The first month of the new year brings us a wealth of literary events—readings, dinners with authors, a benefit dinner for Poets in the Schools, workshops and classes, and a reception for our new poet laureate.

Sonoma County California Poets in the Schools Benefit
January 28, 2012
Gourmet Chinese dinner to benefit Sonoma County’s California Poets in the Schools Program. Food and poetry served by Gwynn O’Gara, our 6th Sonoma County Poet Laureate, Iris Jamahl Dunkle, Pamela Yezbick, Phyllis Meshulam, Molly Albracht Sierra, Meg Hamill, Humboldt County gourmet chef and poet, Daryl Chinn. Cost determined by you. Read more about this event on the County News page.

Sonoma County Poet Laureate Reception
January 29, 2012
The Poet Laureate Selection Committee will host a reception honoring Bill Vartnaw, Sonoma County’s seventh poet laureate, at the Sonoma County Library (3rd and E Streets, Santa Rosa) on Sunday, January 29, 2012. Light refreshments will be served beginning at 3:00 pm, followed by a program featuring Bill Vartnaw, and previous poets laureate Terry Ehret, Geri Digiorno, Mike Tuggle and Gwynn O’Gara, who will be reading their work. The event is free and open to the public.  Please see the County News page for more details.

New Format for Monthly Update

Also new is the format for delivering our monthly emailed Update. Because the email has hitherto been so lengthy (i.e., all the pages on the blogsite were included), 10 to 15 percent of subscribers have not been receiving the news at all. We are now using MailChimp to deliver the goods; it’s a free service, similar to Constant Contact.  The trade-off is that the monthly emails must be considerably shorter, containing only the calendar items and anything NEW from other pages, with no redundancies.  But for those who really prefer the entire enchilada to the low-fat version, a pdf is available. Click here to download the pdf (34 pages).

And of course, all of this information is yours to peruse at any time, simply by returning to this blogsite, which you should bookmark right away: http://literaryfolk.wordpress.com

Wishing you all a creatively fulfilling new year,

Jo-Anne Rosen

Co-editor, Sonoma County Literary Update

The sun is low on the southern horizon, its windfall light held in the few yellow birch leaves outside my window. Each day this light is slivered a little thinner as we head toward the Winter Solstice. By nightfall, we feel the darkness gathering its mystery and promise.

Our many voices—each a small, but vibrant light—illuminate this darkness and reveal its gifts.

Sonoma County’s Poets Laureate

Outgoing poet laureate Gwynn O’Gara was celebrated last Saturday with a gala reception and reading at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts. For all she has done to enrich our literary lives during her two years as poet laureate, we are deeply grateful.

I’m pleased to announce that Petaluma native Bill Vartnaw has been named Sonoma County’s seventh poet laureate, and will be honored at 3 p.m.,  Jan. 29 at Santa Rosa Central Library, 3rd and B Streets.

Vartnaw has been writing poetry for more than 35 years. He founded Taurean Horn Press in 1974, and has published 14 books, including his own In Concern: For Angels, in 1984.

Congratulations to Bill!

December Literary Highlights

No need to rush to the stores for this season of giving and receiving; merely step into any one of the many venues where writers and lovers or words are gathering this month. Here are a few I recommend. You can find these and so many more in the December Calendar of Events and on the Workshops page of the Literary Update.

Friday, December 2, 8:30 p.m. and Saturday, December 3, 8:30 p.m. Petaluma Readers Theatre presents: Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory” and music by the Petaluma Choraliers. (Saturday show begins right after the Lighted Boat Parade and Tree-trimming Party in Theatre Square.) Produced by Nancy Long. At Pelican Art Gallery 143 Petaluma Blvd. North, Petaluma. TICKETS: www.petalumareaderstheatre.com. $12 Adults, $5 17 years and under.

Sunday, December 4, 6:00-8:00 p.m. NEW! Poetry Music series created by Geri DiGiorno. Free. Featuring: Jonah Raskin, Timothy Williams, Sarah Baker. At Redwood Cafe, 8240 Redwood Highway Cotati.

Wednesday, December 7, 14, 21, 2:00-3:00 p.m. Writing During the Season of Light: A Spiritual Reflection Workshop led by Iris Jamahl Dunkle Ph.D, MFA, poet, teacher at Sonoma State and UC Santa Cruz. Location Room 5. Sebastopol United Methodist Church, 500 N. Main Street, Sebastopol (across from Safeway). This is a free community writing workshop exploring the themes of the season through writing.  Each week, we will read poems and writing about this time of spiritual reflection and students will participate in writing exercises based on these themes.  For more information, contact Iris at idunkle@roico.com.

Sunday, December 11, 6:00-8:30 p.m. Offrendas a las Virgen. Jabez Churchill and Theresa Whitehill invite you to a celebration of Our Lade of Guadalupe with poetry, music, and merriment. Readers include Lorena Calvo-Evans, Terry Ehret, Armando Garcia-Davila, Beatriz Lagos, Marcos Pereda, Fabiola Sandoval, Arthur Sheridan, and Ricardo Stocker. Location: Grace Hudson Museum, 431 South Main Street, Ukiah. For more information, contact Jabez Churchill at jabez@sonic.net.

Poem for December

In the Grip of the Solstice

by Marge Piercy

Feels like a train roaring into night,
the journey into fierce cold just beginning.
The ground is newly frozen, the crust
brittle and fancy with striations,
steeples and nipples we break
under our feet.

Every day we are shortchanged a bit more,
night pressing down on the afternoon
throttling it. Wan sunrise later
and later, every day trimmed
like an old candle you beg to give
an hour’s more light.

Feels like hurtling into vast darkness,
the sky itself whistling of space
the black matter between stars
the red shift as the light dies,
warmth a temporary aberration,
entropy as a season.

Our ancestors understood the brute
fear that grips us as the cold
settles around us, closing in.
Light the logs in the fireplace tonight,
light the candles, first one, then two,
the full chanukiya.

Light the fire in the belly.
Eat hot soup, cabbage and beef
borscht, chicken soup, lamb
and barley, stoke the marrow.
Put down the white wine and pour
whiskey instead.

We reach for each other in our bed,
the night vaulted above us
like a cave. Night in the afternoon,
cold frosting the glass so it hurts
to touch it, only flesh still
welcoming to flesh.

“In the Grip of the Solstice” is from Piercy’s collection The Art of Blessing the Day, Knopf Doubleday, 2000.

Blessing to you all,

Terry Ehret, Literary Update Co-Editor

Click on any of these pages from the menu above to view the rest of the December Literary Update:

Monthly Calendar of Events
County-Wide News (Including News from East, West, and North County)
Poet Laureate’s News
Sonoma County in Print
Local Workshop Teachers and Writing Consultants
Current and Upcoming Workshops
Writers’ Connections
Conferences
Ongoing Writing Groups and Open Mic Readings
Calls for Submission
Recommended Northern California Journals and Presses
Directory of Sonoma County Writers
How to Send Announcements to the Literary Update
About the Literary Update
Contact

A writer friend who lives in San Francisco tells me that Sonoma County is well known as a hotbed of literary activity. I didn’t know that when I left the City for Petaluma 13 years ago, but how very grateful I am now for this bounty. There are readings or open mics almost every night, workshops and writing support groups for every discipline and taste. And our writers are being published.

We support huge events such as the book festival on September 24 that drew visitors from all around the Bay Area.  It is always a peak experience to be surrounded by hundreds, possibly thousands, of people who love to read and write.

The other large and well attended event took place the night before the book fest: 100,000 Poets for Change. There Terry Ehret read her powerful, hair-raising prose poem, “How Fascism Will Come,” reprinted below, for those who were not able to attend (and those who were and enjoyed it on the spot).

Of note in October: UUCSR Writers is presenting a free all-day forum, “From Chaucer to Tweets,” on October 8, with workshops on writing craft, language and technology, and an afternoon poetry panel. (See http://uucsrwriters.blogspot.com).

Newly published this fall are Terry Ehret’s Night Sky Journey, Bart Schneider’s Morning Opera and Mike Tuggle’s What Lures the Foxes, all from Kelly Cove Press; the Redwood Writers annual anthology Vintage Voices: The Sound of a Thousand Leaves; edited by Cynthia Helen Beecher; Wisdom Has a Voice: Every Daughters’ Memories of Mother, edited by Kate Farrell (Unlimited Publishing); and Donna Emerson’s Wild Mercy from Finishline Press. There will be readings in various locations for these books throughout October. Check the calendar.

Also recently published: LOSS, an online fiction anthology (Wordrunner eChapbooks, Petaluma), featuring stories by Sonoma County author Stefanie Freele, among others, and edited by Marko Fong. You may read these at www.echapbook.com/stories/loss.

And now to Terry’s prose poem.
Enjoy the literary bounty,
Jo-Anne Rosen
co-editor

On Friday, September 23, on the eve of the 100 Thousand Poets for Change international reading, poets, musicians, and activists gathered at Gaia’s Garden in Santa Rosa to participate in the world’s largest poetry event. The Santa Rosa reading was sponsored by the Peace and Justice Center and hosted by Susan Lamont.

On September 24, poets around the USA, and across the planet, gathered in a demonstration/celebration of poetry to promote serious social, environmental, and political change. This project was launched by two Bay Area poets, Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion. If you’d like to find out more about the 100 Thousand Poets for Change events and future readings, visit their website at www.100tpc.org.

Responding to some requests, here is the prose poem I wrote for the September 23 event.

How Fascism Will Come

When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.  

                                                                             —attributed to Sinclair Lewis

When fascism comes, it will greet us with a smile. It will get down on its knees to pray. It will praise Main Street and Wall Street. It will cheer for the home team. It will clap from the bleachers when the uninsured are left to die on the street. It will rally on the Washington Mall. It will raise monuments to its heroes and weep for them and place bouquets at their stone feet and trace with their fingers the names engraved on the granite wall and go on sending soldiers to die in the mountains of Afghanistan, in the deserts of Iraq. It will send doves to pluck out the eyes of its enemies, having no hawks to spare.

When fascism comes, it will sit down for tea with the governor of Texas. It will pee in the mosques from California to Tennessee, chanting, Wake up America, the enemy is here. It will sing the anthems of corporatization, privatization, demonization, monopolization. It will be interviewed, lovingly, on talk radio. It’ll have talking points and a Facebook page and a disdain for big words or hard consonants. It won’t bother to read. It will shred all its books. It will lambast the teachers and outlaw the unions.

When fascism comes, it will look good. It will have big hair, pressed suits, lapel pins. It will control all the channels. It will ride in on Swift Boats. It will sit on the Supreme Court. It will court us with fear. It will woo us with hope. When fascism comes, it will sell shares of itself on the stock market. It will get rich, then it will get obscenely rich, then it will stop paying taxes. It will leave us in the dust. It will kick our ass. It won’t have to break a sweat to fool us twice. It will be too big to fail.

When fascism comes to America, it will enter on the winds of our silence and indifference and complacency. And on that day, one hundred thousand poets will gather. In book stores and libraries, bars and cafes, in their houses and apartments, in schools and on street corners, they will gather. In Albania, Bangladesh, Botswana, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Finland, Guatemala, Hungary, Macedonia, Malawi, Qatar, crying, laughing, shouting. They will wrap the sad music of humanity in bits of word cloth and hang them, like prayers, on the tree of life.

Note: Note: This piece was inspired by images, articles, and commentary I found online when I “googled” Sinclair Lewis’s quote. Exact quotes are italicized. One of the most powerful was Henry Wallace’s warning written in April, 1944. Here’s the link: http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw23.htm. Another inspiration was Tim Wise’s essay on Redroom.com called “This is How Fascism Comes: Reflections on the Cost of Silence,” from October, 2008. Here’s the link for that: http://redroom.com/member/tim-wise/blog/this-is-how-fascism-comes-reflections-on-the-cost-of-silence.

Terry Ehret
September 23, 2011

Click on any of these pages from the menu above to view the rest of the September Literary Update:

Monthly Calendar of Events
County-Wide News (Including News from East, West, and North County)
Poet Laureate’s News
Sonoma County in Print
Local Workshop Teachers and Writing Consultants
Current and Upcoming Workshops
Writers’ Connections
Conferences
Ongoing Writing Groups and Open Mic Readings
Calls for Submission
Recommended Northern California Journals and Presses
Directory of Sonoma County Writers
How to Send Announcements to the Literary Update
About the Literary Update
Contact

September always feels like homecoming in the literary community with two favorite annual gatherings: the Petaluma Poetry Walk on Sunday, September 18, and the Sonoma County Book Festival on Saturday, September 24. To find out who’s reading and presenting at these events, click on each, or visit the County News page of the Literary Update.

This is the time for nominations for Sonoma County Poet Laureate. If you are interested in serving as Poet Laureate, if you’d like to nominate a poet you know, or if you’d like to be part of the Poet Laureate Selection Committee, contact Linda Galletta at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts: lindag@sonic.net. Deadline for nominations is September 30, 2011 and the new Poet Laureate will be announced in December. You can download the submission requirements and application form from the Sebastopol Center for the Arts’ website www.sebarts.org.

For those like me whose lives revolve around the academic calendar, September is also the start of a new year. Classes and workshops are starting up all over the county, such as Marlene Cullen’s Jumpstart Workshops, Iota Press’s Poetry and Printing, and Nancy Long’s personal coaching for those who dream of putting on a one-person show. Check out the Workshops page to see all the current and upcoming offerings.

September, then, is a time for new ventures and beginnings, as it is for those who observe the Jewish High Holy Days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The Jewish Year 5772 begins at sunset on September 28, 2011, but Rosh Hashanah is not exactly a celebration; it’s more a time of reflection and redirection when we look back and ask, have we strayed from our path?  Have we stopped listening to the small voice of honesty within us? Have we lost our soul’s balance?

For the last ten years, September has been a time of grim remembrance and atonement. 9/11 will always have an ominous ring to it for those of us who watched the towers fall, and especially for those who lost friends or family. We should also remember that 9/11 is a sad day of remembrance for the people of Chile, too. On September 11, 1973,  the CIA-backed military coup, led by General Pinochet, overthrew the democratically-elected government of President Salvador Allende, leading to his assassination (or suicide) and ushering in an era of brutal repression.

As we enter this September, with its promise of abundance and its memory of sorrows,  here is a poem  about reclaiming our balance and our light, written by our new U.S. Poet Laureate, Phil Levine.

Making Light of It

I call out a secret name, the name
of the angel who guards my sleep,
and light grows in the east, a new light
like no other, as soft as the petals
of the blown rose in late summer.
Yes, it is late summer in the West.
Even the grasses climbing the Sierras
reach for the next outcropping of rock
with tough, burned fingers. The thistle
sheds its royal robes and quivers
awake in the hot winds off the sun.
A cloudless sky fills my room, the room
I was born in and where my father sleeps
his long dark sleep guarding the name
he shared with me. I can follow the day
to the black rags and corners it will
scatter to because someone always
goes ahead burning the little candle
of his breath, making light of it all.

from A Walk with Tom Jefferson, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1988

Terry Ehret, Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor

Click on any of these pages from the menu above to view the rest of the September Literary Update:

Monthly Calendar of Events
County-Wide News (Including News from East, West, and North County)
Poet Laureate’s News
Sonoma County in Print
Local Workshop Teachers and Writing Consultants
Current and Upcoming Workshops
Writers’ Connections
Conferences
Ongoing Writing Groups and Open Mic Readings
Calls for Submission
Recommended Northern California Journals and Presses
Directory of Sonoma County Writers
How to Send Announcements to the Literary Update
About the Literary Update
Contact

August, in Celtic tradition, begins with a celebration of the sun god, Lugh, called Lughnasadh, a favored time for handfastings— trial marriages that would generally last a year and a day, with the option of ending the contract before the new year, or later formalizing it as a more permanent marriage.

Now, I don’t know how the debt-ceiling debate will be settled, but chances are our politicians in Washington will come up with an eleventh-hour fiscal equivalent of handfasting.

I’ve recently returned from leading a two-week literary tour and writing retreat in West Ireland with some local writers. We had a “grand and snug time,” as one of them put it. (If you’d like to know more, check the website: http://westireland.wordpress.com/.) I then spent a week in Prague in the Czech Republic where music, art, and poetry are celebrated in every way, though it hasn’t always been so. The political leaders of Praha have a centuries-old tradition of defenestration—literally tossing their opponents out of high windows. In the event our legislators fail to achieve any handfasting agreement in the Celtic fashion, they might resort to the window-tossing option. Or we will.

Whatever the outcome, it’s clear we need to stay awake and vigilant in these days when so much of our social network has already been dismantled. And we need to write and speak our truth. During the 40 years the people of the Czech Republic endured two oppressive regimes, their poets, writers, and artists kept the embers of truth alive. When the winds shifted in 1989, these embers caught fire and ignited a dramatic and peaceful revolution. With virtual communities like this Literary Update, we have a vital way to stay connected and to make our voices heard. Keep writing! Keep supporting each other!

August Poem

Each month, we include a poem in our post. Here’s one that seems to speak to our somewhat bitter summer season: Derek Walcott’s “Dark August.”

Dark August

So much rain, so much life like the swollen sky

of this black August. My sister, the sun,

broods in her yellow room and won’t come out.

Everything goes to hell; the mountains fume

like a kettle, rivers overrun; still,

she will not rise and turn off the rain.

She is in her room, fondling old things,

my poems, turning her album. Even if thunder falls

like a crash of plates from the sky,

she does not come out.

Don’t you know I love you but am hopeless

at fixing the rain ? But I am learning slowly

to love the dark days, the steaming hills,

the air with gossiping mosquitoes,

and to sip the medicine of bitterness,

so that when you emerge, my sister,

parting the beads of the rain,

with your forehead of flowers and eyes of forgiveness,

all will not be as it was, but it will be true

(you see they will not let me love

as I want), because, my sister, then

I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones,

The black rain, the white hills, when once

I loved only my happiness and you.

Nominations for Sonoma County Poet Laureate

Our county’s poet laureate, Gwynne O’Gara, as well as those who have served before her, has done so much to nourish our community. I hope you’ll check out her Poet Laureate’s News page, where you’ll see her call for poems by Sonoma County residents. The deadline is September 30, 2011. From those she receives, she’ll choose three poets to read with her later this fall.

Believe it or not, it’s time once again to consider nominations for the 2012-2014 poet laureate. If you are interested in the nomination process or in serving on the Poet Laureate Selection Committee, contact Linda Galletta at Sebastopol Center for the Arts: lindag@sonic.net.

Poetry Flash’s New Website

On June 28, 2011, Poetry Flash launched a new website

( http://poetryflash.org/) to be published online in monthly issues. The July 2011 issue features a sparkling new design, a more easily navigated event calendar for California and beyond, Some Information Blog Posts, Calls for Submissions, Archives, and info about Poetry Flash programs. For details, check the County News page.

Here are some of the literary highlights for August I hope you’ll be able to attend:

August 6, Saturday, noon to 4:00 p.m. Poets’ Picnic. Location: Benicia First Street Park with Gazebo Corner of Military and First Street. For details, check the Calendar page.

Thursday, August 18, 7:00-9:00 p.m. Writers Forum of Petaluma presenters Belva Davis and Vicki Haddock: The Semi-Reluctant Memoirist. Legendary TV news anchor Belva Davis and journalist Vicki Haddock share the inside story of their collaboration to produce the acclaimed memoir Never In My Wildest Dreams: A Black Woman’s Life in Journalism. See Workshop page for details.

Saturday, August 20, 5:30-9:30 PM: CONFLUX: An evening of poetry and music to celebrate the opening of Gallery V: Contemporary Art in Valley Ford. Visual artist and poet Centa Theresa reads with Patrice Warrender and Terry Ehret, along with cellist Sebastion Plano and vocalist Caitlin Moe. Location: 14875 Valley Ford. Estero Rd., Valley Ford, CA. 94972. For details, visit the Gallery V website.

Sunday, August 21, 2:00-5:00 p.m. “The Sensual M.F.K. Fisher,” a fundraiser benefitting the Sonoma County Book Festival. Biographer Anne Zimmerman of San Francisco comes to Mimi Luebbermann’s Windrush Farm in Petaluma to share the most colorful years and personal stories behind some of M.F.K. Fisher’s beloved gastronomical writings. For tickets or information, check the Calendar page.

And finally, I have some personal announcements to share:

Kelly’s Cove Press

I pleased to announce the launch of a new publishing company, Kelly’s Cove Press, founded by Bart Schneider and dedicated to new work and classic reprints of California writers and artists. Books in the initial series are Kenneth Patchen 1911-1972: A Centennial Selection; Civil War Stories,by Ambrose Bierce, illustrated with paintings by Chester Arnold; The Best of the Devil’s Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce; What Lures the Foxes, by Mike Tuggle; Morning Opera, by Bart Schneider, and my own new collection, Night Sky Journey. Books may be ordered through the website, www.kellyscovepress.com (live September 2011), or by calling 510-338-3480.

Eavan Boland Reads for Sixteen Rivers Press

Sixteen Rivers Press will be hosting a benefit reading featuring Irish poet Eavan Boland. The date is Saturday evening, October 22. For more information or to request an invitation, contact Sixteen Rivers at info@sixteenrivers.org.

Sitting Room Prosody Workshops for Fall 2011

I will again be offering two eight-week Prosody Workshops in the fall of 2011. These will be held on Mondays and Fridays, 9 AM to noon starting the week of September 26. For details, check the See Workshop page or visit my website at www.terryehret.com and click on the workshops link.

Terry Ehret

Literary Update Co-Editor

Click on any of these pages from the menu above to view the rest of the August Literary Update:

Monthly Calendar of Events
County-Wide News (Including News from East, West, and North County)
Poet Laureate’s News
Sonoma County in Print
Local Workshop Teachers and Writing Consultants
Current and Upcoming Workshops
Writers’ Connections
Conferences
Ongoing Writing Groups and Open Mic Readings
Calls for Submission
Recommended Northern California Journals and Presses
Directory of Sonoma County Writers
How to Send Announcements to the Literary Update
About the Literary Update
Contact

Summertime offers Sonoma County an abundance of literary events — twelve Bibliophoria-sponsored workshops, demonstrations and readings in July alone, including workshops on letter press, writing and book-folding for teens, and creating childrens’ books, and a book camp for kids (see the calendar from July 5 through 26).

Summer Sunday Backyard Readings in Petaluma (every 2nd Sunday during the summer unless it rains) are open mics without the mic for poetry, essays, short plays or scenes, comedy, music, or anything creative. The next backyard reading is July 10 (see calendar for details).

And be sure to check out the Ongoing Writers’ Groups and Open Mic Readings page for the usual suspects. Something’s on tap every day of the week. Most of these events are free. Of note: Terry Ehret will be back from Ireland to read at the Healdsburg Literary Salon’s Third Sunday Salon on July 17 (followed by an open mic).

If you’re going, you’ve already signed up for the two writers’ conferences this summer in Napa and Mendocino. Closest to home, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, July 24-29, also offers daytime lectures and evening readings to the public, without full conference registration. Students with current ID are admitted free. See the calendar for details or go to http://napawritersconf.org/events.

The Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference takes place July 28-30 in Fort Bragg (www.mcwc.org). Among the conference faculty who will be presenting readings open to the public is Norma Watkins, whose just published memoir The Last Resort: Taking the Mississippi Cure (University Press of Mississippi) is my personal summer reading recommendation (www.normawatkins.com).

Remember to visit our website: The Sonoma County Literary Update website is updated every few days at http://literaryfolk.wordpress.com. We encourage you to visit these pages frequently for breaking news. If you have a workshop, event, contest, newly published book or call for submission to announce to the Sonoma County literary community, you may send it at any time and it will be posted on the site. Email announcements to sonomacountyliteraryupdate@gmail.com.

Call for submissions: Wordrunner Electronic Chapbooks is looking for short fiction for the fall echapbook, themed “mini-anthology” — one to three stories per author will be published. No fee to submit. Submissions are open July 1 through August 21. See www.echapbook.com/submissions.htm for details.

I’ll close with a poem by Paul Sohar that reminds me of the euphoric suddenness of summer.

Jo-Anne Rosen
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-editor

Being and Its Skin

So what if I stumble,
drunk on the first draft of air
slurped directly from the sky?
And crawl on all fours
to the other edge of the peak?
In the vast space below
I don’t even bother to seek out the house
I left behind.
Maybe I’ll go back down there
maybe I won’t,
it doesn’t matter now.
At the top it feels good to know
there’s nowhere else to go, just stand. And stand still.
Still like the air that goes nowhere
even when tugged by a restless wind.
The rocks don’t move and neither does the sky.
They are all in the right place
and they are what they were meant to be.
And I am where I wanted to be
and what I was meant to be.
To go back down would consume
the substance of being;
to rise any higher would
quench being into nothingness.

(from The Wayward Orchard, at www.echapbook.com/poems/sohar)

I’m off to Ireland and the Czech Republic next week, so I won’t be on hand to compose a July post for the Literary Update. Jo-Anne, our wonderful co-editor who keeps this website updated, will step in for me.

One of the newer features on the Sonoma County Literary Update is the Directory of Sonoma County Writers. Jo-Anne and I set this up almost a year ago, and since then 32 of you have joined the roll call. Of course, I know there are more than 32 writers out there. If you’re reading this and not yet on the directory, you can remedy that in a snap. All you need to do is send a jpeg photo and a short bio. Include your contact information and a link where someone could go to buy your books.

Congratulations to Bibliophoria poetry contest winners Lin Max, John Johnson, and Susan Adams (none of whom are yet in our directory, but should be!). Their work will be printed by Eric Johnson of Iota Press. Gwynn O’Gara, Sonoma County Poet Laureate, was the final judge for the blind submission contest. The winners will be reading their work on Friday, June 10.

Two birthdays are coming up this month: Copperfields and the Sitting Room. When I moved from San Francisco to Petaluma in 1990, these were the two writing communities that welcomed me. Through Jane Love, who was the readings and events co-ordinator and editor of the much beloved Dickens literary journal, I met so many fine writers. And through JJ Wilson and Karen Petersen, founders and directors of the Sitting Room, I found a home for my writing workshops where I’ve had the pleasure of working with so many of you.

I hope you will join in the celebrations planned for these two vital members of the Sonoma County Literary Community. Details are included in the June Calendar of Events.

Saturday, June 4, 12:00 p.m. Copperfield’s Birthday Party.

Sunday, June 5, 2:00 to 5:00 pm. Sitting Room’s 30th Birthday Party.

In more recent years, Katherine Hastings and Ed Coletti have given us a way to celebrate our local writers and to gather as a community to welcome visiting authors. Both Katherine’s WordTemple and Ed’s Café Azul series( new name Poetry SoCoCo) ( new name Poetry SoCoCo) have events scheduled this month.

Saturday, June 18, 7:00 p.m. The WordTemple Poetry Series returns to the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, located at 6780 Depot Street, Sebastopol.

Saturday, June 4, 7:00-9:00 pm. Poetry Azul has a new name, at a new venue and time: Poetry SoCoCo opens at the SoCo Coffee at 4th & Brookwood, 1015 4th Street, Santa Rosa. For more details, see Ongoing Groups/Open Mics page.

And finally, Bibliophoria is sponsoring and hosting a number of important events this summer. Thanks to Christine Walker who has helped to bring all these aspects of writing and book-art together.

Bibliophoria: Celebrate Book Arts! takes place in June & July in Sebastopol. Workshops, readings, exhibitions, parties, town tour, and merchant tie-ins. All for the love of books. Hosted by Sebastopol Center for the Arts and Copperfield’s Books, in honor of the independent store’s 30th Anniversary. http://bibliophoria.com

Writer’s Sampler Series at Sebastopol Center for the Arts: Monday evenings June 20: Making Art with Words: A Collaboration in Print Art & Poetry. June 27: Inkling to Ink & Beyond: Developing and caring for your nonfiction book. July 11: The Many Faces of Memoir: Finding the Style and Structure That Works for You. July 18: The Making and Marketing of a Chapbook. http://bibliophoria.com/writers-sampler/

Children’s Book Writing Conference for writers and illustrators interested in learning more about writing for children from published authors/illustrators and a children’s book editor/agent. A day-long
intensive with sessions devoted to picture books, middle-grade and YA, editing, and presentation. July 16, 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sebastopol Center for the Arts. $110 includes lunch. http:// bibliophoria.com/childrens-book-conference/.

To close, here is my poem for June: Eavan Boland’s “White Hawthorne in the West of Ireland.”

Boland will be the special guest poet for the Sixteen Rivers Benefit on October 22, 2011. You may want to save the date for that. Details available at www.sixteenrivers.org.

I will also be offering a workshop on Prosody this fall at the Sitting Room, in which we will be studying Boland’s work, along with three other poets. Check my website for details in July: www.terryehret.com.

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor

WHITE HAWTHORN IN THE WEST OF IRELAND
By Eavan Boland

I drove west
in the season between seasons.
I left behind suburban gardens.
Lawmowers. Small talk.

Under low skies, past splashes of coltsfoot
I assumed
the hard shyness of Atlantic light
and the superstitious aura of hawthorn.

All I wanted then was to fill my arms with
sharp flowers,
to seem, from a distance, to be part of
that ivory, downhill rush. But I knew,

I had always known
the custom was
not to touch hawthorn.
Not to bring it indoors for the sake of

the luck
such constraint would forfeit —
a child might die, perhaps, or an unexplained
fever speckle heifers. So I left it

stirring on those hills
with a fluency
only water has. And, like water, able
to redefine land. And free to seem to be —

for anglers,
and for travelers astray in
the unmarked lights of a May dusk —
the only language spoken in those parts.

– Eavan BOLAND, Outside History, selected poems – 1980-1990, (Norton/1990).

Click on any of these pages from the menu above to view the rest of the June Literary Update:

Monthly Calendar of Events
County-Wide News (Including News from East, West, and North County)
Poet Laureate’s News
Sonoma County in Print
Local Workshop Teachers and Writing Consultants
Current and Upcoming Workshops
Writers’ Connections
Conferences
Ongoing Writing Groups and Open Mic Readings
Calls for Submission
Recommended Northern California Journals and Presses
Directory of Sonoma County Writers
How to Send Announcements to the Literary Update
About the Literary Update
Contact

Welcome to May! April whirled past us in a flurry of literary events that remind us all how lucky we are to live in Sonoma County, which has a literary life few communities can rival. Today the sun is out, the breezes are light, the bees are out in the blossoms the wind and rain haven’t yet shaken free, and Sonoma County’s beauty is at its finest.

“The world’s favorite season is the spring.
All things seem possible in May.”
-  Edwin Way Teale

Sonoma County Publications

One delightful new possibility is a publication project proposed (love those alliteratives!) by Bart Schneider: an annual series of new work and classic reprints celebrating California writers. For many years, Bart lived, wrote, and worked in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, editing The Hungry Mind Review and directing the fabulous writers’ center called The Loft. Bart moved to Sonoma a few years ago, and has since become an important member of our literary community. Bart writes poetry, literary reviews, and novels, including the series that features his poetry-loving detective, Augie Boyer. Check his work out by clicking here.

Bart plans to launch this series in the fall of 2011, a project which promises to add a new dimension to the publishing work of so many talented folk here in the county, including our own Jo-Anne Rosen’s Wordrunner Electronic Chapbooks; Gillian Conoley’s Volt; Susan Bono’s Tiny Lights; Katherine Hastings’s WordTemple Press; Eric Johnson’s Iota Press, with its gorgeous letterpress designs; Barbara Baer and Maureen Jennings’s Floureant Press, which has created several unique anthologies of local writers; the student publications of Zaum (Sonoma State) and First Leaves (SRJC); the Redwood Writers‘ anthologies and co-publishing projects; and the Sitting Room‘s annual publications. Click on any of these to find out more.

The Literary Update includes a page of Northern California Journals and Presses, which is the most visited page on the blogsite for those outside Sonoma County. But not all our local presses and journals are listed here. As part of my shout-out to the publishers above, I want to encourage you all to get your information included on the blogsite. Check out the page by clicking here. If you’d like your publication included, click on the contact page and send us your information!

Bibliophoria Poetry Contest Winners Announced!

Congratulations to Bibliophoria poetry contest winners Lin Max, John Johnson, and Susan Adams. Their work will be printed by Eric Johnson of Iota Press. Gwynn O’Gara, Sonoma County Poet Laureate, was the final judge for the blind submission contest. More details are on the County-Wide News page.

5th annual California State Poetry Out Loud Competition

Another shout-out goes to Phebe Hong, winner of the 2011 Sonoma County Poetry Out Loud Competition in February, and second runner up in the state competition in Sacramento in March. You can find out more about Phebe by visiting the County-Wide News page. Kudos to Phyllis Meshulam, Poets in the Schools area coordinator and director of the county’s Poetry Out Loud Program.

Prague, anyone?

Following my two-weeks in Ireland, leading the West Ireland Literary Tour and Writing Retreat, I’ll be flying to Prague in the Czech Republic. There I’ll be giving a reading on Friday, June 24, at a club in central Prague. This will be a collaborative event with Slovakian painter Andrea  Smišková, whose works will be on display that evening. Andrea has translated some of my poems into Czech, which she will be reading. And I will present a sequence of brand new poems, inspired by Andrea’s paintings. So if any of you happen to know folk in Prague (its Summer Writing Workshops is the central gathering place for writers from all over the world!), please let them know about this event. Click here for details: Terry Ehret’s Readings.

May Highlights

Here are a few of the special events you’ll find on the May Calendar page:

Clara Rosemarda’s Creative Writing as Spiritual Practice.  More details on Workshop page. Contact Clara: 707:579-2081, rosen@sonic.net

Saturday, May 14, 7:00 pm: Copperfield’s Books in Petaluma hosts a reading by Sixteen Rivers Press’s newest poets: Christina Hutchins and Jeanne Wagner. Christina’s new book is The Stranger Dissolves, which David St. John  a “superb collection , elegant, impassioned, and consistently wise in its reckonings.” Jeanne Wagner’s In the Body of Our Lives “explores the dark complications of home and relationship, grief, emotional deafness, the estranging skin, sin, and redemption” (Jeanne Emmons). Please join us for an evening of new poetry in Copperfield’s welcoming setting. Refreshments will be provided. The event is free. Location: 140 Kentucky Street, Petaluma, CA 94952-2994. Phone: (707) 762-0563.

Friday, May 20 and Saturday, May 21, 8:00 p.m. Petaluma Readers Theatre opens its 2011 season with “A Million Ways to Go!” These are tales of travelers… some scary, some fun, some true, some not. Four actors will take you on several journeys … maybe some that you recognize from your own adventures! Directed by Jared Dreyfus, Produced by Nancy Long. At Riverfront Gallery in Petaluma. Details on the calendar page, or visit www.petalumareaderstheatre.com

Saturday, May 21, 10 am-noon. “Reading the Mystics.” Book: New Seeds of Contemplation, by Thomas Merton. Led by Dr. Vincent Pizzuto, Upcoming meetings: June 18, July 16. At Oasis, 141 Second Street, Petaluma. Free! Contact: Nancy Long at nsasha@earthlink.net for more information.

Yours,

Terry Ehret

Sonoma County Literary Update co-editor

And finally, in honor of May, here is one of my favorite poems by May Swenson:

Click on any of these pages from the menu above to view the rest of the November Literary Update:

Monthly Calendar of Events
County-Wide News (Including News from East, West, and North County)
Poet Laureate’s News
Sonoma County in Print
Local Workshop Teachers and Writing Consultants
Current and Upcoming Workshops
Writers’ Connections
Conferences
Ongoing Writing Groups and Open Mic Readings
Calls for Submission
Recommended Northern California Journals and Presses
Directory of Sonoma County Writers
How to Send Announcements to the Literary Update
About the Literary Update
Contact

April, as you all know, is National Poetry Month. It’s Shakespeare’s birth/death month. It’s tax month. William Carlos Williams called in “the saddest month,” and T. S. Eliot called it “the cruelest month.” It’s a month for fools and foolish whims.
“We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.”  ~Japanese Proverb

But for literary fans and readers, it’s a month of non-stop delights of the poetic and prose variety nationally and locally. The Academy of American Poets suggests these ways to celebrate (click  on each for more details):

Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day
The idea is simple: select a poem you love, carry it with you, then share it with co-workers, family, and friends.

Put poetry in an unexpected place
“Books should be brought to the doorstep like electricity, or like milk in England: they should be considered utilities.”

Play Exquisite Corpse
“Each participant is unaware of what the others have written, thus producing a surprising—sometimes absurd—yet often beautiful poem.”

Memorize a poem
“Getting a poem or prose passage truly ‘by heart’ implies getting it by mind and memory and understanding and delight.

Put a poem on the pavement
“Go one step beyond hopscotch squares and write a poem in chalk on your sidewalk.”

Listen on your commute
“Often, hearing an author read their own work can clarify questions surrounding their work’s tone.”

Ask the Post Office for more poet stamps
“To be eligible, suggested poets must have been deceased for at least ten years and must be American or of American descent.”

Put a poem in a letter
“It’s always a treat to get a letter, but finding a poem in the envelope makes the experience extra special.”

Buy a book of poems for your library
“Many libraries have undergone or are facing severe cuts in funding. These cuts are often made manifest on library shelves.”

Here are a few from Sonoma County’s April Literary Calendar. And there are many, many more!

April 2, 1:00 pm. Occidental Fools Day Parade begins at the Community Center and wends its silly way through town, ending at Occidental Center for the Arts, Bohemian Hwy and Graton Rd.  2-5 pm. call 707-874-9392 or visit website: occidentalcenterforthearts.org.

April 7, 7:00 p.m. Popular Bay Area authors, editors, and publishers Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida will speak in Santa Rosa on Thursday, April 7. For more details, see County News page.

April 14, 7:00 to 9:00 pm. “The Healing Arts of the Spoken Word.” FREE. An evening of readings, music, song, and performance poetry. The Green Bough, 531 Fifth Street, Santa Rosa. Readers and artists include Noelle Oxenhandler, Kristin Pearce, Jonah Raskin, Bart Schneider, Catherine Sevenau and Stacey Tuel. For information, email: jonah.raskin@sonoma.edu

April 23, 7:00 p.m. WordTemple Poetry Series. Celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday! Paul Hoover will present his new book Sonnet 56 (terrific riffs on Shakespeare’s sonnet); Melissa Stein, author of Rough Honey; Pui Ying Wong reads from Yellow Plum Season; and Sonoma County poet Jodi L. Hottel. Sebastopol Center for the Arts. For more information go to www.wordtemple.com.

April 30, 7:00– 9:30 pm. An Evening of Poetry and Music by the Petaluma River, featuring: Terry Ehret with Caitlin Moe for vocals; Renee Owen with Brian Foster on harmonica, mandolin, guitar, and shakuhachi flute; Raphael Block with Judith Moon on the keyboard, mandolin, guitar and harmonium and Ananda on flute; Nancy Dougherty with musician friends. Tickets $12 for adults, $10 for students, children under 12 free. At The Post Wellness By Design Building, 224A Weller Street, Petaluma.

In the calls for submission category, check out these two:

Chocolate Poetry Contest, Presented by Beatriz Lagos and Viva Cocolat

Send an original of your poem and two copies with your name, address and telephone number on only one of the copies.  Maximum two pages per poem. Poets may participate in one of two categories: A) Love and Chocolate or B) Chocolate and Frustration.Write which category on the envelope.
Send to: Poetry Contest/ Nora Wilkins, 1209 B St., Petaluma, CA 94952. Deadline April 30th. Prizes Awarded On: Saturday, May 14th, 5:30 p.m. at Viva Cocolat, 110 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma, CA 94952

Poetry Collection: Wordrunner E-Chapbooks

Petaluma-based, Wordrunner Electronic Chapbooks publishes fiction, memoir and poetry online quarterly, featuring one author per echapbook. Submissions will be open for the summer 2011 POETRY echapbook from April 1 through May 31, 2011. No fee to submit. Payment: $65.  See www.echapbook.com/submissions.htm for detailed guidelines and 2011 submission and publication schedule.

Terry Ehret

Sonoma County Literary Update co-editor

Dear Literary Folk,

While the Celtic calendar turned to spring last month, the traditional opening of spring is March 21, so if it still feels a bit like winter–well, it is. Nonetheless, the plum trees are in full bloom around the county, the new grass has sprung up on the hills, and the wild mustard is dancing through the orchards and vineyards.

March’s calendar of events offers a varied array of events, workshops, readings–even an April Fool’s Day Parade to look forward to. Here are a few of the calendar highlights:

Sonoma County writers Gwynne O’Gara, Arthur Doyle, Ransom Stephens, Centa Theresa, Donna Emerson, Ted Calvert,  Abby Bogomolny, Don Hagelberg, David Madgalen, Viola Weinberg, Andrew Mayer and Ed Coletti all have readings coming up this month.

Our friends from Boise, Betty and Ken Rodgers, will be in town in March. Both will be reading at the Center Literary Cafe on Tuesday, March 8, and Ken will be joining Guy Beiderman for a one-day writing seminar called “Endings: on Saturday, March 12.

Bibliophoria has extended its chapbook competition to March 30. The prize is your poetry printed in letterpress by Iota Press.

You can chose to get your ink flowing with workshops presented by The Book Arts Guild, Chester Aaron, Ana Manwaring, Sher Christian,  Marlene Cullen, Stephanie Freele, Penelope LaMontagne, Christine Walker, and Clara Rosemarda.

Starting  March 7, Redwood Writers and Sonoma County Libraries are hosting  a free series of library panels on the Art and Craft of Writing at local libraries. Details at: http://redwoodwriters.org/series-workshop/cwc-branch-events.

Writers Forum of Petaluma gets underway with its spring series on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, with a presentation by  Gordon Warnock. For information on the Writers Forum: www.thewritespot.us

The North Bay Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) is offering a presentation by Pete Masterson on Self-Publishing Children’s Books: the Nuts and Bolts.

Applications are open for the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference July 24-29, whose faculty include Daniel Alarcón, Lan Samantha Chang, Adam Haslett, and Michelle Huneven in fiction, and Jane Hirshfield, Major Jackson, D.A. Powell, and David St. John in poetry. For more information and application details, visit napawritersconf.org.

And finally, Katherine Hastings’s WordTemple spring  reading series is underway. The next reading is in April, but you can always catch the radio broadcasts and podcasts on KRCB 91.1FM at this link: http://krcb.org/wordtemple.

On March 16 at 7 PM, WordTemple on air presents a special Irish program: Two From Dubliners: recordings of two powerful short stories by James Joyce–”Eveline”, read by Dearbla Molloy, and “A Little Cloud,” read by Brendan Coyle. Joyce’s poem, O It Was Out by Donnycarney is sung by the magnificent tenor Marc Heller. The show will also be sprinkled with some fine Irish-American music, thanks to Mick Moloney and Frank Patterson. Finally, Hastings will announce a poetry reading she will host at the Crossroads Irish-American Festival featuring Sonoma County poet laureate Gwynn O’Gara, Gillian Conoley and Kathleen Lynch.

Now open the pages of the Literary Update, and let the fun begin!

Yours ever,

Terry Ehret

Co-editor, Sonoma County Literary Update

Here’s a poem to shake away the winter, an excerpt from D.H. Lawrence’s “Craving for Spring”

Ah come, come quickly, spring!
come and lift us towards our culmination, we myriads;
we who have never flowered, like patient cactuses.
Come and lift us to our end, to blossom, bring us to our summer
we who are winter-weary in the winter of the of the world.
Come making the chaffinch nests hollow and cosy,
come and soften the willow buds till they are puffed and furred,
then blow them over with gold.
Come and cajole the gawky colt’s-foot flowers.

Come quickly, and vindicate us.
against too much death.
Come quickly, and stir the rotten globe of the world from within,
burst it with germination, with world anew.
Come now, to us, your adherents, who cannot flower from the ice.
All the world gleams with the lilies of death the Unconquerable,
but come, give us our turn.
Enough of the virgins and lilies, of passionate, suffocating perfume of corruption,
no more narcissus perfume, lily harlots, the blades of sensation
piercing the flesh to blossom of death.
Have done, have done with this shuddering, delicious business
of thrilling ruin in the flesh, of pungent passion, of rare, death-edged ecstasy.
Give us our turn, give us a chance, let our hour strike,
O soon, soon!
Let the darkness turn violet with rich dawn.
Let the darkness be warmed, warmed through to a ruddy violet,
incipient purpling towards summer in the world of the heart of man.

Oh, if it be true, and the living darkness of the blood of man is purpling with violets,
if the violets are coming out from under the rack of men, winter-rotten and fallen,
we shall have spring.
Pray not to die on this Pisgah blossoming with violets.
Pray to live through.
If you catch a whiff of violets from the darkness of the shadow of man
it will be spring in the world,
it will be spring in the world of the living;
wonderment organising itself, heralding itself with the violets,
stirring of new seasons.

Ah, do not let me die on the brink of such anticipation!
Worse, let me not deceive myself.