Sonoma County Literary Update

Dear Literary Folk,

Fall brings us together for our traditional seasonal literary events, with some new readings and workshops to spice things us. Last month, the Petaluma Poetry Walk offered us another spectacular line-up of poets in venues throughout downtown, some familiar and some new. Hats off to Bill Vartnaw, Dave Seter, Kary Hess, and the team of volunteers who made this year’s walk such a success—standing room only at every stop!

One of the highlights of the day was the reading at Copperfield’s of our California Poet Laureate, Lee Herrick, and the new San Francisco Poet Laureate, Genny Lim. If you missed that, or just want a chance to hear them again, both Lee and Genny will be reading at the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival, along with Jane Hirshfield and many others.

If you read last month’s Literary Update post, you know that I was traveling in Central Europe for three weeks, and the September edition was typed and sent from Hungary on my mobile phone (many thanks to Jo-Anne, my co-editor, for making it presentable).We were fortunate to enjoy mostly dry, hot summer weather. Not long after we flew home, the heavens opened up over Poland, Czechia, Hungary, and Austria with torrential rains and flooding, such as we have been seeing in the south-eastern US in the past few days.

My husband and I visited five countries that were entirely new to us. Most people were surprised that we referred to that part of the world as Central Europe. We grew up calling Prague, Krokow, and Budapest “Eastern Europe.” But these countries are actually more central than eastern. Prague, for example, is further west than Vienna. But until 1989, much of what is geographically Central Europe was part of the Soviet Block, behind the Iron Curtain, and under Soviet domination. One needed a special visa to visit these countries, so they weren’t on our Eurail route. I was fascinated by the history and the architecture of the countries we visited, as well as the candor of the people I met—their honest grasp of their troubled history, their complicity and resistance, both of which took a tremendous toll on their collective and individual psyches.

Among the most memorable days were those spent visiting the Schindler Factory Museum, Auschwitz, and Birkenau in Krokow,  Poland. Hungary, too has its dark history, and while walking along the promenade on the east side of the Danube one afternoon, my husband and I came upon a memorial called “Shoes on the Danube.” The memorial honors the lives of victims of a massacre of Jews by the Arrow Cross, the Hungarian Nazis. They lined up the Jews along the river, but before shooting them, they had them remove their shoes, which could be valuable if sold. The bodies were then thrown into the river.  The memorial marks the place where their shoes were left behind. As we begin this month of remembrances, I hope we will not lose sight of our shared grief and our humanity.

Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival
Saturday, October 5, 2024, Noon to 4:30 pm, free

Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park, MLK Jr. Way at Allston Way, alongside the Farmers’ Market, downtown Berkeley, one block from BART

Poetry & Music Celebrating Writers, Nature, & Community!

Poets, musicians, environmentalists, and community members will gather on Saturday, October 5, 2024, for the 29th Annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival, to celebrate Writers, Nature & Community, and to deliver an urgent message, with poetry and music, to consider the earth and climate change in our daily lives. Our belief is that we need the inspiration of poetry and music to meet our collective challenge.

The Festival begins with the Strawberry Creek Walk, poetry, nature commentary, and an easy walk along beautiful Strawberry Creek through UC Berkeley. To participate, meet at 10:00 am, at the southeast corner of Oxford at Center, on the edge of the UC Berkeley campus. All Festival events are free.

The Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival beginning at noon features Fred Cody Award-winner for Lifetime Achievement and Service Jane Hirshfield, “one of American poetry’s central spokespersons for the biosphere,” The Asking: New and Selected Poems; California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick, In Praise of Late Wonder: New and Selected; San Francisco Poet Laureate Genny Lim; James Cagney, Martian: The Saint of Loneliness, James Laughlin Award-winner from the Academy of American Poets; Ellery Akers, A Door Into the Wild: Poetry and Art; Marsha de la O, Creature, Pitt Poetry Series; Cintia Santana, The Disordered Alphabet, winner of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry, John Shoptaw, Near-Earth Object, Northern California Book Award-winner for Times Beach.

Book Launch Celebration for Ripenings by Jacqueline Kudler

Some of you told me how much you enjoyed the poem included in the July Literary Update: “The Machines,” by Jackie Kudler. This piece was recently performed by Off the Page Readers Theater on their theme of “In the Dark.” The poem accompanied a remembrance of Jackie, who passed away in May.

Mill Valley Public Library’s Creekside Room will be the site of a reading from Ripenings, a just-released poetry collection by the late Jacqueline Kudler. Light refreshments will be served.

Monday, October 7th | 6:30 pm
Mill Valley Public Library
375 Throckmorton Ave.,
Mill Valley, CA 94941

Registration required. To register, visit millvalleylibrary.org or call (415) 389-4292.

Lost and Found

My own penchant for poetry means that the announcements in these posts tend to be poetry-focused. But Sonoma County has a very vibrant community of fiction and nonfiction writers. West Side Stories provides a showcase for the diverse story-telling voices, so mark your calendars for Wednesday, October 9, 7:30-9:00 p.m. when Dave Pokorny presents West Side Stories. Theme: All Is (or is not) Lost. The event will be at Polly Klaas Community Theater, 417 Western Avenue, Petaluma. Details and ticket ($21.50) purchase: davepokornypresents.com/west-side-stories

2024 Poesía del Recuerdo/Poetry of Remembrance Community Reading

On Friday, October 11, from 6:00 to 8:30 PM, members of the community are invited to attend the annual Día de los Muertos “Poesía del Recuerdo / Poetry of Remembrance” celebration. We are pleased to announce that this year’s event will take place at Petaluma Historical Library & Museum, 20 4th Street, Petaluma, CA 94952.

Our featured speakers include Lalin the Poet (Luis Vasquez), Georgina Tello Bugarin, Irma Vega Bijou, Lin Marie deVincent, Elizabeth Jiménez Montelongo, and Jabez Churchill. Our host for the evening will be Sonoma County Poet Laureate Dave Seter.

We hope that you, too, will participate in the celebration by sharing, in Spanish or English or any other language, a brief poem or remembrance of a departed loved one.

Those who wish to honor the memory of someone are encouraged to bring something—a photo or an item that reminds them of their loved one—that can be placed on a community altar.

Poetry of Remembrance/Poesía del Recuerdo is part of the month-long Día de los Muertos celebrations held in Petaluma during the months of October and November, featuring community altars, bilingual storytelling, sugar skull workshops, music, dance, and a procession with giant puppets.

Admission is free. For more information about Día de Los Muertos events, check out Facebook at El Día de Los Muertos Petaluma.

Book Launch  for Riding Like the Wind

On Friday, October 18, 7:00 p.m. Copperfield’s Books welcomes friend and local author Iris Jamahl Dunkle to Santa Rosa for the launch of her evocative new biography, Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb. This saga of a writer done dirty resurrects the silenced voice of Sanora Babb, peerless author of midcentury American literature. Copperfield’s Books Montgomery Village, 775 Village Court, Santa Rosa. More details: copperfieldsbooks.com/event/iris-jamahl-dunkle-1

Sixteen Rivers Annual Fall Fundraiser and 25th Anniversary

Join us on Sunday, October 20th  from 2:00-5:00 pm for a delightful afternoon of wine, hors d’oeuvres, a silent auction, and readings by Dorianne Laux and Joe Millar

Yes, it’s been 25 years since seven idealistic poets decided to create a regional poetry publishing collective, modeled after Alice James Book, but celebrating the voices of the San Francisco Bay Area. Since our inception in 1999, we’ve published more than 60 original collections of poetry; brought in new members of the press every year to learn about book production from the inside out; published two best-selling anthologies, The Place That Inhabits Us and America, We Call Your Name; and we’ve launched a new series of chapbooks by teen poets locally and across the country, inspired by the anthologies.

The event is free, hosted by the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda Berkeley, CA 94707. Here’s the link for more information and to let us know that you are coming. You can also use the link to make a donation to Sixteen Rivers: https://www.eventbrite.com/myevent?eid=1016910766477

Ghastly Ghostly Poetry

Do you have a poem that’s just right for the Halloween Season? Mark your calendar for Wednesday, October 30, 7:00-9:00 p.m.. North Bay Letterpress Arts presents a Ghastly Ghostly Poetry Reading and Open Mic. Join us for a ghoulishly good evening of ghostly readings. FREE and open to the public — B.Y.O.P(oetry)! At 925-D Gravenstein Hwy. S., Sebastopol.

Poem for October

This month, I continue the SCLU’s new feature of selecting a poem or short prose piece by a Sonoma County writer. I so appreciate those of you who have sent me your submissions, and invite all of you to participate. Scroll down to review the submission guidelines.

A Road, a River, the Railroad
by Donna  Emerson

Beside the green-black wall of trees,
packed so tight, so high,
we could never see over them,
nor houses among them,

we saw only the road,
the Canisteo River,
and the Lackawanna Railroad tracks.

They held us against the hills.
They took us to the bigger world,
yet we rarely went there.

We stayed at grandmother’s in Cameron Mills.
We lay at night hearing freight trains
far down the Canisteo Valley.

Long-short-short-long whistles blowing,
felt our beds rattle
from the racket of the train cars.

Thought we could tell the sound
of oil cars from box cars, from caboose.
Counted the accented ramble beats
as the cars flew down the tracks out of sight
after the eager engine.

Into North Cameron and Averell Hill
where Great Great Great Uncle William
had watched over the river and the rails
on his Morgan horse
before he took the road and the rails
to West Point, The Indian Wars, the Civil War.
He never came all the way back.

Donna L. Emerson lives in Petaluma, California, and western New York. Recently retired from Santa Rosa Jr. College. Donna’s award-winning publications include the New Ohio Review, CALYX, the London Magazine, and Paterson Literary Review. She has published four chapbooks and two full-length poetry collections. Her most recent awards: nominations for a Pushcart, Best of the Net, and two Allen Ginsberg awards. Visit her website: donnaemerson.com

Send Us Your Poetry/Short Prose Selections for 2024

Starting last January, I began featuring a different Sonoma County writer each month at the end of the Literary Update Post.  Here’s how to participate.

The theme can be anything you feel is appropriate to the season. I’ve adjusted the subject line so you won’t feel limited to sending lineated verse. In fact, prose poems, flash fiction, creative nonfiction are all welcome, as long as the piece you send is no more than a page in length.

Send your submission to me at tehret99@comcast.net, with “SCLU Poem/Prose of the Month” in the subject heading.

Send me just one submission, no more than a page (or less).

These can be previously published, provided you identify the publishing source. If the piece is not your own, provide the author’s name and source. The author should be a Sonoma County voice, and if contemporary, please ask the author’s permission to submit.

Deadline: You can send the submission any time during the month, but I’ll need to receive your submission a few days before the month’s end to give me time to read, make my choice, and contact the author of the piece selected.

 

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor