2023 Poetry Flash Reading Series

Poetry Flash readings readings that are live and in person take place at Moe's Books, Berkeley, and at East Bay Booksellers, Oakland. Due to shelter-in-place and the pandemic, the Poetry Flash Reading Series has become a virtual series as of August 9, 2020, presented online until further notice. To find out more about the Poetry Flash Reading Series, please email editor@poetryflash.org. ASL interpreters for the deaf and hearing impaired may be requested with at least one week's notice, email editor@poetryflash.org. Our bookstore venues are wheelchair accessible. Read more about the series on the Poetry Flash Reading Series page.

22 JANUARY 2023 — sunday

Joan Baranow and Tayve Neese

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Joan Baranow, A Slight Thing, Happiness, and Tayve Neese, evolution psalms, online via Zoom, free, 3:00 pm PST (Register to attend: please click here; you will receive an email with a link to join the reading)

Featured books for this event are available at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Joan Baranow's new book is A Slight Thing, Happiness. Erin Rodoni says, "From the intricate intimacies of laparoscopic surgery to the strangely sensual seascape of a petri dish, Baranow's lush, incisive imagery reveals a scarred yet serene internal garden of organs and cells. From hospital beds to IVs and incubators, from the underdeveloped lungs of a preemie to the bruising love of early motherhood, these poems soothe and croon and bloom toward the messier, wilder garden that is the family and the world we live in." Baranow's previous books are Still You: Poems of Illness and Healing, In the Next Life, Living Apart, and Morning: Three Poems. Her poetry has appeared in the Gettysburg Review, The Paris Review, Poetry East, JAMA, Feminist Studies, and other magazines. A fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and member of the Community of Writers, she has won individual artists fellowships in poetry from the Marin Arts Council, and the Ohio Arts Council. She founded and teaches in the Low-Residency MFA program in Creative Writing at Dominican University of California.

Tayve Neese's new book is evolution psalms. Irena Mashinski says, "Tayve Neese's laconic, dynamic, rhythmically impeccable poems evolve with the determination of banyan tree roots, bound only by the mesmerizing pulse of metamorphosis—skeletal, igneous, stellar, emotional. Their tapestry is filled with scale-defying wonders—a horseshoe crab, a feather, or a molecule of salt—relying on each other for space to coil around, to fork through, to nest in; representing love itself in its incessant earthly movement." Her previous collections are Blood to Fruit and Hooved (audio chapbook). Locust is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry in Ireland. Her work has appeared in Fourteen Hills, The Paris Review (online edition), and Pedestal Magazine. Her poetry has been nominated for a 2021 Pushcart Prize with Black Lawrence Press. She has edited over twenty-five books, including poetry collections, novels, chapbooks, and memoirs, and is the Executive Editor and co-founder of Trio House Press. She is also the founder and primary editor of The Banyan Review.

5 FEBRUARY 2023 — sunday

Beverly Burch and Robert Thomas

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Beverly Burch, Leave Me a Little Want, and Robert Thomas, Sonnets with Two Torches and One Cliff, in person, 2727 California Street, between Ward and Stuart Streets, Berkeley, free, 3:00 pm PST (poetryflash.org).


MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Beverly Burch's new poetry book is Leave Me a Little Want. Julia Levine says, "I love this book and its urgent attention to language and form in the "treacherous province" of our current times. Burch never turns away from the coexistence of the beautiful and the bloody, the tedious and the risky, and so I not only trust her, but feel jolted awake." Beverly Burch's previous books are Latter Days of Eve, How a Mirage Works, and Sweet to Burn. Her poetry has appeared in 32 Poems, Gulf Coast, Denver Quarterly, Southern Review, Los Angeles Review, New England Review and other magazines. She also has two psychoanalytic books on women's sexual and gender relations, On Intimate Terms and Other Women.

Robert Thomas's new poetry collection is Sonnets with Two Torches and One Cliff. Kim Addonizio says, "A formally constrained poem that brilliantly manages to sound anything but. A paean to longing, to the mysteries of love and time and distance, 'Negligee and Hatchet,' as its title suggests, is full of contraries and surprises—swamp pop and Mick Jagger, grotto and tomb, Aphrodite and caramel corn…the poet's language turns and dazzles with every line." His previous books are Bridge, a novella, winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Fiction; Door to Door, selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the Poets Out Loud Prize; and Dragging the Lake. His poetry has appeared in The Yale Review, The Southern Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Atlantic, and other magazines. He also received a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Pushcart Prize.

19 FEBRUARY 2023 — sunday

David Alpaugh and Connie Post

Poetry Flash presents a reading from new books by David Alpaugh, Seeing The There There, and Connie Post, Between Twilight, online via Zoom, free, 3:00 pm PST (Register to attend: please click here; you will receive an email with a link to join the reading)

Please join us for a virtual reading on Sunday, February 19 at 3:00 pm PST. We are excited to bring you this event via Zoom. To register for this reading, please click on the link in the calendar listing above. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Thank you for continuing to support Poetry Flash and our reading series.

Connie Post's new book can be purchased at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash. David Alpaugh's new book is available at https://www.wordgalaxy.com/books/david-alpaugh-seeing-the-there-there-poems.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
David Alpaugh's new collection is Seeing The There There. Susan Terris says, "simply amazing," a "unique, one-of-a-kind book" "you will want to own…read…savor." Alpaugh fuses comic and serious poetry with more than one-hundred color photos, paintings and graphic images that include a beached whale, a three-legged cat, a martini with olives, a grief-stricken Jack-O-Lantern, John Donne's flea, Duchamp's famous bidet, and a ham sandwich. Each poem, Marvin R. Hiemstra writes "finds us in a sui generis universe" with "surprising rhymes surfing on fresh insight." Alpaugh's previous collection Spooky Action at a Distance was published by Word Galaxy in 2020. Counterpoint, 1994 Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize-winner from Story Line Press, was reprinted in 2021. His work is included in the anthology California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present, edited by Dana Gioia, and Alpaugh has been a finalist for Poet Laureate of California.

Connie Post's new poetry book is Between Twilight, from New York Quarterly Books. Diane Seuss says "This honest voice, this exiled voice, comes through in poems that strike me as prayer. They seek mercy, not so much from a deity but from the world, and most significantly, from herself." Connie Post delves deep into the difficult journeys of everyday life and intersects those with the difficult maps of the past. There are "atrocities in the body" and many ways a person can falter, fall or rise from "the hue of an unseen self." Post served as the first Poet Laureate of Livermore, California. Her previous full-length collections include Floodwater, Lyrebird Award-winner, and Prime Meridian, named a distinguished favorite in the Independent Book Awards. Her awards include the Crab Creek Review Poetry Award and Caesura Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies including Calyx, 2River, Cold Mountain Review, The American Journal of Poetry, River Styx, Slipstream, and Verse Daily.

26 FEBRUARY 2023 — sunday

Genny Lim, Maya Khosla, Chris Olander, John Curl

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Genny Lim Kra!, Maya Khosla All the Fires of Wind and Light, Chris Olander, River Light, John Curl, Rainbow Weather, online, via Zoom, free, 3:00 pm PST (Register to attend: please click here; you will receive an email with a link to join the reading)


Featured books for this event will be available at: bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash. Genny Lim's recent collection is available at www.asiabookcenter.com/store/p1403/KRA!.html.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
These four dynamic poets were all featured readers at last fall's in-person Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival in Berkeley, California.

Genny Lim's recent book is Kra!. Her previous collections are Paper Gods and Rebels, Child of War, and Winter Place, among others. Her work appears in The Politics of Life: Four Plays by Asian American Women, Unbroken Thread: Anthology of Plays by Asian American Women, Oxford Book of Women's Writings in the United States, and Island: Poetry and the History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island. Genny Lim is a recipient of the 1981 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and a Bay Guardian Goldie for Local Discovery 1991. She is currently the San Francisco Jazz Poet Laureate (2017-present).

Maya Khosla's new collection is All the Fires of Wind and Light. Lucille Lang Days says, "Khosla presents climate change and endangered species with precise images and biological accuracy. Fire ecology, a widely misunderstood field, is a central theme. In this collection there is anticipation of catastrophe, but there is also hope: 'The living are awake / to the profusion soon to follow. / They will grow with the diligence / of all known colors / unfolding….'" Also a wildlife biologist and filmmaker, Maya Khosla's previous collections are Keel Bone, and Heart of the Tearing. Her work appears in the Chicago Quarterly Review, Canary: A Literary Journal of the Environmental Crisis, Munyori Literary Journal, and World Literature Today. She was Sonoma County Poet Laureate 2018–2020.

Chris Olander's poetry collection is River Light. Kirk Lumpkin says, "What has always impressed me about Chris Olander's poetry is how present, how kinetically alive the energies of Nature (birds, oaks, rivers, etc.) are in it and of how the words dance in the breath and sinew of it." Olander has published in many anthologies and magazines. He is a founding director of Poet's Playhouse in Nevada City (1988-89) and of the Nevada City Poetry Series of Grass Valley. He served as Poet Laureate of Nevada County, 2019-21. He leads the annual Strawberry Creek Walk for the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival.

John Curl's new poetry book is Rainbow Weather: Poems for Environmental Healing. Kim Shuck says, "The poems in Rainbow Weather challenge the reader to release expectation and received hierarchies and in exchange, to retrieve wonder. Current circumstances being what they are, the treatment for collective malaise is probably complicated, a combination of things with many moving parts, but somewhere in that combination there is certainly space for the calm, understanding observations in this poetry collection." His previous collections include Yoga Sutras of Fidel Castro, Revolutionary Alchemy, and Scorched Birth. His historical writings include Indigenous Peoples Day, and For All the People. He is co-editor of the recent anthology, Storm Warning: Poets for the Planet Building Socialism.

19 MARCH 2023 — sunday

Dean Rader and Meryl Natchez

Poetry Flash presents a reading and a conversation in poems by Meryl Natchez, Catwalk, and Dean Rader, Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry, in person, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, free, 3:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).

Featured books for this event will be available at the event. Dean Rader's are also available at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
"In this reading and conversation in poems, the poets will read poems that seem to speak to each other's work—from tales of the inimitable Frog and Toad children's books, the scenes from Reservoir Dogs, to the standard territory of love, sex, death and most everything else, except taxes."

Meryl Natchez's fourth book, Catwalk, received an Indie Best Book 2020 Award from Kirkus Reviews. Jericho Brown says, "Meryl Natchez casts the kind of spells that amount to a more precise definition for the "changing same" of what lyric poetry really is. Yes, these poems show a gift for formal dexterity with haibuns and cinquains and nonce verse, but what I love about them is how much of the world—how much of a life—Natchez conjures in the space of a few lines. From the biology of earthworms to the pitfalls of a forty-year love affair, there is no place this poetry won't touch." Meryl Natchez's work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, LA Review of Books, Hudson Review, Poetry Northwest, Literary Matters, The American Journal of Poetry, Tupelo Quarterly, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere. For more see www.merylnatchez.com.

Dean Rader's most recent poetry collection is Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry, a finalist for the Northern California Book Award and the Oklahoma Book Award. ZYZZYVA wrote of it, "By writing honestly about the difficulties of self-representation, Rader represents himself as a writer who cares deeply about his audience and his craft." His previous collection, Works & Days, won the T.S Eliot Prize. Eric Weinstein wrote of it, "his poems ask the difficult questions in accessible ways, ways rendered all the more effective via wry humor and an eye for the darkly poignant." Writer, scholar, and critic as well as a poet, Dean Rader also writes about Indigenous studies, modern and contemporary art, and visual culture. He is a professor at the University of San Francisco and a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry.

27 APRIL 2023 — thursday

Rose Black and Hannah Sward

Poetry Flash presents "An Evening of Poetry & Memoir," reading and discussion with poet Rose Black, Green Field, and memorist Hannah Sward, Strip, both writers work with Right to Write Press, a nonprofit that supports emerging writers who are incarcerated in California prisons; in-person, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 7:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).

Featured books for this event will be available for signing at the event and at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash. Proceeds from the in-person book sales will benefit Poetry Flash, and a portion of the online proceeds will also support the series.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Hannah Sward's new book is Strip: A Memoir. She tells of being abandoned by her mother and living with her poet father on an island with no stores or cars. Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee says, "Hannah Sward's memoir of how she blundered into the sex industry is touchingly honest, and written with a light touch." Booklist wrote, "Elegant prose, stripped of all sensationalism and demands for pity…a fresh, literary addition to the courageous and resonant addiction-memoir genre." Her writing has appeared in Halcoyne, Arts & Letters, Red Wheelbarrow, and Porter Gulch Review, among other magazines. She was Editor and Columnist at Third Street Villager Los Angeles, and has written for Fix and Your Tango. A longtime contributor at Erotic Review, she is also a Board member of Right to Write Press, a nonprofit that supports emerging writers who are incarcerated.

Rose Black's poetry books are Clearing, Winter Light, and Green Field. David St. John says, "Rose Black's superb new collection of poems, Green Field, is a sobering volume of recollections, reflections and meditations upon a life's ravaged hopes, the echoes of a personal past, and the raw realities of our present. Like fables and dreams gone dark in the lens, these poems instruct us in the complex measures we need to employ in determining what values still remain—and endure—in our lives." A Pushcart nominee, her poetry has been widely published, and her first two books are included in Yale's Beinecke Library for the Yale Collection of American Literature. She teaches poetry at Salinas Valley State Prison and is one of the founders of Right to Write Press, a nonprofit that promotes the growth of emerging poets who are incarcerated in California state prisons. She will read from her own work and from poetry by incarcerated writers, including Ubaldo Teque, Jr., who recently won first place in a statewide prison poetry contest with thousands of entries. She edited his chapbook, Niño Inmigrante. Rose Black lives and works at Renaissance Studios, an artists' collective in East Oakland.

11 MAY 2023 — thursday

Ann Fisher-Wirth and Dan Bellm

Poetry Flash presents An Evening of Poetry with poet and translator Dan Bellm, celebrating Counting, a chapbook, and his translation of Balam Rodrigo's Central American Book of the Dead, reading with Ann Fisher-Wirth, celebrating her new collection, Paradise is Jagged, in person, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 7:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).

Thank you for continuing to support Poetry Flash and our reading series.
Featured books for this event will be available for signing at the event and at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash(a small portion of the online proceeds will support the series).

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Dan Bellm's new poetry book is Counting. Molly Fisk says, "Counting offers us Dan Bellm's deft conversational tone and his blending of the deep and the quotidian, with mesmerizing cadences that carry us further into ourselves and further into the wider world, both accountable and accounted for." His 2023 translation from the Spanish is Central American Book of the Dead, by Balam Rodrigo. Dan Bellm is the author of four previous books of poetry, One Hand on the Wheel, Buried Treasure, winner of the Alice Fay DiCastagnola Award of the Poetry Society of America and the CSU Poetry Center Prize, Practice, 2009 California Book Award-winner, and Deep Well. His translations from Spanish and French include Speaking in Song, by Pura López Colomé, and The Song of the Dead, by Pierre Reverdy, supported by an Artist's Fellowship in Translation from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has taught literary translation and poetry in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles, Mills College, and New York University, and he serves as an interpreter for immigrants and asylum seekers with Centro Legal de la Raza, Oakland, California. Dan Bellm lives in Berkeley, California.

Ann Fisher-Wirth's new book of poems is Paradise is Jagged. Cyrus Cassells says of it "As a poet, Ann Fisher-Wirth is a steadfast wizard of telltale imagery and at-the-ready music…Fisher-Wirth's lyric concentration and attention to home, alive nature, and struggling humanity are that sacred and arrow-sure." She's authored six previous books of poems, including The Bones of Winter Birds and Mississippi, a poetry/photography collaboration with Maude Schuyler Clay. She also co-edited the acclaimed The Ecopoetry Anthology with Laura-Gray Street. Among her honors are two Fulbright awards and a 2023 Governor's Award for Excellence in Literature from the Mississippi Arts Commission. A senior fellow and board member of the Black Earth Institute, she recently retired from the University of Mississippi where she taught in the MFA program and directed the Environmental Studies program.

3 JUNE 2023 — saturday

Tribute to Al Young: Lee Herrick, Ishmael Reed, more

Poetry Flash and Something About the Blue Organizing Committee presents "Something About the Blues: A Tribute to Al Young, (1939-2021)," featured presenters include Ishmael Reed, California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick, RSVP required: info@poetryflash.org, in person, refreshments, Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar Street, Berkeley, free, 2:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).

For this event, please RSVP by emailing info@poetryflash.org. RSVP is required.

MORE ABOUT THE TRIBUTE
Join us for "Something About the Blues: A Memorial Tribute to Al Young," to honor and remember Al Young, poet, and former Poet Laureate of California, a dynamic and generous presence in the California poetry landscape for decades. Since he passed away on April 17, 2021, we have not been able to safely gather to remember and celebrate his life. This event is a gathering of poets and friends to honor and remember his beautiful presence.

Featured readers and presenters will include Lee Herrrick, California Poet Laureate; Ishmael Reed; musicians Tuck & Patti; Michael Young, Al's son; Persis Karim; Kim Shuck, previous San Francisco Poet Laureate; Lisa Alvarez; Avotcja; Kim McMillon, and more.

11 JUNE 2023 — sunday

Mary Mackey and Judy Wells

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Mary Mackey, Creativity: Where Poems Begin, and Judy Wells, Night at the Musée d'Orsay: Poems of Paris & Other Great European Cities, in person, 2727 California Street, a Cooperative Art Gallery, Berkeley, free, 3:00 pm PDT (www.2727.today).

Featured books for this reading will be available at the event, and are also available at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Mary Mackey's new book is Creativity: Where Poems Begin. Mara Lynn Keller says, "In Creativity, Mary Mackey takes us on a journey to the mysterious place where creativity begins. Her quest makes this a book for anyone who wants to explore how ideas and bursts of insight come, not just to poets and novelists, but to us all." Mackey is the author of at least eight poetry books including The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams: New and Selected Poems, 1974 to 2018, winner of 2019 Eric Hoffer Award for Best Book Published by a Small Press, Sugar Zone, winner of a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and Travelers With No Ticket Home. She is also the author of fourteen novels including The New York Times bestseller A Grand Passion, The Village of Bones: Sabalah's Tale, and Widow's War. Mackey is past president of PEN West, a Fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Professor Emerita of California State University, Sacramento. The Mary Mackey Papers are archived at Smith College, Massachusetts.
Judy Wells's new poetry book is Night at the Musée d'Orsay: Poems of Paris & Other Great European Cities. Kathleen Weaver says, "It's a treat to immerse yourself in Wells's poems in Night at the Musée d'Orsay, rich with life, color, and memory. She creates a wraparound mood of discovery, excitation, optimism, and the youthful joy of seeing for the first time those famous paintings, those foreign streets, a civilization freshly seen and intimately embraced." Judy Wells's previous books include Dear Phebe: The Dickinson Sisters Go West, I Dream of Circus Characters: A Berkeley Chronicle, and Everything Irish. Her writings have appeared in Berkeley Times, Marin Poetry Center Anthology, The Borzoi College Reader, Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women, California Quarterly, Traveler's Tale Ireland, Value: Essays, Stories, & Poems by Women of a Certain Age, and Not Dead Yet: Feminism, Passion, and Women's Liberation. She is also co-editor of the anthology, Berkeley Literary Women's Revolution: Essays from Marsha's Salon.

22 JUNE 2023 — thursday

Bert Meyers Tribute: Eric Gudas, David Shaddock, Anat Silvera

Poetry Flash presents a reading celebrating the publication of Bert Meyers: On the Life and Work of an American Master, readers include poets Eric Gudas, David Shaddock, and Anat Silvera, the poet's daughter, in person, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 7:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).

Bert Meyers: On the Life and Work of an American Master will be available at the event and online at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash(a portion of the proceeds support Poetry Flash).

Bert Meyers: On the Life and Work of an American Master, the latest volume in The Unsung Masters Series, offers a large selection of his very best poetry alongside essays and appreciations from José Angel Araguz, Jim Bogen, Victoria Chang, Amy Gerstler, Garrett Hongo, Daniel Meyers, Barry Sanders, Ari Sherman, Maurya Simon, and Sean Singer, among others. The Unsung Masters Series exists to bring great but largely overlooked writers to new readers. This volume is edited by Dana Levin and Adele Williams.

"Bert Meyers is an American original—a brilliant poet whose use of tone and figurative language was so emotive, intelligent and nuanced, it became inimitable, became its own unique perspective on our world. I wouldn't be surprised if mid-twenty-first century scholars announce that in Bert Meyers we have overlooked the best poet of his generation." —Ilya Kaminsky
MORE ABOUT THE READERS

Eric Gudas is the author of Best Western and Other Poems, winner of the Gerald Cable Book Award, and Beautiful Monster, a chapbook. His work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, Poetry Flash, Los Angeles Review of Books, Raritan, and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles.

David Shaddock is a poet and psychotherapist. His most recent poetry book is A Book of Splendor: New and Selected Poems on Spiritual Themes. He has a regular column in Poetry Flash, "Poetry and Healing," and is the author of Poetry and Psychoanalysis: The Opening of the Field (Routledge), and two books on relationships and couples therapy. He lectures widely on those topics, and maintains a private practice in Berkeley.

Anat Silvera, Bert Meyers's daughter, is one of the founders of Silvera Jewelry School in Berkeley. Before and after college she studied with artists and craftsmen, apprenticing as a metalsmith and learning how to create fine beadwork. She is the author of a book on her craft, and has exhibited her work all over the U.S., including as featured artist at the Oakland Museum of Art Collector's Gallery.

The son of Romanian and Polish Jewish immigrants, Bert Meyers (1928-1979) was born in Los Angeles. Always rebellious and a questioner of authority, he dropped out of high school and became a poet. For many years he worked at manual labor jobs, including printer's apprentice, until he became a master picture framer and gilder. Here he found satisfaction in craftsmanship and attention to detail, the same approach he used in composing his poetry. Throughout those years he continued to write, feeling that a poet should be immersed in the world, and should have real world things to write about. Meyers wanted to be self-taught. He read everything he could get his hands on and had a prodigious literary memory. He frequented the vibrant circles of LA poets at the time, with Thomas McGrath and others. His fellow poet and friend Robert Mezey said, "Bert Meyers belonged to no school or coterie and had no use for fashion. He was that rarest of creatures, a pure lyric poet. His poems are very much what he was—gentle, cantankerous, reflective, passionate and wise." Although he had never taken undergraduate classes, and had no high school diploma, in 1964 he was admitted to the Claremont Graduate School on the basis of his poetic achievements. By 1967 he had a Ph.D in English Literature and was hired to teach poetry and literature at Pitzer College in Claremont, where he taught until 1978. During his life as a professor, Meyers finally had the time to focus on his writing; he also had an important and lasting influence on his students, a new generation of poets and writers, including Dennis Cooper, Amy Gerstler, Garrett Hongo, and Mauyra Simon among others.

He published at least eight collections of poetry, including Early Rain (1960), The Dark Birds (1968), Sunlight on the Wall (1976), Windowsills (1979), The Wild Olive Trees (1979). Before he died, he selected the core poems of In a Dybbuk's Raincoat: Collected Poems (2007). His widow, Odette Meyers, son Daniel Meyers, and poet Morton Marcus shepherded the book into posthumous publication. Meyers's precisely framed poems are image driven and often quite short. Noting that "the image is unequivocally at the center of his work" in her introduction to In a Dybbuk's Raincoat, Denise Levertov lamented that "Bert Meyers death has deprived us of one of the best poets of our time." (Information from bertmeyers.com)

25 JUNE 2023 — sunday

Gail Rudd Entrekin and Elizabeth C. Herron

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Gail Rudd Entrekin, Walking Each Other Home, and Elizabeth C. Herron, In the Cities of Sleep, in person, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, free, 3:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).


MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Gail Rudd Entrekin's new poetry book is Walking Each Other Home. Ellen Bass says, "At times spare and lyrical, at times rich with sensory detail, Entrekin invites readers into the intimacy of Walking Each Other Home." The publisher, Longship Press writes, "These poems sing the long and loving song shared by two people now facing a decline, and it is a song of love and devotion, a song of truth." Entrekin's previous books include Rearrangement of the Invisible, You Notice the Body, Change (will do you good), and The Art of Healing with Charles Entrekin. She co-edited Sierra Songs & Descant, an anthology of poetry and prose, and the poetry anthology Yuba Flows, and edits Canary, an online environmental literary magazine. Her poems have been widely published and were finalists for the Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod International Journal. She lives in the hills of San Francisco's East Bay.

Elizabeth C. Herron's new book is In the Cities of Sleep. Greg Mahrer says, "In this haunting and passionate collection, Herron reminds us that we are 'out of season,' caught as we are in this fateful sweep of time where everything from the minute to the galactic speaks of our temporality." Herron's previous books are Insistent Grace, Desire Being Full of Distances, and The Stones, the Dark Earth. Her writing has appeared in Comstock Review, Canary, North American Review, West Marin Review, and elsewhere. She also writes articles about the importance of natural systems for the well-being of all life. A Fellow of the International League of Conservation Writers, her writing has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Foundation for Deep Ecology. Elizabeth Herron is the current Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, northern California.

16 JULY 2023 — sunday

Diane Seuss and Jennifer Franklin

Poetry Flash presents a reading by Jennifer Franklin, If Some God Shakes our House, and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Diane Seuss, frank: sonnets, online, via Zoom, free, 3:00 pm PDT (Register here),

Featured books for this reading are available at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS

Jennifer Franklin’s new poetry book is If Some God Shakes Your House. Ed Hirsch says, “Jennifer Franklin throws her voice in these taut lyrics and prose poems that view her own experience through a dramatic lens, the voice of Antigone come back to face the rockiness of our moment and the inevitability of death." Franklin’s previous books include No Small Gift, and Looming. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in American Poetry Review, Los Angeles Review, Prairie Schooner, The Paris Review, Guernica, and elsewhere. Franklin teaches at the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center, where she runs the reading series and serves as the Program Director. She also teaches in Manhattanville’s MFA Program, in New York.

Diane Seuss’s most recent book is frank: sonnets, winner of the Pulitzer Prize 2022. The Pulitzer committee said, “A virtuosic collection that inventively expands the sonnet form to confront the messy contradictions of contemporary America, including the beauty and the difficulty of working-class life in the Rust Belt.” The Rumpus says, “Seuss understands the labor of a sonnet’s particular space—the intensity and the balance, the anaphora and the rhyme that can gallop wild inside the sonnets field.” Seuss’ previous books are Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl, Four-Legged Girl, Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open, and It Blows You Hollow . Her new collection, Modern Poetry, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2024. Her writing has appeared in the Georgia Review, Brevity, The Best American Poetry 2014, Missouri Review, Able Muse, and elsewhere. Her honors also include the PEN/Voelcker Prize, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, and National Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in rural Michigan.

6 AUGUST 2023 — sunday

Terry Tierney and Peter Neil Carroll

Poetry Flash presents fiction writer and poet Terry Tierney, reading to launch The Bridge on Beer River, his brand new novel, and poet and historian Peter Neil Carroll, Talking to Strangers: Poetry of Everyday Life and This Land, These People: The 50 States, poems, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 3:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).

Featured books for this reading will be available for signing at the event and at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Poet and fiction writer Terry Tierney's brand-new novel is The Bridge on Beer River. Andy Smart says, "Reading Terry Tierney's novel-in-stories, The Bridge on Beer River, is to remember what I love about fiction. Tierney does, in fact, tell tales, but he tells them with a writerly voice that can only result in that most precious outcome: honest deception." His previous books are The Poet's Garage, a poetry collection, and Lucky Ride, a 1960s road trip novel. His stories have appeared in Fiction Pool, Blue Lake Review, Eunoia Review, Fictive Dreams, Literally Stories, Big Bridge, and others. His poems have appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Front Porch Review, Kalliope, Kansas Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Puerto del Sol, California Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, Cottonwood Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Oakland.

Poet and historian Peter Neil Carroll's new books are This Land, These People: The 50 States, poems, and Talking to Strangers: Poetry of Everyday Life. Lee Rossi wrote of Talking to Strangers, "Like earlier chroniclers of the American folk—Edgar Lee Masters and Edward Arlington Robinson come to mind—Carroll is drawn to the eccentric and the oddball. In sinuous free verse, he limns a series of arresting anecdotes, few longer than a page, as he searches for Homo Americanus." His previous poetry collections include An Elegy for Lovers, The Truth Lies on Earth, Fracking Dakota, Riverborne: A Mississippi Requiem, and A Child Turns Back to Wave, Prize Americana winner 2012. Other books include Keeping Time: Memory, Nostalgia, and the Art of History; The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War; and It Seemed Like Nothing Happened: America in the 1970s. He lives in northern California.

24 SEPTEMBER 2023 — sunday

Judy Bebelaar and Jeanne Wagner

Poetry Flash Reading Series presents their festive season opening, a book launch for poet and writer Judy Bebelaar, Sky Holding Fall, reading with poet Jeanne Wagner, Everything Turns Into Something Else, followed by refreshments and music, The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar Street, Berkeley, free, 3:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).

Featured books for this reading will be available for signing at the event and at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash.

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Judy Bebelaar's new poetry book is Sky Holding Fall. devorah major says, "Judy Bebelaar has written a book of seeing and connection, of everyday miracles and astronomy, of birdsong and sea, and forests holding mountains, all reaching toward a changing sky. It is a book of the human capacity to face death, to revel in life, and to love and love again." Bebelaar's previous poetry book is Walking Across the Pacific. She is also co-author, with Ron Cabral, of the nonfiction book, And Then They Were Gone: Teenagers of Peoples Temple from High School to Jonestown, finalist for the Northern California Book Award, and winner of ten other awards and honors. Her prize-winning work has been published widely in magazines and anthologies including The Widows Handbook, River of Earth and Sky, The Squaw Valley Review, Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down, and elsewhere. She lives in Berkeley.

Jeanne Wagner's recent poetry book is Everything Turns Into Something Else, runner-up for the Grayson Book Prize. Pulitzer Prize-winner Stephen Dunn said, "Jeanne Wagner brings an originality to whatever she chooses to take on. I love, in particular, how she thinks her way down a page, every line seemingly discovered by the line that preceded it. A wonderful achievement." Her previous collections include The Zen Piano-Mover, winner of the Stevens Manuscript Award, and In the Body of Our Lives. Her poetry has appeared in the North American Review, Cincinnati Review, River Styx, Nimrod, Poetry Daily, Nimrod, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She has been the recipient of several national awards including the 2021 Joy Harjo Award and the 2022 Cloudbank Poetry Prize. She lives in Marin County, California.

8 OCTOBER 2023 — sunday

Gillian Conoley and Dean Rader

Poetry Flash presents Gillian Conoley, Notes from the Passenger, and Dean Rader, Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly, reading from their new poetry collections, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 3:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).

Featured books for this reading will be available for signing at the event and at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Poet, editor, and translator Gillian Conoley's new book is Notes from the Passenger. Brian Teare says, "Gillian Conoley writes visionary Americana, her signature vernacular abstraction picking up lyric signals from the Invisible. Attuned to the intrinsic revelations of apocalypse, Notes from the Passenger registers the increased 'vibratory qualities' of our especially troubled times." Her previous books include A Little More Red Sun on the Human: New and Selected Poems, Profane Halo, The Plot Genie, and Peace. Conoley's work has been featured in many anthologies, including American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry, Lyric Postmodernisms: An Anthology of Contemporary Innovative Poetries, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. Her honors include the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Jerome J. Shestack Prize, and the Northern California Book Award. Founder and editor of VOLT magazine, Conoley has collaborated with installation artist Jenny Holzer, composer Jamie Leigh Sampson, and Butoh dancer Judith Kajuwara.

Dean Rader's new poetry collection is Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly. Elena Karina Byrne says, "Just as Rader's elegiac unknown waves 'its wand, / and a beam of light disappears into the sky's black hat,' the living conversation of poems and paintings in Before the Borderless puts the reader in touch with the 'everything [they] need to know.'" His previous collections include, Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry, finalist for the Northern California Book Award and the Oklahoma Book Award, and Works & Days, winner of the T.S Eliot Prize. Eric Weinstein wrote of it, "his poems ask the difficult questions in accessible ways, ways rendered all the more effective via wry humor and an eye for the darkly poignant." A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry, he is collaborating with the calligrapher Thomas Ingmire on a series visual/textual projects. He lives in San Francisco.

5 NOVEMBER 2023 — sunday

Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein) and Dick Cluster

Poetry Flash presents a reading by poet and jazz singer Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein), God in Her Ruffled Dress, and writer Dick Cluster, translator of the acclaimed poetry collection, Fiat Lux, by Paula Abramo, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 3:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).

Featured books for this reading will be available for signing at the event and Dick Cluster's will also be at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS

Lisa B (Lisa Bernstein)'s new poetry collection, God in Her Ruffled Dress, from LA's What Books Press, appears thirty-four years after publication of her debut full-length poetry book The Transparent Body, from Wesleyan University Press. D.A. Powell says of God in Her Ruffled Dress, "A book of deep seeing, 'the code inside the code'…also a book of intense listening, 'the bright spurt of trumpet' and the train calling like a late-night lover…a series of divine pleasures transcribed faithfully by a skilled musician and writer." Lisa B's poems have appeared in more than sixty anthologies and periodicals, including City Lights Review, Field, Kenyon Review, Lilith, Ploughshares, Poetry International, Tikkun, and ZYZZYVA. She has received Creative Writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, Ucross Foundation, and others. She is also a jazz and groove singer interweaving spoken and sung verse in her original songs and re-envisioned standards. She has released seven albums and various singles (available on all music platforms) to critical acclaim and international radio play, and performs with her band throughout the country. She also works as a professional psychic reader.

Dick Cluster has been translating Spanish-language literature for the past twenty-five years. His recent translations include Paula Abramo's Fiat Lux, nominated for the 2023 Northern California Book Award in California Translation, a cycle of poems about Abramo's ancestors—political refugees to and within Latin America—and about poetry itself. Alejandro Zambra said of it, "Amazing, unique and mind-blowing little book. Paula Abramo proves that there are territories where only poetry can take us." Dick Cluster also translated Gabriela Alemán's Poso Wells and Family Album, and Mylene Fernández Pintado's A Corner of the World, all from City Lights Books. He edited and translated his curated prose anthology, Kill the Ámpaya: The Best Latin American Baseball Fiction. Achy Obejas says of it, "If baseball is really a metaphor for life, then Kill the Ámpaya—Dick Cluster's wonderful collection of Latin American baseball stories—is an astonishing record of its beauty and coarseness, redemption and tragedy." Dick Cluster is also the author of a social history of Havana and a detective novel series.

19 NOVEMBER 2023 — sunday

Anders Carlson-Wee and Francesca Bell

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Anders Carlson-Wee, Disease of Kings, and Marin County Poet Laureate, Francesca Bell, What Small Sound, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 3:00 pm PST (poetryflash.org).

Featured books for this reading will be available for signing at the event and at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS

Francesca Bell's new poetry collection is What Small Sound. Sarah Kain Gutowski says, "…What Small Sound entreats us to value the terror, sorrow, and hardship in life as much as its moments of beauty and love and sensuousness. As readers, the poet's appeal to us is easier to accept, and makes more sense because she leads by example: "Oh world," Bell sings plaintively in "After the Hearing Test," "leave me slowly. / Let me dally over each diminishing return." Her previous collections include Bright Stain, finalist for the Washington State Book Award and Julie Suk Award, and Whoever Drowned Here, a collection of poems by Max Sessner that she translated from the German. Her writing appears in many magazines including Los Angeles Review of Books, New Ohio Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and Rattle. Her translations appear in Mid-American Review, The Massachusetts Review, New England Review, River Styx, and elsewhere. She is Marin County Poet Laureate and translation editor at Los Angeles Review.

Anders Carlson-Wee's new book is Disease of Kings. Patrick Phillips says, "Disease of Kings is a harrowing dive into late-empire America, with its underworld of scroungers and squirrelers, dumpster-chefs and honest thieves, who have turned their backs on the gluttony of the Anthropocene. Again and again, these beautiful poems 'sing what we can't say,' and dare to imagine a new life, fashioned from the wreckage of this one." His previous collections include, The Low Passions, a New York Public Library Book Group Selection, and Dynamite, winner of the Frost Place Chapbook Prize. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Harvard Review, American Poetry Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Anders Carlson-Wee is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Poets & Writers, Camargo Foundation, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and Napa Valley Writers' Conference. He is the winner of the Poetry International Prize, and lives in Los Angeles.

30 NOVEMBER 2023 — thursday

Raffi Del Bourgo and David Watts

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Raffi Del Bourgo, A Tune Both Familiar and Strange, forthcoming, and David Watts, Katy Bridge, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 7:00 pm PST (poetryflash.org).


MORE ABOUT THE READERS

Raffi Del Bourgo's forthcoming poetry collection, A Tune Both Familiar and Strange, won 2023 Terry J. Cox Prize for Poetry, and will be published in 2025. Lynne Knight says, "Rafaella Del Bourgo takes bold and sometimes wild risks but never loses control of her intent and design. [She] embraces the conventions of the narrative even as she defies the narrow traps of the confessional…From loss to death and back again to exuberant whimsy, Del Bourgo never misses a beat or nuance." Her previous collections include I Am Not Kissing You and the chapbook, Inexplicable Business: Poems Domestic and Wild. Her writing has appeared in Nimrod, The Jewish Women's Literary Annual, The Adroit Journal, The Green Hills Literary Lantern, Caveat Lector, Puerto Del Sol, Rattle, Oberon, Spillway, The Bitter Oleander, and elsewhere. Her awards include Lullwater Prize for Poetry, New River Poets Award, Grandmother Earth Poetry Prize, Paumanok Prize, and Mudfish Poetry Prize. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize three times. She lives in Berkeley, California.
David Watts's new books are Katy Bridge, poems, Saint Julian Press; Seed Kites, haiku, Red Moon Press; ellis mode, deep conscious writing, Cyberwit Press (India); and Daily Bouquet, aphorisms. The Eyelids of the Wind, translations of Haiku from the Spanish, is forthcoming from Red Moon Press in January 2024. Dean Rader wrote, "'The past comes to me,' writes David Watts in one of the many excellent poems in Katy Bridge. And indeed, it does. In poems both meditative and ruminative, Watts helps readers see what he sees and feel what he feels when he is visited by particularly poignant memories. When merged with candid observations from the present, Katy Bridge becomes a kaleidoscope of invention and experience we are all invited to look through." Physician, poet, closet philosopher, and author of thirty-four books, David Watts has excelled in many fields, including medicine, classical music, scientific invention, radio and television hosting and production, and finally, as a poet and a writer. His literary credits include seven books of poetry, two collections of short stories, a mystery novel, a best-selling western and several essays. He lives in Mill Valley, California.

3 DECEMBER 2023 — sunday

Cynthia Hogue, Louise Nayer, Tennison S. Black

Poetry Flash presents a reading by poet and translator Cynthia Hogue, instead, it is dark, poet and memoirist Louise Nayer, Narrow Escapes, and Tennison S. Black, Survival Strategies, a National Poetry Series selection, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 3:00 pm PST (poetryflash.org).

Featured books for this reading will be available for signing at the event and at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Tennison S. Black's new collection, Survival Strategies, was selected for the National Poetry Series by Adrienne Su. Donald Revell says, "With each poem, experience—whether tender or catastrophic—is birthed into new competence and clarity. There is a profound and literal refreshment in this book, one urgently needed now." Tennison Black's writing appears in SWWIM, Hotel Amerika, Booth, Bacopa Review, Wordgathering, New Mobility, and elsewhere. They are managing editor of Sundress Publications and Best of the Net and are the editor of the anthology on contemporary disability, A Body You Talk To. They live in Washington State.
Cynthia Hogue's tenth poetry collection is instead, it is dark. Ilya Kaminsky says, "How do other people's memories come to live in our bodies, how do they travel by means of language, from one human bod`y to another, across time and miles, painful miles? I ask this question out of sorrow, yes, but also in wonder, upon reading Cynthia Hogue's beautiful, transformative instead, it is dark, a book not of tales or dreams or historical accounts but of memories that survive us, that have already surviveds us, as they've entered the lyric. Open this book on almost any page and you will see not just World War II history, or its aftermath, but also what such histories do to our minds.…" Her recent ekphrastic Covid chapbook is Contain, and her new collaborative translation from the French of Nicole Brossard is Distantly, from Omnidawn. Among her honors are a Fulbright Fellowship to Iceland, two NEA Fellowships, and the Landon Translation Award from Academy of American Poets. She was the inaugural Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University. She lives in Tucson.
Louise Nayer's new book is Narrow Escapes: A Memoir. Katherine Seligman says, "Narrow Escapes is a riveting, beautifully told story of Nayer's journey across continents, but also through layers of grief from a childhood trauma, as she learns to find her way home. I will not forget this book." Louise Nayer's prose and poetry books include Keeping Watch; The Houses Are Covered in Sound; Burned: A Memoir, an Oprah Great Read and winner of the Wisconsin Library Association award; and How to Bury a Goldfish: 113 Rituals for Everyday Life, co-authored with Virginia Lang. Her writing appears in OZY, San Francisco Chronicle, Wear Your Voice, Arizona Daily, and elsewhere. Louise Nayer is a member of the Writer's Grotto, and teaches through OLLI UC Berkeley. She lives in San Francisco.