's latest book of poems is The End of Pink. Aimee Nezhukumatahil says, "The remarkable designs of a landscape created by Kathryn Nuernberger give us such a stamp of hoof, wonder, and wit…This is an unforgettable collection of sly-sexy poems of desire, grief, and motherhood." Her first collection, Rag & Bone, won the 2010 Elixir Press Antivenom Prize. She is the director of Pleiades Press and has received fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society and the Bakken Museum of Electricity in Life to research aspects of the history of science and medicine.
Jacques J. Rancourt's debut book of poems is Novena, winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize from Pleiades Press. D. A. Powell says, "Jacques Rancourt is a votary of desire and a faithful disciple to memory…This is a holy book, a pilgrim's progress of erotic, mystical and terrifying beauty." A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, his poems have been widely published in literary journals, including Kenyon Review and Best New Poets 2014.

30 JULY 2017 — sunday

Christopher Howell, Dorianne Laux, Joseph Millar

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Dorianne Laux and Joseph Millar from their new chapbook, Duet, with Christopher Howell, Love's Last Number, 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)

Christopher Howell's new book of poems is Love's Last Number. Laura Kasischke says, "In these gemlike meditations on love and time and the human condition—and so much more—Christopher Howell's vision is nearly mystical, his music almost entirely uncanny…There is a distance in this tone that is all about clarity, and a proximity that is all about intimacy, humility." He has published ten collections, most recently Gaze and Dreamless and Possible, a volume of new and selected poems. His honors include two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two Washington State Book Awards, and three Pushcart Prizes.
Joseph Millar and Dorianne Laux will be reading from their new chapbook of poems about music, Duet, as well as from their own books. Millar's new book of poems is Kingdom. Marie Howe says, "If this is a kingdom then Joe Millar may be one of the kings. He's lived enough to be both man and woman now, and he's learned to sing so sweet a song it might be rising from the broken branches and the bones of the lost horses, or the desert stars, or the scars of the middleweight boxers who finally went home." He's published three previous books of poems, most recently Blue Rust, and he's won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Dorianne Laux's fifth book of poems is The Book of Men, winner of the Paterson Prize. Alan Shapiro says, "The Book of Men could just as easily have been called The Book of Empathy, or The Book of Negative Capability, or The Book of Intimate Awareness of Who We Are and How We Got To Be This Way. Whether she is writing about men or women, the powerful or the powerless, the present day or the past, Laux observes, evokes and meditates with profound compassion and understanding for the delicate complexities of the human heart." Her previous collections are Awake, What We Carry, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Smoke, and Facts About the Moon, which won the Oregon Book Award. Among her other honors are a Pushcart Prize, two appearances in Best American Poetry, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

6 AUGUST 2017 — sunday

Cassandra Dallett and Bruce Isaacson

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Cassandra Dallett, Wet Reckless, and Bruce Isaacson, The Last Lie: Selected Poems 2009-2017, 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)

Cassandra Dallett's latest book of poems is Wet Reckless. Al Young says,"In poem upon poem, Cassandra Dallett pours out her cool and steaming heart in unmeasured rounds of bittersweet toasts and takes. Dallett's voice and vision shine." Among her previous collections are Bad Sandy, Pearl Tongue, and On Sunday, A Finch, which was nominated for a California Book Award. A two-time Pushcart nominee and Literary Death Match winner, she lives in Oakland and writes poetry and memoir about a counterculture childhood in Vermont and her ongoing adolescence in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Bruce Isaacson's new book of poems is The Last Lie: Selected Poems 2009-2017. Jack Hirschman says, "Bruce Isaacson's wondrously accurate portrait of poet Joie Cook alone would star this book, but there's a whole galaxy of brilliant poems that constellate this recent selected poems, so just look up and read them; the pleasure will be all yours." Recent collections include Tango, Frayed, and Lost Among the Neon. He's the outgoing poet laureate of Clark County, Nevada, which includes Las Vegas where he lives, and he's the editor and publisher of Zeitgeist Press.

24 AUGUST 2017 — thursday

Melba Joyce Boyd, M.L. Liebler, Brian Jabas Smith, Al Young

Poetry Flash presents a reading by California Poet Laureate emeritus Al Young, poet and biographer Melba Joyce Boyd, poet M.L. Liebler, I Want to Be Once, and short story writer Brian Jabas Smith, Spent Saints & Other Stories, request ASL interpreters one week in advance at editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
M.L. Liebler is a celebrated poet, literary arts activist, and professor. Most recent of his many books of poetry is I Want to Be Once; others include The Moon a Box and Written in Rain: New and Selected Poems, 1985-2000. He’s edited many books, ranging across labor politics, music, and poetry, and his brand new one is Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip-Hop and Beyond, with a wide range of contributors, including Greil Marcus and Al Young.
Poet, editor, and professor Melba Joyce Boyd is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Death Dance of a Butterfly. As Jayne Cortez notes, "Life opposed to death, death opposed to life in New Orleans, in Detroit, in Death Dance of a Butterfly. Melba Joyce Boyd's most important volume of poetry is filled with interactions, eulogies, and 'streets beneath water stains.' It is a collection flashing with poetic development." Boyd is also the author of Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press, a tribute to Dudley Randall (1914-2000) with whom she worked as an editor at Broadside Press and whose authorized biographer she became. Randall was poet laureate of Detroit, a civil rights activist, and a force in the Black Arts Movement. Two of his poems, one for the four little girls killed in the Alabama church bombing in Birmingham, one for the assassination of President Kennedy, were set to music by folk singer Jerry Moore in 1965. Randall published them as broadsides, and so the press, publishing chapbooks that opened out the work of African American writers into the canon of American literature, was born. Boyd’s book, connecting politics and art with the wider struggles of black America in that era, is also a dialogue between poets and includes extensive interviews. In addition, she produced and directed a documentary film on Randall and the press.
Brian Jabas Smith’s debut book of fiction is Spent Saints & Other Stories. Jim Daniels says, “In these fine stories, Brian Smith’s direct, natural, story-telling voice rocks with the authority and grit of someone who’s been there and come back to tell the tale.” Smith is an award-winning journalist, first as a staff writer and columnist for the Phoenix New Times and then as an editor for the Detroit Metro Times. His earlier career was as a songwriter who fronted rock’n’roll bands. He’s written for many performers, including Alice Cooper.
Al Young, former California Poet Laureate, author of poetry, novels, and memoirs. His most recent poetry collection is Something About the Blues; some forthcoming books are 22 Moon Poems, October Variations, and Love Offline.

27 AUGUST 2017 — sunday

Heaven Was Detroit: Al Young, Greil Marcus, ML Liebler

Poetry Flash presents a celebration and launch reading for Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip-hop and Beyond, with contributors Greil Marcus, Al Young, Melba Joyce Boyd, Brian Jabas Smith, George Moseman, Joel Martin, and Pat Thomas, with editor M.L. Liebler, 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 reading and Bay Area celebration for Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip-hop and Beyond, an anthology of writing on Detroit's seminal music and its culture, with editor M.L. Liebler and contributors Greil Marcus, Al Young, Melba Joyce Boyd, Brian Jabas Smith, George Moseman, Joel Martin, and Pat Thomas.
Greil Marcus, author of Mystery Train, Lipstick Traces, and most recently, A History of Rock'n'Roll in Ten Songs.
Al Young, former California Poet Laureate, author of poetry, novels, and memoirs. His most recent poetry collection is Something About the Blues; some forthcoming books are 22 Moon Poems, October Variations, and Love Offline.
M.L. Liebler, poet, literary arts activist, and professor, founder, among much else, of the National Writer's Voice Project in Detroit, author of many books of poetry, including the forthcoming I Want to Be Once, and editor of anthologies including Working Words: Punching the Clock & Kicking Out the Jams and Heaven Was Detroit.
Melba Joyce Boyd, professor, author of nine books of poetry and a number of books, including Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press.
Brian Jabas Smith, award-winning journalist, first as a staff writer and columnist for the Phoenix New Times, and then as editor at the Detroit Metro Times, former songwriter and front man for rock'n'roll bands, and author of the short story collection Spent Saints.
George "Moseley the Punk" Moseman, member of the "outside the box" band the Früt.
Joel Martin, well-known Detroit producer, publisher of Eminem's music and producer of The Romantics, Sponge, Sean Forbes, and others.
Pat Thomas, author of Listen, Whitey!: The Sights and Sounds of Black Power, 1965-1975 and the forthcoming Did It!: From Yippie to Yuppie, Jerry Rubin: An American Revolutionary and A&R consultant to various record labels as well as producer of reissues of vintage music by Sly Stone, Carole King, and others.

14 SEPTEMBER 2017 — thursday

Erica Goss and Gillian Wegener

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Erica Goss, Night Court, and Gillian Wegener, This Sweet Haphazard, request ASL interpreters one week in advance at editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Erica Goss's new book of poems is Night Court, winner of the 2016 Lyrebird Award from Glass Lyre Press. Al Young says, "Erica Goss raps her poem-gavel…tries on robes, viewpoints; she tries out voices, celebrating the sweeping powers of legend and myth. This poet loves the world her poems would save." A former Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, California, 2013-2016, she is cofounder of Media Poetry Studio, a poetry-and-film camp for teen girls. She is also the author of Wild Place and Vibrant Words: Ideas and Inspirations for Poets. Her poems, reviews, and articles are widely published both on-line and in print.
Gillian Wegener's new book of poems is This Sweet Haphazard. Dean Rader says, "Everything is brimming in Gillian Wegener's fantastic new collection of poems… —rivers, bees, the Old Mill Café, forest fires, churches, Neville Bros. Service, the ghosts of Humboldt County, the streets, shops, and citizens of Modesto, and most importantly, the unmapped geography of the human heart." She's published a chapbook, Lifting One Foot, Lifting the Other, and a previous full-length collection, The Opposite of Clairvoyance. She coordinates the Second Tuesday Reading Series in Modesto; she is cofounder of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center, and she's a former Poet Laureate of Modesto.

21 SEPTEMBER 2017 — thursday

Brittany Perham and Matthew Siegel

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

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Brittany Perham's new book of poems, Double Portrait, was the winner of the 2016 Barnard Women Poets Prize, selected by Claudia Rankine, who says, "Double Portrait, by turns playful, mournful, indulgent, musical, insightful, and all the way human, comes clean about our most driving desires…imaginative and familiar, the result is full of humor that is both rueful and sensual." A Jones lecturer in the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University where she was a Stegner Fellow, she is author of the previous collection The Curiosities and co-author, with Kim Addonizio, of the chapbook The Night Could Go in Either Direction.
Matthew Siegel's debut book of poems, Blood Work, was winner of the 2015 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, selected by Lucia Perillo, who says, "These poems resist the dualities of lyric versus narrative, confessional versus impersonal, real against surreal, formal/improvisational, comic/sad. Matthew Siegel manages to tick off all the boxes at once, while remaining compulsively readable. The trick that he's pulled off is to make a book that simultaneously tickles you and shakes you by the scruff of your neck." He, too, is a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford.

28 SEPTEMBER 2017 — thursday

Thomas Centolella and Susan Gubernat

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Thomas Centolella, Almost Human, and Susan Gubernat, The Zoo at Night, request ASL interpreters one week in advance at editor@poetryflash.org, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Thomas Centolella's new book of poems is Almost Human, winner of the Dorset Prize, selected by Edward Hirsch, who says, "Somehow magical—the way these well-made, oddly elusive, sometimes funny, lyrically discursive and poignantly beautiful poems engage the mysteries." He's published three previous collections, American Book Award winner Terra Firma, California Book Award-winner Lights & Mysteries, and Views from along the Middle Way. He's a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
Susan Gubernat's new book of poems is The Zoo at Night, winner of the Prairie Schooner Prize in Poetry. Mark Svenhold says, "'Beauty is always strange,' says Baudelaire, and in Susan Gubernat's brilliant The Zoo at Night, we have a grand tour of the many ways that the world, arriving directly under our noses, can remain, everlastingly, embodied and mysterious." She is the author of Flesh, winner of the Marianne Moore Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Analog House. An opera librettist, her major work, Korczak's Orphans, a collaboration with composer Adam Silverman, has been performed at a number of venues.

15 OCTOBER 2017 — sunday

Sharon Doubiago and Doreen Stock

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Sharon Doubiago, An Algebra, and Doreen Stock, In Place of Me, wheelchair accessible, East Bay Booksellers (formerly Diesel), 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)

Doreen Stock's new book is prose, Talking With Marcelo, a bio-sketch of Argentine journalist Marcelo Holot, a chapbook-length interview in which he answers her questions about his early years, his life as a student protester during the Dirty Wars, and his later career as a journalist in Buenos Aires during which he met and wrote about some of the key figures of his time, including Juan Peron. Her latest poetry collection is In Place of Me, a collected works, edited with an introduction by Jack Hirschman. Her first book of poems is The Politics of Splendor, which also includes her translations of Marina Tsvetaeva and Anna Akhmatova. She is a founding member of the Marin Poetry Center.
Sharon Doubiago's new book of poems is Naked to the Earth. Dorianne Laux says, "Doubiago's poems leave no stone unturned. Wild and expansive, brimming with exactness and texture, they make new worlds and dare to cross the borders between myth and reality and hold a steady gaze toward the unknown. There is terror in this collection, and despair, but also joy, love, and the gift of resilience in a broken world." Her previous publications are numerous and include the two-volume memoir, My Father's Love, Body and Soul, and Psyche Drives the Coast. In order to be a poet, her main home for many years has been her vehicles. Her publisher, Wild Ocean Press, describes her as: "A vagabond poet in the ancient tradition," who has "lived, written, taught, and performed mainly on the West Coast, from Baja to British Columbia—most significantly the artist/poet towns of Mendocino, Ashland, Newport, Portland, and Port Townsend." Living on the road has given her numerous experiences which are reflected in her many books and writings.

19 OCTOBER 2017 — thursday

Jeanne Foster and Alan Williamson

Poetry Flash presents a reading by poet-translators Jeanne Foster and Alan Williamson, from their new co-translation of Italian poet Bianca Tarozzi, The Living Theatre, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Jeanne Foster and Alan Williamson will be reading from their co-translation, from the Italian, of The Living Theatre by Bianca Tarozzi, the first U.S. publication of the celebrated Italian poet. The collection is a journey through the poet's childhood memories of the difficult conditions of World War II under Mussolini and mid-century changes that changed Italian life, especially for women. Bianca Tarozzi is an acclaimed Italian poet whose many books of poems have received her country's highest literary honors; she is also author of a novel, Una luce settle (A Subtle Light), and she is the translator of Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, James Merrill, Richard Wilbur, A.E. Housman, Denise Levertov, and Louise Glück into Italian.
Jeanne Foster's most recent collection of poems is Goodbye, Silver Sister; previous collections include Great Horned Owl and A Blessing of Safe Travel, which won the Quarterly Review of Literature Poetry Award. She translated twenty-five poems by Juan Ramon Jimenez in Instants of Faith, and she is co-editor of Appetite: Food as Metaphor.

Alan Williamson's books of poems include Presence, The Muse of Distance, Love and the Soul, Res Publica, and The Pattern More Complicated: New and Selected Poems. His many books of criticism include Pity the Monsters: The Political Vision of Robert Lowell, Introspection and Contemporary Poetry, Eloquence and Mere Life, Almost a Girl: Male Writers and Female Identification, and Westernness: A Meditation. His other several translations from Italian include a complete version of Pavese's Death Will Come and Look at Me with Your Eyes. Among his honors are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

26 OCTOBER 2017 — thursday

Jonathan Moody and Raphael Cohen

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by writer-performer Raphael Cohen Rebel Elegant, and Jonathan Moody, Olympic Butter Gold, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Raphael Cohen is a writer-performer committed to poetry for social change. His debut book of poems is Scrutinizing Lines (2007). His new chapbook, Rebel Elegant, is a single long poem on Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, a rising star for the Denver Nuggets basketball team, who was suspended by the NBA when he refused to stand for the national anthem, citing his Muslim conscience and the U.S.'s history of racial and economic oppression. Cohen has performed widely across the U.S. and in Canada, taught, facilitated training at various youth empowerment groups and founded and directed Play at the Margins Press, an independent publishing and event production initiative.
Jonathan Moody's new book of poems, winner of the 2014 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, is Olympic Butter Gold; Pleiades says, "Jonathan Moody's second full-length collection of poems…overflows with music, image, and pop culture. The speaker is a natural storyteller, fusing lyric and narrative with a voice that walks the line between youth and experience, playfulness and seriousness." A Cave Canem graduate fellow, he is also author of the collection The Doomy Poems.

2 NOVEMBER 2017 — thursday

Tribute to Michelle Gillett: Robert Thomas, Carolyn West, more

Poetry Flash presents a posthumous book launch in tribute to the late poet Michelle Gillett, reading from Coming About will be Erin Gillett, Sarah Miller, Robert Thomas, and Carolyn West, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Michelle Gillett's debut book of poems, Coming About, was selected for publication before her death from lung cancer in 2016. Daniel Tobin says of it, "…Gillett's insight is Rilkean in its wisdom.…In these fiercely honest poems, knowledge of the fragility of things before 'the ever-declining light' keeps pace with a faith that knows always 'some effect of the light keeps the dusk unfinished,' staving off the absolute dark. Coming About is a brave and beautiful book by a poet greatly gifted both in her humanity and her craft." Born in 1948, she lived in Stockbridge, Massachusetts and was active in the arts and literary communities of the Berkshires.

The readers for the event will be:

Erin Gillett, her daughter, who graduated from UC Berkeley with a Masters degree in Architecture and works as an architectural designer and consultant.
Sarah Miller, author of Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn and numerous essays.
Robert Thomas, author of Bridge, fiction, and the poetry collections Door to Door, winner of the Poets Out Loud Prize, selected by Yusef Komunyakaa, and Dragging the Lake. He's won a Pushcart Prize and received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Carolyn West, poet and storyteller.

9 NOVEMBER 2017 — thursday

Susan Kolodny and Carolyne Wright

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Susan Kolodny, Preserve, and Seattle poet Carolyne Wright, This Dream the World: New & Selected Poems, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Susan Kolodny's new book of poems is Preserve. Robert Thomas says, "Susan Kolodny's moving new collection begins with her arrival in Botswana and tells the story of a journey that transforms her understanding of herself and her own culture…Kolodny is unsentimental about the challenges that game preserves face…and the book itself becomes a Preserve she creates to save a world whose survival is at risk." Her first collection is After the Firestorm. She's also a psychoanalyst and author of The Captive Muse: On Creativity and its Inhibition.
Carolyne Wright's new book of poems is This Dream the World: New & Selected Poems. David Axelrod says, "The language of Carolyne Wright's poems is as rich, diverse, and bursting with life as the natural world of the coastal Northwest she calls home; but her home is the world, much of which she has traveled. Her poems engage that larger world and the lives of its citizens, their history, turmoil, and jeopardy. Hers is a poetry both of celebration and of sober courage." Author of numerous previous collections, including A Change of Maps, she is co-editor of Raising Lily Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace, a groundbreaking anthology. She is also a translator who has published five books of translation from both Spanish and Bengali. In addition, she has published a book of essays, and has received a Fulbright and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She lives in Seattle.

12 NOVEMBER 2017 — sunday

Gerald Fleming and Jack Marshall

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Jack Marshall, Fugitive in Full View, and Gerald Fleming, One, wheelchair accessible, East Bay Booksellers (formerly Diesel), 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)

Gerald Fleming's recent book of poems is One. Frederick Barthelme says, "His new volume, One, takes on the monosyllable and wrestles it into dizzying and wonderful pretzel-esque works which may appear, at first glance, non-pretzel-esque. You'll probably love this book as much as I do." He's published three previous collections, Swimming Climbing onto Shore, Night of Pure Breathing, and The Choreographer. A teacher in San Francisco's public schools for thirty-seven years, he's written three books for teachers. He edited and published the literary journal Barnabe Mountain Review from 1995 to 2000, and is currently editing both the limited-edition vitreous magazine One (More) Glass and The Collected Prose and Poetry of Lawrence Fixel.

Jack Marshall's new book of poems is Fugitive in Full View. Stephen Dunn says, "Jack Marshall is one of our unheralded masters. Very few poets can combine statement and lyricism as well as he can. His fine ear is always evident in his packed three-line stanzas—the sound of words finding and gracing sense, permitting the overtly political, and helping to color his broad sympathies. This is a terrific book, and Marshall is an American treasure." He has published numerous previous collections and the memoir From Baghdad to Brooklyn. Among his honors are a PEN Center USA Award, two Northern California Book Awards and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

16 NOVEMBER 2017 — thursday

Randall Mann and Barbara Jane Reyes

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Randall Mann, Proprietary, and Barbara Jane Reyes, Invocation to Daughters, wheelchair accessible, East Bay Booksellers (formerly Diesel), 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 7:30 (510/653-9965, ebbooksellers.com)

Randall Mann's new book of poems is Proprietary. Lambda Literary says, "Sonically, Mann is a master of formalistic design with a witty sense for line-breaks…He represents perhaps the best in gay male poetry today, with a message of protest against corporate American life…Mann's work should be admired for its ferocity, its craft, and its unabashedly gay point of view." Author of three previous collections, Straight Razor, Breakfast with Thom Gunn, and Complaint in the Garden, he has been published widely in literary journals, including Poetry, which awarded him the 2013 Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize.
Barbara Jane Reyes's new book of poems is Invocation to Daughters. Sesshu Foster says, "Invocation to Daughters recombines registers—prayers, pleas and elegy—braiding a trilingual triple-threat, a 3-pronged poetics that enjambs and reconfigures the formal with the street, utterance with erasure, the prose sentence with the liminal…Barbara Jane Reyes is one of the Bay Area's incendiary voices." Born in the Philippines, in Manila, se was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She's published four previous collections, including Poeta en San Francisco, which received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, and Diwata, which won the Global Filipino Literary Award for Poetry. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Philippine American Writers and Artists.

30 NOVEMBER 2017 — thursday

Dan Gerber and Joseph Stroud

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Dan Gerber, Particles: New & Selected Poems, and Joseph Stroud, Of This World: New and Selected Poems, wheelchair accessible, Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 7:30 (510/849-2087, www.moesbooks.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Dan Gerber's new book of poems is Particles: New & Selected Poems. Jim Harrison said, "[Dan Gerber's] work is completely untarnished by fad or fashion and I enter it again and again with a sense of wonderment. When our age passes, this work will remain." He has published eight previous collections, as well as three novels, a collection of short stories, and two books of nonfiction. His honors include a ForeWord magazine Book of the Year Award in Poetry, Michigan Author Award, and the Mark Twain Award.
Joseph Stroud's latest collection is Of This World: New and Selected Poems. Jane Hirshfield says, "One the finest collections of poems I've read in years—intelligent, sensuous, moving, full of insight." Author of numerous previous collections, he has received a Pushcart Prize, had his poems featured on National Public radio, and been awarded a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress.