I co-hosted Poetry Unbound, a monthly reading series in Berkeley, CA, with Oakland poet Clive Matson from June 2013 through July 2015, for a run of 26 readings. During that time, I used this page as an info site for each reading. The last reading that I hosted was on July 5, 2015, after which Clive has continued the series himself. You can find info about the series (and Clive in general) at http://matsonpoet.com. Below you can see the documentation and info for each of the readings that I was involved with. I also designed the flyers for the series.
Poetry Unbound, a Reading Series in Berkeley
Oakland writers Clive Matson and Richard Loranger are proud to present Poetry Unbound, a monthly reading series at the Art House Gallery in Berkeley. This series dedicates itself to presenting new work in a broad range of styles and genres, and to bringing together writers from different circles and communities, to strengthen and unite. Poetry Unbound features three writers on the first Sunday of each month, with a brief open mic. We occasionally feature music along with the poets, and special events as well.
Poetry Unbound dives into July with radical roots and explosive words. In from Woodstock, NY, we have very special guests Andy Clausen and Pamela Twining. Andy has been rocking the poetic underworld worldwide for over five decades, and will rock your neurons to their nuclei. Pamela hails from a fearless but gentle place, planting seeds deftly wherever she speaks. Alongside them, we have the ultra-fabulous BeachHead, manifest in flesh by the East Bay’s own Pagan Neil and Alan Shearer, also in their fifth decade of twisting minds and ethos with their seductive strains of words and violin. This is a serious deal show and not to be missed!
This month also marks the departure of Richard Loranger as co-host and organizer for the series, which will be carried on by Clive Matson and others.
There will be a brief open mic at the start of the reading, for 30 minutes and ten readers maximum. So come early to sign up!
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Poetry Unbound #26
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Sunday, July 5, 2015
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
Andy Clausen (from Woodstock, NY)
Pamela Twining (from Woodstock, NY)
and BeachHead (with Pagan Neil & Alan Shearer)
with a brief open mic
hosted by Clive Matson and Richard Loranger
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Andy Clausen has travelled and read his poetry all over North America and the world. (New York, California, Alaska, Texas, Prague, Kathmandu, Amsterdam etc.) He has maintained a driven intrepid lifestyle and aspired to be a champion of the underdog. He has lectured at many Universities and taught at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, at Naropa. He was co-editor of, Poems for the Nation, with Allen Ginsberg and Eliot Katz (Seven Stories Press). He was an editor at Long Shot Magazine. Andy has written about his friendships with Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Ray Bremser, Janine Pommy Vega, Peter Orlovsky, and many others of the Beat Generation. He is the author of 40th Century Man (Autonomedia 1997), Without Doubt (Zeitgeist Press 1990), The Iron Curtain of Love (Long Shot Press 1984), Songs of Bo Baba (Shivastan Press 2004) and his latest work, Home of the Blues (Museum of American Poetics Publications 2013), among others.
Pamela Twining lives in Woodstock, NY, where she raised her children and studied organic farming and healing with herbs. She has read her poetry in many venues, alongside Andy Clausen, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Mikhail Horowitz, Anne Waldman, Antler, Jeff Poniewaz, and Charles Plymell, to name a few, often accompanied by Cosmic Legends. Over the years she has developed a very personal style, sometimes tender and lyrical, sometimes brutally frank, resonating with the wisdom of her partially Native American heritage. Her work has appeared in Big Scream, Napalm Health Spa, The Café Review, Big Hammer, Poetrybay and others. Pamela is the author of i have been a river…; Selected Poems of Pamela Twining (DancinFool Press 2011), utopians & madmen (DancinFool Press 2012) and A Thousand Years of Wanting: the Erotic Poetry of Pamela Twining (Shivastan Press 2013).
BeachHead, composed of Pagan Neil on poetry & Alan Shearer on violin, released their 1st poetry/music album (You Can’t Fit a Square Head in a Round Soul) in 1971 & have performed in 47 states & 14 countries since. Alan has performed in orchestras around the world including the National Symphony of Columbia in Bogotá & over 25 years with the Berkeley Symphony. He took his M. A. ( Music) from Stonybrook. He teaches both publicly & privately. Pagan made his living doing poetry in the streets, faires & festivals but picked up an M. A. (Poetry) & an M. F. A. (Poetics & Writing) along the way. He’s put out over a dozen chapbooks, recordings & 1 dictionary (Book of Love, An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the Word Love), making him a lexicographer as well as a bard. He learns both publicly & privately.
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Poetry Unbound #25
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Sunday, June 7, 2015
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
Linda Lerner (from Brooklyn, NY)
Ellaraine Lockie
and Colleen McKee
with a brief open mic
hosted by Clive Matson and Richard Loranger
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Linda Lerner’s collection, Yes, the Ducks Were Real, was published by NYQ Books (Feb. 2015) as was her previous full length collection, Takes Guts and Years Sometimes (2011). A chapbook of poems inspired by nursery rhymes, illustrated by Donna Kerness, Ding Dong the Bell Pussy in the Well was published by Lummox Pres, Feb. 2014. She’s been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. In 1995 she and Andrew Gettler began Poets on the Line, (http://www.echony.com/~poets) the first poetry anthology on the Net for which she received two grants. She can be heard reading on http://www.poetryvlog.com.
Ellaraine Lockie is a widely published and awarded author of poetry, nonfiction books and essays. Her collection, Where the Meadowlark Sings, won the 2014 Encircle Publication’s Chapbook Contest and was recently published. Other recent work has been awarded the Women’s National Book Association’s Poetry Prize, Best Individual Collection from Purple Patch magazine in England for Stroking David’s Leg, winner of the San Gabriel Poetry Festival Chapbook Contest for Red for the Funeral and The Aurorean’s Chapbook Spring Pick for Wild as in Familiar. Ellaraine teaches poetry workshops and serves as Poetry Editor for the lifestyles magazine, Lilipoh. She is currently judging the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contests for Winning Writers.
Colleen McKee’s most recent book is called Nine Kinds of Wrong. It’s memoir, fiction, and poetry. Other collections of her work include My Hot Little Tomato, and A Partial List of Things I Have Done for Money. Colleen lives in Oakland and works at the Academy of Art. She is fond of drawing, aimlessly meandering, and looking closely at creatures that creepeth on their bellies. Visit her at www.ninekindsofwrong.blogspot.com or www.colleenbethmckee.blogspot.com.
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Poetry Unbound #24
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.Sunday, May 3, 2015
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
Eliot Schain
and the students of Alhambra High School
with a brief open mic
hosted by Clive Matson and Richard Loranger
$5 donation, $1 for students, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Eliot Schain’s poetry has been published in Ploughshares and American Poetry Review, among others, and was included in two recent anthologies: The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed and Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poems and Poetics From California. His most recent book is Westering Angels, available from Zeitgeist Press, and additional poems can be found at his website: eliotschain.com. He has served as Program Director for The Poetry Society of America, and now lives in Berkeley, CA, where he makes a living as a psychotherapist and high school teacher.
The Students of Alhambra High School have this to say about their work:
Miya Johnson: “I’m an aspiring baker that comes from a Mexican background. I think poetry is a way for me to express how I feel in order to help better understand myself.”
Jonathan Serbellon: “What inspires me is the freedom you have to create who you want to be.”
Brady Rousseau: “[Poetry gives me] the opportunity to make sense of my perceptions, and the strange things going on in my head. Poetry as distillation.”
Ava Garshasbi: “Writing is a form of release for me, so when I feel like I am unable to say what I am thinking or feeling, I put it down to express what I feel needs to be said.”
Kyle Fitzpatrick: “Knowing that literature can create new and profound ideas about life, that’s what inspires me.”
Tyler Healy (quoting R. Lutece): “The mind of the subject will desperately struggle to create memories where none exist…”
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Poetry Unbound #23
Sunday, April 5, 2015
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
Irma Herrera
Joseph Rios
and Laura Schulkind
with a brief open mic
hosted by Clive Matson and Richard Loranger
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Irma Herrera, a native of South Texas and a Bay Area resident for the past three decades, is a social justice activist who spent her career working in law and journalism. Her opinion pieces and reporting have appeared in diverse publications such as NYTimes, LA Lawyer, and Mexico City News. Last year she discovered the art of storytelling and is now taking her writing to the stage. She is developing an hour-long solo show, Tell Me Your Name, about identity, race, class and the “othering” all of us do.
Joseph Rios was born and raised in the Central San Joaquin Valley. He studied literature at UC Berkeley. In 2011, he co-founded Quinto Sol Remembered to recover the history of the first Chicana/o press and its journal, El Grito. His poetry has been published in The Acentos Review, BorderSenses Literary Journal, and Poets Responding to SB1070. He is an alumnus of the VONA workshop and the Summer Creative Writing Program at Berkeley. Recently, he was a featured poet in the Lyrics and Dirges series at Pegasus Books and the Lunada series at the Galeria de la Raza. Since 2005, he has worked in landscaping, avionics, fruit packing, building maintenance, college recruitment and high school college-advising, and is an award-winning journalist.
Poet and writer Laura Schulkind is an attorney by day, where she is entrusted with others’ stories. Through poetry and fiction she tells her own. She and her husband divide their time between Berkeley and Big Sur, California, and her two grown sons continue to inspire her. Her chapbook, Lost in Tall Grass (Finishing Line Press) was released in May, 2014. Her poetry and short fiction have also appeared in Bluestem, Caveat Lector, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Dos Passos Review, Eclipse, Forge, The McGuffin, Minetta Review, OxMag, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Talking River, and Tiger’s Eye Press. Her published work and musings on why “lawyer/poet” is not an oxymoron can also be seen on her website: www.lauraschulkind.com.
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Poetry Unbound #22
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Sunday, March 1, 2015
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
Andrena Zawinski
Andy Ross
John Curl
and Judith Cody
with a brief open mic
hosted by Clive Matson and Richard Loranger
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Judith Cody, poet and composer, won national awards from Atlantic and Amelia magazines, also a national award in music. Poetry, in Spanish and English editions, is in the Smithsonian’s permanent collection. She was a finalist in the Bright Hills Press poetry chapbook competition, a quarter-finalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize, was put forward for the Lyric Recovery Award’s Carnegie Hall reading, and won honorable mentions from the National League of American Pen Women. Poems are published in over 80 journals and anthologies. Cody was Editor-in-chief of the first Resource Guide on Women in Music, San Francisco State University. She wrote the internationally notable biography of composer, Vivian Fine: A Bio-Bibliography, Greenwood Press, and Eight Frames Eight, poems. She is an editor for PEN Oakland’s anthology,“Fightin’ Words”and is currently the editor a NASA division history. Visit www.judithcody.com.
Andrena Zawinski received an Oakland PEN Oakland award in 2010 for her poetry collection Something About from Blue Light Press in San Francisco. Her Traveling in Reflected Light from Pig Iron Press in Youngstown received a Kenneth Patchen Prize in Poetry. She has additionally authored four chapbooks, and her work appears widely in print at publications that include Blue Collar Review Journal of Progressive Working Class Literature, The Progressive Magazine, Viet Nam Generation Journal of Recent History and Contemporary Culture, Journal of Jungian Thought, Arroyo Literary Review, Rattle, Pacific Review, and many others with several Pushcart Prize nominations with individual poetry awards ranging from poetry of social concern to spiritual poetry. Her work is available widely online at Bay Area Writing Project’s Digital Paper, East Bay Review, Switched on Gutenberg, Poemeleon and many other digizines. She teaches creative writing and composition at Laney College and is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com. She hails from Pittsburgh, PA but has made her home in the Bay Area since 2000.
Literary agent Andy Ross has been posting to his wildly popular blog, Ask the Agent, since 2009. The blog includes no-nonsense advice on getting published and finding an agent, his incisive thoughts about the process of writing and the business of book publishing, and his recollections as a bookseller and owner of the legendary Cody’s Books in Berkeley for 30 years. Ask the Agent: Night Thoughts on Writing and Book Publishing collects the best of these writings as well as new material. The writing is rich, the insights always original, and it’s side-splittingly funny. The collection includes such classics as: “How to Pitch to an Agent,” “The Slush Pile,” “Think Like an Editor,” “The First Book Ever Written,” “Ann Lamott (And Albert Camus) on Writing,” and “Eunuchs at an Orgy: Authors on Literary Critics.”
John Curl is the author of thirteen volumes of poetry, including Yoga Sutras of Fidel Castro and Revolutionary Alchemy; three volumes of history, including For All The People; The Co-op Conspiracy (novel); Memories of Drop City (memoir); Ancient American Poets (translations of classical Native American poetry); drama, and numerous other works. He is chair of PEN Oakland and a member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade. He represented the USA at the World Poetry Festival in 2010 in Caracas, Venezuela. “John Curl has earned a place among the foremost revolutionary American poets since the end of WW2.” Jack Hirschman
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Poetry Unbound #21
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Sunday, February 1, 2015
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
Lisa Martinovic
Peter Bullen
and Zarina Zabrisky and Simon Rogghe
with a brief open mic
hosted by Clive Matson and Richard Loranger
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Lisa Martinovic is a long-time slam poet, improv theater actor and essayist. She has featured everywhere from the Nuyorican and City Lights to Lollapalooza, LitQuake and BeastCrawl. Her writing appears in publications as diverse as the San Francisco Chronicle and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. Lisa writes flash fiction for the unmitigated joy of it.
Peter (Thomas) Bullen, a Berkeley hairdresser who began writing at 49, sees his work as a happy collision between the tender and the preposterous, finding them affable companions on the page and in other interesting places. He was a Quiet Lightning (2014) Neighborhood Hero and a reader at Barely Published Authors for LitQuake 2014. His work has muddied up the pages of Sparkle and Blink, Blotterature, and Weave. On occasion, he is under the distinct impression that he has finished a novel. For fiction excerpts, stray thoughts, wishes: www.wetriedourbest.wordpress.com.
Zarina Zabrisky is the author of two short story collections and the novel WE, MONSTERS. She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a recipient of a 2013 Acker Award. Simon Rogghe is a poet, fiction writer, and translator of French surrealism, currently earning his Ph.D. in French literature at UC Berkeley. Their work has appeared in eight countries and their first book of collaborative poetry, Green Lions, was called “a hugely multifaceted, multigenred piece of art” and a “manual for transformation” by critics in the US and UK.
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Poetry Unbound #20
Sunday, January 4, 2015
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
Judy Wells
Jack Marshall
and Richard Michael Levine
with a brief open mic
hosted by Clive Matson and Richard Loranger
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Judy Wells was born in San Francisco and raised in Martinez, California. She received her B.A. from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She has published ten books and chapbooks of poetry, from I Have Berkeley to her latest, The Glass Ship. She was a featured reader in the Berkeley Poetry Festival, 2006, 2009, and 2011 and she is also co-editor of The Berkeley Literary Women’s Revolution: Essays from Marsha’s Salon (McFarland, 2005). Judy was an academic counselor and faculty member at Saint Mary’s College of California, working with adults returning to school. Now a full-time poet, she lives with her husband, avant-garde poet Dale Jensen, in Berkeley.
Jack Marshall is the author of fourteen collections of poetry, several of which have won a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award, the PEN West Center Award, and the Pushcart Prize, as well as been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His most recent volume, Spiral Trace (Coffee House Press, 2013) was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. His memoir, From Baghdad to Brooklyn (also from Coffee House Press) appeared in 2005.
Richard Michael Levine has written magazine articles for many national publications, including Harper’s, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, New York, The New York Times Magazine and Esquire, where he wrote a media column and was a contributing writer. He has been an editor or columnist at Newsweek, Saturday Review and New Times, received an Alicia Patterson Fellowship and has been a professor at the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. His bestselling book, Bad Blood: A Family Murder in Marin County, was published by Random House and New American Library and has been translated into several languages. His poems have appeared widely in literary magazines, and a short story collection, The Man Who Gave Away His Organs, will be available from Capra Press in 2015.
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Poetry Unbound #19
Sunday, December 7, 2014
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
James Cagney
Didi Goodman
and Marc Hofstadter
with a brief open mic
hosted by Clive Matson and Richard Loranger
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Oakland native James Cagney is a storyteller, poet and Cave Canem Fellow. He has appeared as a featured artist at Midnight In Mumbai, The Shout Storytelling Series, Readers Bookstore At Fort Mason, Mahogany Urban Poetry Series, and he has facilitated writing workshops at the San Francisco Public Library. His work has been published in Eleven Eleven Journal, Oakland Local, Fresh Hot Bread, and Sparring with the Beatnik Ghosts.
A native of East Tennessee, D. R. Goodman now lives in Oakland, California, where she teaches martial arts full time. After a long hiatus from poetry, she was jolted into action upon hearing, on her car radio, a reading by future Poet Laureate Kay Ryan. Since then, her poems have appeared in literary journals across the U.S; in the 2005 anthology, Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets, William Baer, editor; and now in her first full-length volume, Greed: A Confession, from Able Muse Press. She is also the author of The Kids’ Karate Workbook: A Take-Home Training Guide for Young Martial Artists (North Atlantic/Blue Snake); and of an illustrated chapbook, Birds by the Bay.
Marc Hofstadter was born in New York City and obtained degrees from Swarthmore College, U.C. Santa Cruz and U.C. Berkeley. He has taught at Santa Cruz, the Universite d’Orleans and Tel Aviv University. He has published six volumes of poetry and one of essays, and has published poems, essays and translations in over 65 magazines. His new book of poems is called Memories I’ve Forgotten. He lives in Rossmoor with his partner David Zurlin.
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Poetry Unbound #18
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Sunday, November 2, 2014
5 – 8 pm
A Special Event:
Release party for new great weather for MEDIA Anthology
featuring:
Jane Ormerod
Daniel Yaryan
Lauren Marie Cappello
Kit Kennedy
Julia Vinograd
Clive Matson
and Mary Mackey
with a brief open mic
hosted by Richard Loranger
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Jane Ormerod is the author of Welcome to the Museum of Cattle (Three Rooms Press, 2012), Recreational Vehicles on Fire (Three Rooms Press, 2009), the chapbook 11 Films (Modern Metrics/EXOT Books, 2008), and the spoken word CD Nashville Invades Manhattan. Born on the south coast of England, Jane now lives in New York City and performs extensively across the United States and Europe. She is a founding editor of great weather for MEDIA. Website
Daniel Yaryan is a devout disciple of the “Beat Friar” Brother Antoninus (William Everson) and producer of the popular poetry series Sparring With Beatnik Ghosts.
Lauren Marie Cappello has traded in the glitter of New Orleans for homesteading in Northern California. Her work has appeared in E·ratio 15 &16, gape-seed (Uphook Press), It’s Animal but Merciful (great weather for MEDIA), among others.
Kit Kennedy is the author of While Eating Oysters (CLWN WR BKS, 2013) and co-author with Susan Gangel of Inconvenience (Littoral Press, 2010) and Constellations (Co-Lab Press, 2011). Her work has appeared in the great weather for MEDIA anthology It’s Animal but Merciful, and in journals including Otoliths, and The Pedestal Magazine. She lives in San Francisco. Website
Clive Matson (MFA Columbia University) was drafted as Chalcedony’s (kal-SAID-‘n-ease) astonished scribe in 2004, and he’s been performing her songs ever since. His early teachers were Beats in New York City, and, amazingly, his seventh book was placed in John Wieners’ coffin. He became immersed in the stream of passionate intensity that runs through us all and has finally stopped trying to go anywhere else. He writes from the itch in his body, to the delight of his students, and that’s old hat, according to Let the Crazy Child Write! (1998), the text he uses to make his living, teaching creative writing. He enjoys playing basketball, table tennis, and collecting minerals in the field.
Julia Vinograd is a Berkeley street poet. She has published fifty-eight books of poetry and won the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation for her collection The Book of Jerusalem. She received a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. A Pushcart Prize winner, she was one of four editors of the anthology New American Underground Poetry Vol. 1: The Babarians of San Francisco – Poets from Hell (Trafford Publishing, 2006).
Mary Mackey’s published works include six collections of poetry, including Sugar Zone, winner of the 2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence (Marsh Hawk Press 2011). She is also the author of thirteen novels including the poetic novel Immersion (Shameless Hussey Press, 1972), the first novel published by a Second Wave feminist press. Mary’s works have been translated into twelve foreign languages. Website
Richard Loranger is a writer of poetry and prose, as well as a spoken word, performance, and visual artist, who has lived in many parts of the country, including New York, Austin, Boulder, Ann Arbor, Chicago, and San Francisco. He currently lives and works in Oakland, CA. He is the author of Poems for Teeth, as well as The Orange Book and nine chapbooks, including Questions (Exot Books, 2013) with artwork by Bill Mercer. His work has been included in over eighty magazines and journals and twenty anthologies. Website
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Poetry Unbound #17
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Sunday, October 5, 2014
5 – 8 pm
A Benefit for our esteemed venue,
The Art House Gallery & Cultural Center
featuring:
Al Young
Connie Post
and Kelly Cressio-Moeller
with a brief open mic
signup 5 pm
start 5:15
$10 donation (for the benefit), with no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Al Young grew up in the rural South of villages and small towns, and in urban, industrial Detroit. From 1957-1960, he attended the University of Michigan, where he co-edited Generation, the campus literary magazine. In 1961 he emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, settling at first in Berkeley, where he held a variety of colorful jobs (folksinger, lab aide, disk jockey, medical photographer, clerk typist, employment counselor) before graduating with honors from U.C. Berkeley with a degree in Spanish. From 1969-1976, he was Edward B. Jones Lecturer in Creative Writing at Stanford near Palo Alto, where he lived and worked for three decades. In 2000, he returned to Berkeley, where he continues to freelance. In 2005, to crown an almost never-ending list of impressive awards, honors, and publications, Governor Schwarzenegger appointed him Poet Laureate of California.
Connie Post served as Poet Laureate of Livermore, California (2005 to 2009). Her work has appeared in Calyx,Kalliope, The Big Muddy, Cold Mountain Review, Crab Creek Review, Comstock Review, Slipstream, Pirene’s Fountain, & Valparaiso Poetry Review. She won the 2009 Caesura Poetry Award. She has been short listed for the Calyx Lois Cranston Memorial Award and the Comstock Review Muriel Craft Bailey Awards. Her chapbook “And When the Sun Drops” won the Aurorean Fall 2012 Editor’s Choice award. Her first full length manuscript “FloodWater” was released in January 2014 by Glass Lyre Press.
Kelly Cressio-Moeller has new poetry forthcoming in Cultural Weekly, Spillway, and THRUSH Poetry Journal. Her poems have previously appeared in Boxcar Poetry Review, Crab Creek Review, Crab Orchard Review, Gargoyle, Poet Lore, Rattle, Redwood Coast Review, Southern Humanities Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and ZYZZYVA as well as the anthology First Water: Best of Pirene’s Fountain and Diane Lockward’s book, The Crafty Poet. She shares her fully-caffeinated life with her tall husband, two ever-growing sons, and their immortal basset hound in Northern California. She’s at work on her first book of poems.
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Poetry Unbound #16
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Sunday, September 7, 2014
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
Kim Shuck
Mary Mackey
and John Paige
with a brief open mic
signup 5 pm
start 5:15
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Kim Shuck spends most days fretting over words, beads or her grown children. She is the 2005 winner of the Diane Decorah award for her first solo book Smuggling Cherokee. Her other solo books are Rabbit Stories and Clouds Running In, as well as a chapbook, Sidewalk Ndn.
John Paige writes, “Here’s to those who have inspired and helped me in my vocation as poet-translator. In 1965 Allen Ginsberg wrote, ‘John Paige’s autobiographical precision and continuity of feeling…are…sharp and poignant.’ Miguel Alva, whose first language was Nahuatl (Aztec) in Coxcatlan, Mexico, tutored me weekly in his native tongue from 1987 to 1989. John Bierhorst, preeminent Nahuatl scholar and translator, author of thirty-five books, wrote of my translations, ‘The poetry speaks through your words. This kind of directness succeeds beautifully.’ My poetry companions have been Alden Van Buskirk (author of Lami) and, for half a century now, Clive Matson. Publications: The Country Is Not Frightening (Neon Sun), Songs, Myths and Prayers of the Mexica Aztecs, and Four Translations From Classical Nahuatl.
Mary Mackey is the author of 13 novels and 7 collections of poetry including Sugar Zone,winner of the 2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature, and Travelers With No Ticket Home, just published by Marsh Hawk Press. Her poems have been praised by Wendell Berry, Jane Hirshfield, Dennis Nurkse, Ron Hansen, and Marge Piercy for their beauty, precision, originality, and extraordinary range. Garrison Keillor has featured her poetry on his program The Writer’s Almanac, and her novels, all of which have recently become available as e-books, have made The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestseller lists, been translated into twelve languages, and sold over a million and a half copies. You are invited to connect with Mary, sample her work, and read her blog interview series People Who Make Books Happen at www.marymackey.com and https://www.facebook.com/marymackeywriter.
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Poetry Unbound #15
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Sunday, August 3, 2014
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
Daniel Yaryan
Hollie Hardy
and Gary Turchin
with a brief open mic
signup 5 pm
start 5:15
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Co-founder of Mystic Boxing Commission, Daniel Yaryan is a poet, writer, graphic designer and event producer. He founded Sparring With Beatnik Ghosts, resurrected Poetry Festival Santa Cruz in 2012 and was regarded by the late Los Angeles poet Wanda Coleman as “one of the new generation of poetry mavens.”
Hollie Hardy is the author of How to Take a Bullet, And Other Survival Poems (Punk Hostage Press, 2014). She holds an MFA in poetry from SFSU, and teaches writing classes at Berkeley City College. An active participant in the local literary scene, Hardy co-hosts the popular reading series Saturday Night Special, an East Bay Open Mic, co-curates Litquake’s Flight of Poets, and is a core producer of the Beast Crawl Literary Festival in Oakland. She lives in Oakland, CA. www.holliehardy.com
Gary Turchin is the author/illustrator of a couple of wonderful books, If I Were You (2011), and Ditty-Ditty Doggerel; A Life From Bad To Verse (2012). In 2013, Sugartown Publications released his poetry collection, Falling Home. Recent poetry credits include Inquiring Mind, Blue Lyra Review, The Gathering, and Poetalk. Recent poetry awards include an Ina Coolbrith Circle award, a Maggi H. Meyer Memorial Poetry Contest award, and a Soul-Making Keats Literary award. Gary has written/produced and performed three one-man shows for adult audiences, and one show for kids featuring his original verse that was presented in more than 300 schools and libraries over the course of a dozen years. His creative process, while battling Parkinson’s disease for ten years, is documented in the film, The Healthiest Man On Earth, viewable on YouTube at: http://youtu.be/craVH8mzpuQ.
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Poetry Unbound #14
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Sunday, July 6, 2014
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
QR Hand
Jan Dederick
and Martin Hickel
with a brief open mic
signup 5 pm
start 5:15
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
q.r.hand, jr. born in bed-stuy Brooklyn in 1937 moved to California in 1969 living in Vallejo since retiring from working as mental health counselor after bout with prostate cancer poetry published in various journals and anthologies collection whose really blues published by taurean horn press reader and performer with wordwind chorus since early 80s in bay area
Jan Dederick writes with passion and whimsy about topics close to the hearts of all, and topics beyond the pale of popularity as well. Her work has been described as funny, edgy, rich, full-bodied, courageous. She likes form, or form likes her, not sure which. She loves to rant about the health care system, the patriarchy, the goofiness of the human race. She’s produced 2 chapbooks, Ear to the Rail and Between a Rock and a Soft Place, and a full length collection, Hammer It Into Horseshoes. Jan serves on the editorial board of Poetalk. Her day job is in the healing arts of Homeopathic Medicine and Kairos Therapy.
Martin Hickel began writing poetry during high school, where he also took up journalism, eventually founding the Lassen County Times, a weekly newspaper in far Northern California. He assists Sonoma poet Geri Digiorno with the Petaluma Poetry Walk, and organized the Marin poetry festival and Sunset By the Bay Reading series in Sausalito. For food he supports obsolete database applications and tries to be nice to his wife. He has self-published lots of chapbooks. His work appears in a few anthologies and web journals.
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Poetry Unbound #13
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Celebrating our first birthday with
An Evening of Poetry and Jazz
Sunday, June 1, 2014
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
COPUS
Charles Curtis Blackwell
and Kayla Sussell
with a brief open mic
signup 5 pm
start 5:15
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
COPUS is a world beat ensemble that presents conscious lyrics and beautiful melodies for the intelligent listener. Formed by renowned poet Royal Kent and ASCAP award-winning composer Wendy Loomis, the group has performed at clubs, theaters, and festivals in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Nashville, Atlanta, Boston, and Western Massachusetts. The group has released CD Later Than You Think, single “The Fool”, and trilogy “Jah Provide”, and is currently working on their next full-length recording. COPUS just released its video single Haves & Have Nots as a tribute to the strength of the 99%. “COPUS could become legendary if given the opportunity to thrive!” -Michael Allison, MusicDish.com
Charles Curtis Blackwell is a jazz poet and a playwright, performance and visual artist. His published plays and poetry include Is, the Color of Mississippi Mud, and The Fiery Response to Love’s Callings, among other works. He has also produced three spoken-word CDs in collaboration with jazz drummer Billy Toliver. His paintings have been shown from coast to coast and have received multiple awards. In 2009 he was one of three featured artists at Lighthouse for the Blind’s 20th anniversary Insights exhibit in San Francisco. The show included over 20 of his works on paper and the event and Blackwell’s artwork were featured in The New York Times. Currently he resides in the San Francisco area, and he has organized writers’ workshops and community cultural arts events for the Faithful Fools agency and The Hospitality Community Arts program in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood.
Kayla Sussell has lived in Temescal, Oakland for many decades. After a lifetime spent working as a copy editor for various publishing houses, she has found new joy in working with language by writing poetry. She plans to continue to work on poems for the rest of her life.
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Poetry Unbound #12
Sunday, May 4, 2014
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
Deborah Fruchey
Blanca Torres
and Nadine Lockhart
with a brief open mic
signup 5 pm
start 5:15
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Deborah Fruchey has spent too much of her life in churches, psych wards, and 12-Step meetings (in that order). She then graduated to poetry readings. She has been included in 10 anthologies to date, including the infamous Poets from Hell volume saluting the San Francisco “Babarian Movement” of the 1980s. Her first novel, The Unwilling Heiress, was chosen as a Best Book by the American Booksellers Association. Her nonfiction work on mental illness, entitled Is There Room for Me, Too?, has been called “the best book of its kind.” Deborah’s first formal book of poetry, Armadillo, is available in its final form for the first time today. She is rumored to be hiding out in suburbia, but since her friends are all writers and musicians, her reformation is probably insincere.
Nadine Lockhart is currently earning her PhD in Literature from Arizona State University. She founded and co-hosts the Phoenix Poetry Series, a monthly featured reading showcasing award-winning poets, which is in its eighth year. She has won various poetry contests, including this year’s first place at the Arizona Poetry Society in the category “Expressing Beliefs in All Ways.” Her most recent and current projects, respectively, include an imaginary poet biography and “translation” from Carpathian Russian, a chapbook of Kabir in translation from a dialect of Hindi into English, and her dissertation, Arizona Dreams: Poetry in the Public Sphere.
Blanca Torres grew up on the dry, eastern side of Washington state. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and earned a Masters of Fine Arts in fiction from Mills College She has worked as a reporter for several major newspapers and now writes for the San Francisco Business Times. She is a founding member of Sunday Stories, a Bay Area writing group for writers of color. Blanca lives in San Francisco and is working on a collection of short stories and a memoir about her mother’s childhood in Mexico.
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Poetry Unbound #11
Sunday, April 6, 2014
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
Jerry Ratch
Adele Mendelson
and Selene Steese
with a brief open mic
signup 5 pm
start 5:15
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Jerry Ratch has published thirteen books of poetry, the novel Wild Dreams of Reality, and the Memoir A Body Divided, the story of a one-armed boy growing up in a two-fisted world. His work can be purchased through the author’s website: www.jerryratch.com. One reviewer writes, “His titles show the wit and feisty courage at the foundation of his writing, ‘The Six Second Rule,’ ‘Adulterated Memoirs.’ He even dares to take on our world, in ‘How the Sixties Ended, or The San Francisco Poetry Wars.’”
Adele Mendelson is a Bay Area poet and fiction writer. She had a long career teaching English at UCB. She has produced three volumes of poetry/prose and enjoys giving readings and sharing her work in other venues. She believes that the cardinal virtue of writing is that it not bore the author or anyone else. Writing should be sexy, there should be something at stake, and the dark side should be lurking just below the cover.
Selene Steese credits writing with saving her life. “I felt very lonely growing up,” she says. “Words gave me focus, provided a lens through which I could make sense of the world.” She’s a prolific writer, immersing herself in words as often as possible. Reflecting on her song “Addicted to Words,” she says, “I can’t imagine a healthier or more life-affirming addiction than my obsession with committing poetry.” She studied for more than eight years with the Bay Area’s living legend writing teacher Clive Matson.
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Poetry Unbound #10 
Sunday, March 2, 2014
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
Joan Gelfand
David Shaddock
and Todd Temkin
with a brief open mic
signup 5 pm
start 5:15
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Joan Gelfand’s poetry, fiction and reviews are in national and international publications. Joan is the Poetry Editor for the “J,” the Development Chair of the Women’s National Book Association and a blogger for the Huffington Post. Joan’s newest collection of poetry The Long Blue Room is forthcoming from Benicia Literary Arts, 2014. Previous books are: A Dreamer’s Guide to Cities and Streams, Here & Abroad,and Seeking Center. You can check out her website at http://joangelfand.com.
David Shaddock’s poems have won the Ruah Magazine Power of Poetry Award for a collection of spiritual poems, and the International Peace Poem Prize, among other honors. His poems have appeared in such journals as Tikkun and Mother Jones. His books include In This Place Where Something’s Missing Lives with an afterword by Rabbi Arthur Waskow, and Dreams Are Another Set of Muscles, with an introduction by Denise Levertov. His play In A Company of Seekers was performed at the 2012 Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. He is the author of two nonfiction books on relationships and couples therapy, and maintains a private psychotherapy practice in Oakland.
Todd Temkin was born in Milwaukee, but has lived in the historic Chilean seaport of Valparaíso since 1994. In Chile, Temkin is known as a poet, urban activist, and Sunday columnist for El Mercurio de Valparaíso, the oldest Spanish language newspaper in continuous publication in the world. His poems have appeared in magazines throughout the US and Latin America and he is the author of two books, Crazy Denizens of the Lost World and Moriré en Valparaíso, which was nominated for Chile’s prestigious Altazor Prize—the only non-Chilean author ever nominated for the award. Other awards include the “Premio Ciudad de Valparaíso” and the Juana Ross de Edwards Prize. In 2003, the Chilean National Society of Architects named Mr. Temkin “Honorary Architect” in honor of his contributions to the preservation of Chile’s national heritage. Since 2011, he has been a member of Chile National Art’s Board (Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes), the only non-Chilean to be so designated.
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Poetry Unbound #9
Sunday, February 2, 2014
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
Paradise
Jan Steckel
and Marvin R. Hiemstra
with a brief open mic
signup 5 pm
start 5:15
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Jan Steckel is a pediatrician who was forced to retire early from practice because of an acquired disability. Her full-length poetry book, The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011), won a Lambda Literary Award for LGBT writing. Her chapbooks Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. Her fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry have appeared in Yale Medicine, Scholastic Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, American Journal of Nursing, Red Rock Review, and many other journals. Her writing has won a number of contests and has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize.
Born a rip-roaring Leo in the Year of the Rabbit Marvin R. Hiemstra, poet, humorist, social commentator, entertainer, and founding Editor-in-Chief of the Bay Area Poets Seasonal Review, has recent work in The Amsterdam Quarterly and The Satirist. Marvin studied at the Iowa City Writers workshop with Donald Justice and received a Masters in Literary Criticism, Indiana University. Dana Gioia called the DVD, French Kiss Destiny, Marvin’s kaleidoscope of poetry/humor filmed in San Francisco, “superb work.” The Tower Journal praised Poet Wrangler: droll poems: “Marvin R. Hiemstra is at his best in this collection, serving up humor, double-entendre, and hours of delight…This book offers sheer joy. What more could you want?” Literary Historian Natalie Caille defines Marvin, “a serious connoisseur of the moment.”
“Everybody falls in love with Paradise at least once in their life!” “He’s the best poet this side of heaven!” These are some of the things that have been said about Paradise, the poet of a thousand poems. A master poet, Paradise is also a recording artist, actor, activist, avatar, healer, journalist for the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, who facilitates poetry & creative writing workshops at the Annual Famous Poets Convention in Reno, Nevada and Orlando, Florida. He wrote a poem, “Entering Oakland” that pioneered the efforts to change Oakland’s former border signs from that to “Welcome to Oakland!” He conceived the poetry newspaper that has made millions for the homeless, now called Street Spirit, and was a member of the nationally ranked 2001 Berkeley Slam Team. He was recently given his own day, Paradise Day (October 6) for his many years of community service in the arts.
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Poetry Unbound #8
Sunday, January 5, 2014
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
Julia Vinograd
César Love (click on names for a video preview)
and Rybree Tree
with a brief open mic
signup 5 pm
start 5:15
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Julia Vinograd is a Berkeley street poet. She has published 59 books of poetry and three poetry CD’s. She won the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation for The Book of Jerusalem and a Pushcart Prize for her poem “The Young Men Who Died of AIDS”. She was one of the four editors of the anthology New American Underground Poetry Vol. 1: The Babarians of San Francisco – Poets from Hell. She received a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa, and is the proud recipient of a Poetry Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Berkeley.
César Love is a native of the East Bay. His new book of poems, While Bees Sleep, was published by CC Marimbo Press. About his poems, Alejandro Murguía says they are “precise and condensed as haikus, as tasty as pomegranates,” and they “turn on a dime to reveal insights luminous as street lights on an urban night.” César Love is also an editor of the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal. His current project is to create a bridge between the poetry community of the San Francisco Bay Area and the poetry community of Merida, Yucatan.
Rybree Tree is a musician of 8 years who just can’t stop writing songs. Rybree Tree is not a tree. Or a boy, or a girl, or a kitchen sink. They are a gender queer homo who grew up in San Diego and are currently based in Oakland. They are dedicated to sharing their work and have been performing on streets around the US for five years. They currently have one complete album, This Body Wants to Live, which they are taking on tour this spring. You can find their music at soundcloud.com under Rybree Tree, and at myspace.com/bach2.
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Poetry Unbound #7
Sunday, December 1, 2013
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
Steve Arntson
MK Chavez
and Liana Holmberg
with a brief open mic
signup 5 pm
start 5:15
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Steve Arntson is a musician who has played literally hundreds of recitals, and who came to writing through his music later in the game. He started hanging out at the Café Babar readings in the late 1980’s, and claims to have been “very influenced by all those cats.” In the last ten years he has concentrated on two areas in his written work: geographical fantasia in which places evoke stories (often the California and Oregon coasts, which he loves), and on burning man, which he has been going to for quite a while and claims that it makes him feel as if he is in the middle of a Fellini movie.
MK Chavez is the author of Virgin Eyes, Visitation, Next Exit #9 (with John Sweet), and Pinnacle. She has been the editor of Mill’s College Award winning journal The Walrus, Cherry Bleeds Literary Journal, and the Milvia Street Journal, and is co-founder and co-curator of the Berkeley based monthly reading series Lyrics & Dirges and founder and editor of Tres Corazons Press. You can find her recent and upcoming work in Generations, 1611, and Zone 3.
Liana Holmberg‘s poetry, fiction, and prose have appeared in the Academy of American Poets anthology New Voices, Necessary Fiction, decomP magazinE, Hawai`i Review, and Honolulu Weekly. Liana is a freelance developmental editor and a founding editor at Red Bridge Press, publisher of the new anthology Writing That Risks: New Work from Beyond the Mainstream.
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Poetry Unbound #6
Sunday, November 3, 2013
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
Bruce Isaacson
MK Chavez
and Sara Anika Mithra
with a brief open mic
signup 5 pm
start 5:15
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Bruce Isaacson has lived in San Francisco, Michoacan, L.A., New York, Philadelphia, Oakland, and Leningrad. He is known as a poet and publisher of Zeitgeist Press, which has done over 100 books mostly from poets associated with the Cafe Babar and the 1980s spoken word revival. His books include Ghosts Among the Neon, Dumbstruck at the Lights in the Sky and the recent Book of Rebellions. He has a son at Reed College, and lives in Las Vegas with his wife and daughter.
MK Chavez is the author of Virgin Eyes, Visitation, Next Exit #9 (with John Sweet), and Pinnacle. She has been the editor of Mill’s College Award winning journal The Walrus, Cherry Bleeds Literary Journal, and the Milvia Street Journal, and is co-founder and co-curator of the Berkeley based monthly reading series Lyrics & Dirges and founder and editor of Tres Corazons Press. You can find her recent and upcoming work in Generations, 1611, and Zone 3.
Sara Anika Mithra performs poems to inhabit space with theatrical archetypes. Dreamy, experiential, and startling, they expose vulnerabilities that usually remain dormant. Other creative work includes video, handmade paper arts, knitwear, and collage zines. In California, she’s formally studied folklore, collecting, anthropology, and the avant garde. Informal studies range from improvisation to embroidery. She’s made The Better to Teeth You With (2013), More than One Hundred Years… (2009), She Looking Up (2006), Clay A Would-Be Ghost Town (2006), and “Hattie Don’t Stop” (2005).
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Poetry Unbound #5
Sunday, October 6, 2013
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
Jeanne Lupton
Larry Beresford
and Doug Friedman
with a brief open mic
signup 5 pm
start 5:15
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Jeanne Lupton is currently taking dulcimer and voice lessons, having personal essays published in Dead Mule School of Southern Literature on-line journal, and developing a solo performance, working title “Saturday Night Man.” She writes tanka and personal essays. Marimba Press will publish her essays soon. For the past seven years she’s hosted a poetry reading series at Frank Bette Center for the Arts in Alameda. She lives at Strawberry Creek Lodge senior housing in Berkeley with her cat Summer. She says, “One of my favorite ideas about writing is expressed best by my distant cousin Willa Cather. Paraphrasing, artists know how hard it is to be truthful, and the practice of art takes us into, through and toward more and more truth. Or, as Bob Dylan, no relation, would say ‘To live outside the law you must be honest.’”
Larry Beresford is a freelance medical journalist who currently lives with his mother-in-law in San Francisco but would rather live in Alameda. His book, Under a Gibbous Moon: The Adventures of Mister Funky, published by Gail Ford and Broken Shadow Publications, is a collection of humorous poetry written in the notorious alter ego of Mister Funky. His Family Poems, available at Amazon.com, highlight relationships with his spouse, his first grandson and the dolphins. He is a skinny tire cyclist, an occasional bass guitarist, and famous for his red beans and rice.
Doug Friedman came to Oakland from New York seven years ago. Before that he was acting in New York and Chicago. He began writing at fourteen. He has written poetry, short stories and plays. He lives in an apartment. With himself. It is important to note that all of his writing has been done inside his truck. This will be the first time he has allowed his writing to be removed.
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Poetry Unbound #4
Sunday, September 1, 2013
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
Kim Shuck
Garrett Murphy
and Teju Adisa-Farrar
with a brief open mic
signup 5 pm
start 5:15
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Kim Shuck is a writer, textile artist and curator working mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area. Shuck has two solo books Smuggling Cherokee, a collection of poetry and Rabbit Stories, a narrative in vignettes. Her poems and stories have been included in over 50 anthologies and literary magazines. In her free time she herds cats and cajoles her children.
Garrett Murphy was born in Alameda and raised in Oakland; he has been writing ever since he can remember. His works have appeared in Milvia Street, the Peralta Press, Street Spirit, and the anthologies The New Now Now New Millennium Turn-On Anthology and Words Upon the Waters: A Poetic Response to Hurricane Katrina, among others. He has published several books, the most recent being the novella Yang But Yin: The Legend of Miss Dragonheel, and is said by some to be one of the Bay Area’s preeminent political and human nature satirists. His website is www.garrettmurphywriter.org.
Teju Adisa-Farrar, an expressive Jamaican-American, identifies as a citizen of the world. As sociologist and political theorist, social justice and global awareness are two of her main passions. She has read her poetry in many venues and her works have been anthologized in a few collections. Her first collection of poems and essays is entitled In-between Things, and she has two new poems published in the July edition of the online journal ProudFlesh.
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Poetry Unbound #3
Sunday, August 4, 2013
5 – 8 pm
A MEMORIAL READING FOR TOM QUONTAMATTEO
featuring:
Larry Beresford,
Sally Bolger,
Clive Matson,
Adam David Miller,
and Judy Wells.
with a brief open mic
signup 5 pm
start 5:15
catered and free of charge
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
Larry Beresford says, “I met Tom Quontamatteo in a Tuesday night poetry class in Clive Matson’s living room circa 1990. We did a lot of open readings and poetry salons over the years and spent many evenings talking about poetry at the Rite Spot cafe. He was there the first time I had an intimate conversation with my eventual wife, Rose Mark, after a Sunday evening poetry potluck at the Moonwhistle day care center in Diamond Heights.”
Larry Beresford is a freelance medical journalist living in San Francisco, frequent performer on the Bay Area open reading circuit and author of two books of poetry, Under a Gibbous Moon: The Adventures of Mister Funky and Family Poems.
Sally Bolger says, “A river of words and language always has flowed through my life, but it was just over a year ago that I finally dove into the current in search of my writing voice. I was given a copy of Tom’s book at a Poetry Saloon not long after his death. The following Sunday I hiked Mount Tam, this time with Tom’s book as company. As I walked, I read, and soon found myself following a trail of feathers that took my feet off the known route to an area of the mountain I had never explored, just as Tom’s poetry took me to new places that had been there all along. ‘Hiking with Tom’ is the telling of that journey.”
Clive Matson has continued Temescal’s second-Friday of the month reading group, “Poetry Saloon (drunk on poetry),” started by Gail Ford in the early 1990s. Among the vibrant writers who attended was Tom Quontamatteo, whose quiet delivery belied the intense, closely observed emotion behind his poems. Clive teaches creative writing and has lately organized the Chalcedony poems of the last ten years into a manuscript, Your Hands Say Breathless Rose.
Adam David Miller thinks of Northern California as his garden, which he has been tending for the past half-century. Of Mr. Quontamatteo, he writes,
Grand Tom rode the range and ran the gamut; He could be one of us.Judy Wells attended Alhambra High School, class of ’62, in Martinez, California with Tom Quontamatteo. Years later, they met again in Berkeley with a surprising common interest. They both had become poets, a trajectory neither had foreseen when they graduated high school in their traditional, small home town.
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Poetry Unbound #2
Sunday, July 7, 2013
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
John Curl
Eanlai Cronin
and Clara Hsu
with a brief open mic
signup 5 pm
start 5:15
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
John Curl‘s latest poetry collection is Revolutionary Alchemy (2012), with a foreword by Jack Hirschman, San Francisco poet laureate emeritus, who writes, “Revolutionary Alchemy is a book of major importance. John Curl has earned a place—with this book of poems—among the foremost revolutionary American poets since the end of WW2.” John Curl is the author of eleven books of poetry, a memoir, and several volumes of history. His book Ancient American Poets (2007) contains his translations and biographies of Inca, Yucatec Maya and Aztec poets with the originals in Quechua, Maya, and Nahuatl. He represented the USA at the World Poetry Festival of 2010 in Caracas, Venezuela. He is vice president of PEN Oakland and a member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade.
Eanlai Cronin is a memoirist, retired teacher, survivor of chronic illness and advocate for a broader social understanding of disability. An Irish national, Eanlai writes about the epidemic of abuse and PTSD among the Irish people and women and girls in particular. Her work has appeared in Sinister Wisdom, Sonoma Women’s Voices, and The Courage to Heal. Her recently completed memoir GIRL IN IRISH chronicles the early years of her life in rural southwest Ireland.
Since moving to San Francisco in 2005, Clara Hsu has organized numerous free poetry activities and hosted a monthly salon for seven years. She is the co-host of the “San Francisco Poetry Open Mike Podcast TV Show” with John Rhodes. Her first book of poems, Mystique, received honorable mention at the 2010 San Francisco Book Festival. In 2012, Clara received special recognition for her innovative and original poetry and an offer to be the featured poet by the Erbacce Prize in the UK. Clara’s most recent project is establishing Poetry Hotel Press with Jack Foley.
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Poetry Unbound Debut Reading
Sunday, June 2, 2013
5 – 8 pm
featuring:
John Rowe
Tomas Moniz
Ingrid Keir
with a brief open mic
signup 5 pm
start 5:15
$5 donation, no one turned away
Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave.
(one block north of Ashby, and close to Ashby BART)
Berkeley, CA
PERFORMER BIOS
John Rowe, Berkeley native, is the author of several poetry chapbooks: At My Wit’s Beginning, Winsome Losesome and 15 Years, which previews a full-length collection in the works. He’s a co-host of the monthly (2nd Fridays) Last Word Poetry Reading Series, held at Nefeli Caffe in Berkeley. For many years he’s served as president of the Bay Area Poets Coalition and is associate editor of BAPC’s Poetalk magazine. More info at www.rowepoet.com.
Ingrid Keir is a founder of the WordParty, and admits to being addicted to all things poetry. She is currently pursuing her M.F.A. in poetry at San Francisco State University, and enjoys spontaneity whether it means reading with a jazz band, collaborating with artists, or creating visual poetry. She has written several chapbooks: Urban Booty (1999); The Secrets of Like (2004); Toward the Light (2007). Please see www.thewordparty.com for more info.
Tomas Moniz is the founder, editor, and a writer for the award winning zine and book by the same name: Rad Dad. He also is co-founder and co-host of the successful monthly reading series Lyrics and Dirges, every third Wednesday at Pegasus Books Downtown as well as the bit more rambunctious open mic, Saturday Night Special at Nick’s Lounge. He is also a part of the publishing house: Deviant Type Press. He’s been making zines since the late nineties, including the serialized zine novella, Without Words & Without Kneeling as well as the zine Dirty. Tomas teaches at Berkeley City College, and lives with three children and a menagerie of animals in Berkeley, California.