Sonoma County Literary Update

Posted by: wordrunner | April 1, 2025

2025-04 Update

Dear Literary Folk,

Greetings from LA where I’ve spent four days at the annual gathering of the writing tribes known as AWP. Sonoma County was well represented there, not only by our authors, but also by our culinary products, like Cowgirl Creamy cheeses, Sonoma wines, Lagunitas beers, all prominently featured at every restaurant I ventured into.

It is always fun to hang out at the book fair (600+ vendors), meeting up with old friends and getting to know new acquaintances from all over the country. I found some panels and readings that intrigued me, too, on topics like translation, writing about aging, silence, and addressing climate/ecology issues. Keynote speaker was Roxane Gay, whom I wasn’t familiar with prior to this conference.

A child of Haitian immigrants, Gay hails from Omaha, Nebraska. She gained widespread acclaim in 2014 for her book Bad Feminist, a collection of essays that reflect on her personal experiences, pop culture, and social issues. Gay writes with wit and empathy, which has earned her a devoted fan base. She has also published works of fiction and memoir, served as an editor for various literary journals, and written an opinion column for The New York Times. But perhaps the reason for Gay’s appeal to the younger writers at this conference is that in July 2016, Gay and poet Yona Harvey were announced as writers for Marvel Comics’ World of Wakanda, a spin-off from the company’s Black Panther title, making them the first black women to be lead writers for Marvel.

She is a literary hero to many, and a powerhouse writer who engaged us all as writers and as citizens in dire times. “The pen is not mightier than the sword,” she said. The pen IS the sword.”

When I wasn’t at the conference and book fair, my daughter, who lives in Burbank, introduced me to some of the downtown sites, like Grand Central Market and a used bookstore called The Last Bookstore, which was a fabulous place to pass a few hours: three floors of books of every genre, each with its own theatrical decor: life-size mammoth, Egyptian sarcophagus, bird cage with a raven and skull. Part of the LA vibe is the theatricality of the place.

Another off-site outing was to a literary-themed pub called Catcher in the Rye where Sixteen Rivers held a book launch for our 2025 publications, as well as an open mic for all our friends and guests, such as Santa Rosa poet Jodi Hottel, pictured here.

One of the highlights of the conference for me was the tribute to poet and teacher Brenda Hillman. In my conference notes, I jotted down this Hillman quote: “To live in metaphor is to be eternally hopeful.” I’m not sure I know what this means, but I feel its truth. Metaphor is the engine of creative thought, the acknowledgment of multiplicity of realities, which may be what we have in English in place of the subjunctive. How else to speak of what isn’t, but might be? Hope nestles in that “might be.” And we are surely in need of hope right now.

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International Day of Protest

Throughout the conference, I repeatedly heard talk of a grassroots international day of protest scheduled for Saturday, April 5, 2025. Here’s what I know:

“Tens of thousands of people in the United States and around the world are preparing to take to the streets on Saturday, April 5, in what organizers are calling the largest single day of protest since Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term. With more than 600 events planned across all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and multiple international cities, the message is unified and urgent: Hands off our rights, our resources, and our democracy.” (https://thetimesweekly.com/2025/03/global-protests-on-april-5-cities-unite-against-trump-and-musk/)

Keep your eyes and ears open for word of local gatherings and join them if you are able.

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Phyllis Meshulam’s New Book (Re)Creations

Congratulations to Sonoma County Poet Laureate Emerita Phyllis Meshulam on her new book (Re)Creations. The poems in (Re)Creations reframe and reclaim women and the Earth in response to texts like E.O. Wilson’s, The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, and our heritage of cultural traditions and sacred myths.

“This book offers what is most needed – a deep, personal and challenging journey into Humanity and its visions, lives, questions, and wonders. An incredible accomplishment, a visionary span, a warm-hearted dedication to all life.”
–Juan Felipe Herrera, United States Poet Laureate emeritus

To order your copy: send an email to jerrym@sonic.net, $28 ($23 + $5 shipping)\

Kelsay Books, February 2025, 104 pp.
ISBN #978-1-63980-680-5

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Sixteen Rivers Book Launches in April

April is National Poetry month, and it comes with a flurry of book launches and readings. Here is the information about the Sixteen Rivers North Bay and East Bay book launches. Hope you can join us for one or more of these! Others are listed on the calendar page.

(I realize that the Saturday reading coincides with the national day of protest, but I promise you, we will be making our voices heard through our poems.)

Saturday April 5 at 1 pm
North Bay Book Launch
Readers: Moira Magneson, Patrick Cahill, Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong, Terry Ehret and Nancy J. Morales
Location: Book Passage Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera

Sunday April 6 at 3 pm
Poetry Flash East Bay Book Launch
Readers: Moira Magneson, Patrick Cahill, Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong, Terry Ehret, and Nancy J. Morales
Location: Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave Berkeley

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Here’s a Quick Sampler of What’s in the April Calendar

Uncovering Sonoma County’s History Through Poetry
This is a free workshop with Poet Laureate Dave Seter at the Sonoma County History and Genealogical Library in Santa Rosa on Saturday, April 5, 1:00-3:00 p.m. Learn about documentary poetry, Sonoma County historical topics of interest including past and ongoing injustices, and how to utilize the resources available at the library to make your poems about Sonoma County history impactful. Details and registration: events.sonomalibrary.org/event/placeholder-history-poetry-workshop-dave-seter-73125

Sitting Room Celebrates Black Women Writers
Also on Saturday, April 5, 2:00-4:00 p.m. the Sitting Room Library will host a presentation for National Poetry Month: Conjuring the Past, Speaking to the Present, Celebrating Black Women Writers. Presenters will be Kim Hester Williams & Barbara Beatie. Limit 8. RSVP to JoAnn Borri: joannborri@gmail.com.

Rivertown Voices Presents Two Sonoma County Poets
Rivertown Poets presents a live reading at the Aqus Café on Monday, April 7, 6:15 p.m. The features are Larry Robinson and Fran Carbonaro. Open mic follows the features. Sign up at the cafe. Come early for good seats and dinner. The cafe is located at 189 H Street in downtown Petaluma.

Check out the Calendar page for more events, workshops, and readings.

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2025 Writers Conferences Accepting Applications

Napa Valley Writers’ Conference — July 20-25, 2025
Applications are now open for the 44th Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, napawritersconference.org. The admissions deadline for all applications, including requests for financial assistance, is April 21.

Mendocino Coast Writers Conference — July 31-August 2, 2025
General Registration is now open for our in-person conference taking place from July 31-August 2, 2025 in Mendocino. Reserve your spot in April and save on the conference fee! Registration is open until June 30, 2025. Learn more here.

All conference registrants are encouraged to submit to our writing contest which will be open for submissions until June 30, 2025. There is no entry fee. However, the contest is only open to registered participants of the full three-day conference. Winners will have the opportunity to read their work at the conference, receive credit to the conference bookstore, and winning entries are considered for publication in Noyo Review

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Poem for April

I have been featuring poems by Sonoma County writers each month, but this month, I wanted to offer a poem of resistance and hope. This one is by Tomas Transtromer, and was featured in the anthology America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience, published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2017, in response to the first Trump administration. The poems in this collection are profoundly relevant to our times. You can purchase a copy through our website, using this link: https://shop.sixteenrivers.org/products/america-we-call-your-name-poems-of-resistance-and-resilience

If you have a poem or short prose piece for our next or upcoming Literary Update posts, please scroll down for the submission guidelines.

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Allegro

by Tomas Tranströmer
translated by Ingar Palmlund

I play Haydn after a dark day
and sense an honest warmth in my hands.

The keys are willing. Mild hammers strike.
The tone is green, lively and still.

The tone says that freedom exists
and that someone does not pay the emperor tribute.

I push the hands deep into my haydnpockets,
mimicking one who quietly watches the world.

I raise the haydnflag — this means:
“We do not surrender. But want peace.”

The music is a glasshouse on the slope
where stones fly, stones roll.

And the stones roll right through
but each pane remains whole.

Original poem

Jag spelar Haydn efter en svart dag
och känner en enkel värme i händerna.

Tangenterna vill. Milda hammare slår.
Klangen är grön, livlig och stilla.

Klangen säger att friheten finns
och att någon inte ger kejsaren skatt.

Jag kör ner händerna i mina haydnfickor
och härmar en som ser lugnt på världen.

Jag hissar haydnflaggan — det betyder:
“Vi ger oss inte. Men vill fred.”

Musiken är ett glashus på sluttningen
där stenarna flyger, stenarna rullar.

Och stenarna rullar tvärs igenom
men varje ruta förblir hel.

From Den halvfärdiga himlen, Bonniers 1962
Copyright © Tomas Tranströmer 1962

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Send Us Your Poetry/Short Prose Selections for 2025

Starting in January of 2024, 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.

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Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor

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Posted by: wordrunner | March 1, 2025

2025-03 Update

March 1, 2025

Dear Literary Folk,

Uneasy times, to say the least. At moments like this, writing the monthly post feels like fiddling while Rome is burning. How can the literary goings-on in Sonoma County compare to the monumental civil crisis we are in, when our freedoms, self-definitions, civil respect and decency, not to mention the fate of democracy and our planet are all under threat?

And yet, many I have spoken with in our literary community the past few months have found a way to resist, and in that resistance is some sense of creative empowerment, or at least the potential for reclaiming of voice. We can share with each other what helps us face the world we wake up to each day with, if not hope, at least some clarity of vision. Here are some actions, all small in scale, that I’ve engaged in over the last few weeks.

My husband and I read out loud to each other Timothy Snyder’s book On Tyranny, published in 2017, during the first Trump administration, but even more chillingly applicable to what we are witnessing today. Snyder is a professor of 20^th century history, with a focus on totalitarian, authoritative, fascist regimes. Each short lesson presents a characteristic of tyrannical systems and their leaders, and what ordinary folk can do to resist.
I’ve donated small amounts to support those whose writing on social media helps clarify my understanding and vision (e.g. Heather Cox Richardson and Robert Reich).
I’ve stopped ordering or doing business with companies that financially supported Trump’s campaign or Project 2025, and refrained from any shopping on February 28, 2024 to join the national boycott.
I went onto GoogleMaps and reported an error: the Gulf of Mexico was misnamed Gulf of America.
I streamed Congressman Jared Huffman’s town hall meeting and felt encouraged by his willingness to call a coup a coup, and a constitutional crisis a crisis. It was good to hear so many other members of the community voicing their calls for opposition by our representatives.
I took Iris Dunkle’s workshop “Empowering Your Voice Through Multimedia Erasure” and set to work on recent Executive Orders that seemed to me in need to erasing. Sonoma County poet Margie Stein recently tried her hand at this, too, and you can read her erasure of Executive Order 14168 at the end of this post.

As I wrote last December, I encourage you all to write into the uncertainty, and if you are so inclined, please consider sending your work, prose or poetry, to me for possible inclusion an upcoming Literary Update. You’ll find submission guidelines at the end of this post.

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Toss Repeat Wins 2024 James Tate Prize

Congratulations to John Johnson on publication of his chapbook Toss Repeat. The publisher is SurVision Books in Ireland. Toss Repeat is one of the winners of the 2024 James Tate Prize. Use this link for more information about SurVision Books and/or to order John’s chapbook:
https://www.survisionmagazine.com/jamestateprizewinners.htm

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Spring Workshops with Dave Seter

Our Sonoma County Poet Laureate, Dave Seter, will be leading two workshops in March hosted by the Sebastopol Center for the Arts this Spring.

Sunday March 2: Abstraction through Form
Sunday March 30: Documentary Poetry

These workshops form a series of Poetry Challenges because they are meant to help poets expand the boundaries of what they might normally choose as subjects or poetic styles. That said, these workshops are meant for all levels from the beginning poet to the more experienced poet.

Seter is donating his time, so any fees go directly to support programs at SebArts. Follow this link for more details and to sign up: sebarts.org/literary-arts

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New Books from Sixteen Rivers

Sixteen Rivers Press is launching four new publications in April: The Department of Peace, by Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong, If we are the forest the animals dream, by Patrick Cahill, In the Eye of the Elephant, by Moira Magneson, and Plagios/Plagiarisms, Volume Three, by Ulalume Gonzalez de Leon, translated by Terry Ehret and Nancy J. Morales.

These books will all be available on the Sixteen Rivers website very soon, but you can order Plagios 3 right now from our distributor Itasca. Here’s the link. https://itascabooks.com/products/plagios-plagiarisms-volume-3

There are some upcoming book launches and events, to which you are all cordially invited. To start things off, Sixteen Rivers will be at the AWP Book Fair in Los Angeles. If you’re planning to attend, stop by and say hi. Our authors will be signing books all three days. And join us for our off-site reading on Friday at Catcher in the Rye Pub.

March 26-29 AWP Author Signings
Los Angeles Convention Center

Sixteen Rivers Book Fair Table T717
Thursday, March 27 , 1-2 PM —Terry Ehret and Nancy J. Morales
Friday, March 28, 2-3 PM—Moira Magneson and Patrick Cahill
Saturday, March 29, 10-11 AM—Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong

Friday, March 28, 5–7 p.m.
AWP Off-Site Reading
Location: Catcher in the Rye (a literary-themed pub),
10550 Riverside Drive, Toluca Lake, CA.

Saturday April 5 at 1 pm
North Bay Book Launch
Location: Book Passage Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera, CA 94925

Sunday April 6 at 3 pm
Poetry Flash East Bay Book Launch
Location: Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave Berkeley, CA 94705-1808

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Poem for March

Since Trump took office in January, he has issued more than 70 Executive Orders designed to implement the proposals in Project 2025. One of these is Executive Order 14168: Defending Women from Gender Idealogy Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.

Santa Rosa poet Margie Stein recently took on the task of correcting the language of this order to clarify its real intent.

Here is the result of her editorial work. (Click on image for full pdf.)

And here’s a link to a website where you can read the complete language of the Executive Order: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/30/2025-02090/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal

Marjorie is proud to be part of the LGBTQIA+ community and lives with her beloved wife in Santa Rosa. Her first book, An Atlas of Lost Causes, was published by Kelsey Street Press. Marjorie’s work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in American Poetry Journal, Blood Orange Review, The Denver Quarterly, Interim, Mary, New American Writing, VOLT and other publications.

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Send Us Your Poetry/Short Prose Selections for 2025

Starting in January of 2024, I began featuring a different Sonoma County writer each month at the end of the Literary Update Post. Here’s how to participate.

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).

____

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor

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Posted by: wordrunner | February 1, 2025

2025-02 Update

Dear Literary Folk,

Happy Cross-Season Day, Groundhog Day, Saint Brigit’s Day, Imbolc, or Lá Fhéile Bríde, the Celtic Goddess Brigid’s Day—however you celebrate our shortest month, halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Last week, I heard the first frogs of the season singing their love-chorus along the banks of Thompson Creek—a sure sign of spring on the way. It’s the Year of the Snake, as the Chinese celebrate it, and though 2025 already feels like a very bumpy ride, the Wood Snake in Chinese tradition represents wisdom, intelligence, adaptability, intuition, and transformation—all qualities we’ll need in the months and years ahead.

Three Local Writers Remembered
Three wonderful writers have left us in the past month: Margaret Kaufman, Joe Zaccardi, and Casey FitzSimons. I want to take time to honor each of these writers and what they have contributed to their literary communities.

Margaret Kaufman was a dear friend and fellow founding member of Sixteen Rivers Press. A poet, short story writer, teacher, and editor, Margaret was also very active with Temple Emmanu-El and with her family, and she taught workshops on writing at the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco. One of her poems, Aunt Sallie’s Lament, was published as a piece of book art, designed by Claire Van Vliet, using colored pages to mimic quilt pattern pieces, and words as stiches to weave a poignant narrative of a prairie woman. Another long poem, Sarah’s Sacrifice, published by Gefn Press, was set into cantata form by Ben Steinberg. Other books include Inheritance and Snake at the Wrist (both from Sixteen Rivers Press). In the last decade of her life, she struggled with dementia. She passed away on January 3, 2025. Fellow friend Valerie Berry said of Margaret, “She had that “Southern lady” style where graciousness was second nature, but watch out for the wit that could leave you wondering what butterfly just bashed some sense into you.”

Joe Zaccardi came to poetry “nel mezzo del cammin,” after a career that included being a medic in the Vietnam War. Joe was a poet of grace and sensitivity, evident in his collections The Weight of Bodily Touches from Kelsay Books and Songbirds of the Nine Rivers from Sixteen Rivers Press. One of Joe’s goals was to make of poetry an instrument of healing; indeed he was one of the kindest and most decent human beings I’ve ever known. Joe served as a board member and editor of the Marin Poetry Center Anthology 2010–2012. As poet laureate of Marin County (2012–2013), one of his projects was an anthology called Changing Harm into Harmony, on the subject of bullies and bystanders. A member of the LGBTQ community, Zaccardi believed that to write a single poem is a minor miracle. Mutual friend Murray Silverstein remembers this about the manuscript Joe submitted to Sixteen Rivers, destined to become Songbirds of the Nine Rivers: “I recall thinking, once I knew it was Joe’s, this is one man’s act of reparation, through poetry, for Viet Nam (where, of course, he served). And that made me love the book even more. The phrase “the redress of poetry” kept coming into my mind today (the title of one of Heaney’s books from years back) and I kept wondering why. Then, of course, it dawned: it’s what Joe achieved with Songbirds. . . . and really with the whole sequence of his books: each spoke to the world at such a different angle.” Joe passed away on January 15, 2025.

The poetry community mourns the loss of poet Casey FitzSimons, who passed on December 24, 2024.Casey was a frequent featured reader at San Francisco Bay Area poetry venues. She self-published 15 poetry books. She taught art in San Francisco for many years, was Director of Fine Arts at the Academy of Art College, served on the editorial staff of the Marin Poetry Center Anthology, and offered workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area on poetry craft and criticism. For those who wish to remember Casey, a tribute and poetry open mic celebrating her life will be held on April 12, 2025, in Half Moon Bay. Click on this link for more details about Casey’s life and work: pw.org/directory/writers/casey_fitzsimons.

Rivertown Poets Welcomes Sonoma County’s Poet Laureate and Youth Laureates
On Monday, February 3, at 6:15 p.m. Rivertown Poets, triple-header reading and open mic: featured poets will be Dave Seter, current Sonoma County Poet Laureate for 2024-2026, Youth Poet Laureate Lisa Zheng, and Youth Poet Ambassador Sabine Wolpert. Come early for dinner, good seats, and to sign up for open mic. The café fills fast. Aqus Cafe is located at 189 H Street. Open mic follows the readings. Please limit your share to one poem of less than three minutes.

Spring Workshops with Dave Seter
Our Sonoma County Poet Laureate, Dave Seter, will be leading three workshops hosted by the Sebastopol Center for the Arts this Spring. Sign up for one or all three.

Sunday March 2: Abstraction through Form
Sunday March 30: Documentary Poetry
Sunday May 4: Interweaving Text

Seter is donating his time, so any fees go directly to support programs at SebArts.

Follow this link for more details and to sign up: sebarts.org/literary-arts

Rumi’s Caravan Coming to Sebastopol
On Saturday, February 8, 7:00 p.m. A Benefit for SebARTS: Rumi’s Caravan 2025, An Evening of Poetry and Music in the Ecstatic Tradition at Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 282 High Street, Sebastapol. Tickets from $25.00. More information and registration: sebarts.org/classeslectures/p/a-benefit-for-sebarts-rumis-caravan-2025

Have You Got a Book in You?
On Thursday, February 20, 6:00-8:00 p.m. The first of four weekly sessions of “There’s a Book in Me!” with author and Creative Writing Professor Noelle Oxenhandler. $100 for the entire course. At the Sonoma Community Center, 276 E Napa Street, Sonoma.

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Poem for February

Yes and No Tsunami
by William Greenwood

I drove out on the wharf
the middle of a Friday as agreed,
no matter that the February clouds
weighed in like concrete blocks.

The worn planks rumbled
under my slow wheels
until, once inside, I grabbed
a table by the picture window,
watched the water roll and
searched the bay for gumption.

Who knows what we had to eat
―lunch lasted into dinner.
No tsunamis hit the coast
that afternoon, but my Richter
seismographic kept on
going off the charts.

William Greenwood has published translations from the Guatemalan of poet Arqueles Morales and three chapbooks of his own poetry: Into the Center of America (Green Horse Press), Landscape/Cityscape (WordTemple Press), and most recently Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Hope (Green Horse Press).

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Send Us Your Poetry/Short Prose Selections for 2025
Starting in January of 2024, I began featuring a different Sonoma County writer each month at the end of the Literary Update Post. Here’s how to participate.

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).

____

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor

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Posted by: wordrunner | January 2, 2025

2025-01 Terry’s Update

Dear Literary Folk,

Happy New Year to you all!

From 2000 to 2020, my husband Don and I hosted a New Year’s Poetry and Potluck Brunch at our home in Petaluma. Some friends from the literary community came every year. Some attended when they could. Whatever the griefs and troubles, both personal and political, we may have been carrying, this was always a warm, lively, inspiring way to launch each new year,

Then Covid forced us into social distancing, and though we might have kept the event going as a virtual zoom gathering, that just didn’t feel the same. So, for five years, we’ve welcomed the new year in quieter ways, usually up at our Sierra cabin, deep in snow. That’s been nice, too.

During these years, I have often heard from those who attended our Poetry Brunch just how much they have missed the gathering and its nurturing energy. We considered holding it at the Summer Solstice so we could all be outside (safer than gathering indoors), but summer is a time when many are traveling, myself included. And there was something about starting the year together that was very sweet. So my husband and I are considering resurrecting the event next year in 2026.

I realize that many of us are still wary of Covid, RSV, and other miserable bugs, so I imagine a 2026 gathering may be smaller than in past years. That’s fine, too. We have a year to think about how to make this all work, and to see whether an indoor gathering is still feasible.

After Seeing A Complete Unknown

Like many baby boomers, my husband and I went on New Year’s Eve to see the biopic about Bob Dylan’s debut on the New York folk music scene and his tumultuous departure from that scene when he “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival. I enjoyed the film, the music, and the acting. I wasn’t much bothered by the fact that Dylan remained as enigmatic at the end of the film as he was at the beginning. The title let me know the film wasn’t going to be revelatory. But it told a good story about someone who wanted to be “known” (as in famous) without being “known” (as in defined or owned), and I was intrigued by Dylan’s relationship with Woody Guthrie which the film conveyed (real or invented). I also appreciated the way the director let the music speak for itself, and to provide much of the story-telling, both what was going on with national social upheavals and what was unfolding in Dylan’s personal relationships.

I remember that when Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, many friends, colleagues, and students wondered if it was deserved. Dylan must have wondered, too, as he didn’t make his whereabouts known for a few weeks, and responded to the news with his accustomed arrogance. He also chose not to attend the ceremonies where he’d formally receive the recognition. Yes, I believe song lyrics are a form of literature, though more accurately a part of the oral tradition. And, yes, I believe lyricists can be recognized by Nobel (or other) Prizes. The fact that 13 films have been made by or about him, both documentary and biopic, is proof enough that his influence has been wide and deep, and still as perversely mysterious as it ever was.

Seeing the movie sent me back to a poem written by my friend and colleague Diane Lutovich, who grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota in the same Jewish Community as Bobby Zimmerman (aka Dylan), a poem which has always for me filled in some of the blanks about Dylan’s youth. It’s called “Dancing at Bobby Zimmerman’s Bar Mitzvah.” Here’s the opening stanza:

What were they thinking
those children in 1954; he,
the blue-eyed son wrapped in
a wrinkled tallis, his yarmulke levitating
on that huge head of curls; the blue-eyed
girl tripping in new high heels,
back and shoulders bare
as an invitation.

For the rest of Diane Lutovich’s nostalgic, poignant (and revelatory) poem, scroll down to the end of the post.

New Release of “Meeting Light/Encontrando La Luz”

Sebastopol poet Raphael Block has recently released a 3-minute film of his poem “Meeting Light/Encontrando La Luz” in two versions; one with English subtitles, and one with Spanish subtitles. The poem is featured on the Welcome Page of Raphael’s website, and comes from the book, At This Table, which is also available as a free audio download. Please spread the word to Spanish speakers and communities who might enjoy know the film.

Barbara Baer’s New Novel: Masha & Alejandro Crossing Borders

We inadvertently neglected to post a publication announcement in our December newsletter, so this is a shout-out for another extraordinary novel from prolific and talented Sonoma County author Barbara Baer, whose other novels include: Grisha the Scrivener, The Ballet Lover, The Last Devadasi and The Ice Palace Waltz.

Two young immigrants, Masha from Ukraine and Alejandro from El Salvador, move to rural, forested Trinity County, California. Masha works as a nurse in a regional hospital and Alex in an auto body shop. What they don’t expect are visits from a local militia group unfriendly to outsiders. Masha’s unvaccinated Covid patients blame her for their illness, while Alex faces hostility and violence from MAGA supporters. Alex and his son Tomas battle the Trinity wildfires side by side with unlikely allies, making peace with neighbors seem possible. The novel focuses on immigrants trying to find a home, the timeless American story in a time unlike any other.

Publisher: Spuyten Duvvil
ISBN: 978-1-963908-30-5, 292 pages, $25.00
Available at: https://www.spuytenduyvil.net/Masha-and-Alejandro.html
or on Amazon

Start Your Year with a Meditation and Writing Workshop

Santa Rosa poet and memoirist Clara Rosemarda is offering two writing workshops starting this month. The first of six Tuesday workshops is called “Not Contained Between My Hat and Boots: Creative Writing as Spiritual Practice.” It starts January 14 from 11 am to 1 pm. The second workshop series runs for six Thursdays, starting January 16 from 1-3 pm. It’s called TRANSITIONS: Finding Your New Narrative,

Both workshops are on Zoom. For information or to register (707) 567-7117 or rosen@sonic.net. Details on Workshops page.

Spring Workshops with Dave Seter

Our Sonoma County Poet Laureate, Dave Seter, will be leading three workshops hosted by the Sebastopol Center for the Arts this Spring. Sign up for one or all three.

Sunday March 2: Abstraction through Form
Sunday March 30: Documentary Poetry
Sunday May 4: Interweaving Text

Seter is donating his time, so any fees go directly to support programs at SebArts.

Follow this link for more details and to sign up: https://www.sebarts.org/literary-arts

Poetry Flash Needs Our Help

For almost 40 years, Poetry Flash has been a vital resource for California’s literary community. When I was a newbie in the writing world, a graduate student at SFSU just learning the ropes, Poetry Flash came out as a print newsletter, and every month, we snatched up the publication wherever it was available. Joyce Jenkins put together various and sundry announcements, articles, reviews, calls for submissions, and a calendar of readings and open mics in the Bay Area. I found my footing with the help of Poetry Flash. I imagine many of you did, too. Since then, Joyce, Richard Silberg, and many other contributors have expanded Poetry Flash’s reach and influence.

Like many nonprofits, especially in the literary world, Poetry Flash needs our help. Please consider sending a (tax deductible) donation that will support Poetry Flash’s living newspaper, the Watershed environmental poetry festival, the Northern California Books Awards, and much, much more. You can make a donation at this link: https://poetryflash.org/give/.

Annual Call for Submissions for Book-Length Poetry Manuscripts

Sixteen Rivers Press, a shared-work poetry collective with a three-year commitment, invites Northern California authors to submit full-length poetry manuscripts by our deadline of February 1, 2025. All manuscripts will be read blind, and typically one or two manuscripts are selected for publication. The winner(s) will be announced on the press’s website during summer 2025. Selected manuscripts will be scheduled for publication in spring 2027.

For full submission guidelines, use this link: https://sixteenrivers.org/submit

**Volume Three of Plagios/Plagiarisms Is Coming Soon!**

After more than twelve years, the monumental translation project to bring the complete published poems of Ulalume González de Leόn into print in three bilingual volumes is nearly complete! Official book release date of Plagios/Plagiarims, Volume Three is April 2, 2025.

The translations are by Terry Ehret and Nancy J. Morales (with essential help from John Johnson and Jabez Churchill, among others); the cover art is by Jeffrey Morales; the foreword is by William O’Daly. Volumes Two and Three are available on the Sixteen Rivers website. Volume Three is on its way from the printer as I write this and will be available for pre-order in February.

https://sixteenrivers.org/author-profiles/ulalume-gonzalez-de-león.

Here’s a preview of the cover and blurbs.

This third and final volume of Ulalume González de León’s Plagios is a triumph, a culmination of some of the most compelling elements of her poetic works: her exploration of found and familiar language, her curiosity and playfulness, her embrace of the everyday alongside the poetic. These revelatory poems create convergences that both delight and trouble as they incorporate song, riddles and games, nonsense, rumination, contemplation, and celebration. The poems in Plagios are threaded with the realities of time, darkness, loss, and even death, evidence of their comfort with duality and tension. This wonderful bilingual edition lays bare the precision and care of the translators’ work in bringing across the wordplay, depth, sensibility, and humor of her voice.

—Amanda Moore, author of Requeening,
selected for the 2020 National Poetry Series by Ocean Vuong

Weaving the remembered and the imagined into presences that disappear and live within us, that fill with darkness and light, breadth and depth of perception, this third and final volume of Ulalume González de León’s Plagios/Plagiarisms welcomes you. These remarkably original poems invite your participation as someone in whom the dynamics of this world, the physics of love, the veracity of rooms and mirrors, flowers and words, and the materiality of death . . . cultivate questions we live with night and day.

—William O’Daly, author of The New Gods
and translator of Pablo Neruda’s Book of Twilight

There are certain poets whose intelligence, sensitivity to the world, and instinct for the symbol, are singular and instantly recognizable. Ulalume González de León is tapped directly into the source. Her poetry, in lucid and lovely translation by Ehret and Morales, is concerned with what matters to all of us: presence and absence; how different times permeate our lives through memory; and our fate, which is to be continually left here in this world to remember until we ourselves leave. As this book progresses it achieves an almost unbearable level of intensity and honesty and directness of perception. This poet is a rare master. I return to her when I need to be reminded what poetry is, and can be.

—Matthew Zapruder, author of I Love Hearing Your Dreams

______

Poems for January

A Chill Wind
by Margaret Rooney

I wish I could resurrect yesterday
when hope was roused by bright reason
and the certainty of circumstance

before the dismantled truth
bled across the horizon
on today’s cold morning

I walk along a collapsing cliff
high above the grave
and trembling sea

a sharp beaked cormorant
lifts into a cushion of air
like an omen I cannot parse

untilled hills to the east
riddle with shadows
in cloud-dimmed light

there seems
to be no center
no above or below

only a bizarre spin of time
capsizing dreams
I thought were true

Margaret Rooney has been writing poetry for a while. She has a chapbook out called A Wild Rain and has been published in several of the Redwood Writers Poetry Anthologies and other journals. Two of her poems were nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2021.

______

Dancing at Bobby Zimmerman’s Bar Mitzvah
by Diane Lutovich (1937–2004)

Evening shone tender, blue
from inside, lighting up the town
as if the sun had refused to fully set.

The Androy Hotel, perched between
ore dumps and open pit mines, on Hibbing’s
one main street, its Crystal Lounge
awash with his aunts, uncles—Irenes,
Sylvias, Labels, Mikeys—all congratulating,
guzzling champagne, wrapping their dreams
around the bar mitzvah boy,
all to the beat
of sambas and rumbas
imported from Duluth;
chandeliers reflecting
light in a hundred directions
rousing people who’d been hibernating
for years. His mother beamed
over her blue-eyed boy who’d go far—
medical or law school she predicted.
He looked dazed or
ashamed, kept his feet shuffling, fingers tapping,
eager to leave for somewhere else.
I, too, couldn’t wait for those big-city lights,
attentive boys who knew how to dance, kiss.

No one would have guessed
how far we’d run after
the champagne was gone,
the guests coerced to their cars, homes,
and we had licenses of our own. But it was as far

from Hibbing—its open pit mines, its mounds
of red topsoil, winters of icy caves, and
summer nights sweet and fragrant as forget-me-nots—
as we could.

From What I Stole (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2003).

Diane Sher Lutovich, a writer and teacher of writing, was a native of Hibbing, Minnesota. She passed away on June 2, 2004, after having fought a long and tenacious battle with cancer. Her poetry has received several awards and has appeared in a number of reviews and anthologies. She is the author of Nobody’s Child: How Older Women Say Good-bye to Their Mothers, published by Baywood Press, and In the Right Season, published posthumously by Sixteen Rivers Press.

______

Terry Ehret
Co-editor, Sonoma County Literary Update

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Posted by: wordrunner | December 1, 2024

2024-12 Update

Dear Literary Folk,

These words of Rainer Maria Rilke have been on my mind:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer” (from Letters to a Young Poet.)

Some of us may be feeling stunned and dismayed by the world we awoke to last November 6, trying to find our footing on unfamiliar ground. Rilke’s quote addresses the necessity of living with uncertainty, “try[ing] to love the questions.” I’ve been thinking about what it means to live and love the questions. When I go out walking along the creekside trail near my house, I meet familiar faces, fellow walkers, many with their dogs. We greet each other, both dogs and walkers, perhaps a little cautious of political conversation, till we recognize that we are all walking this path, metaphoric and literal, together. That sense of connection is a language we can understand, a door that isn’t locked to us, and gives us the grounding we need to accept this time of uncertainty. “We’ve been here before,” we say, but in truth, we haven’t.

I first encountered Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet when I was in college and taking my first poetry writing workshops. In a recent romp through very old journals, dating back to 1975, I came upon another quote that was an important touchstone for me back when I was 19 and finding my way by fear or feel towards some kind of life with purpose and meaning. These words may be very familiar to many of you, too. They are from Carlos Castañeda’s The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. Castañeda relates a question Don Juan posed: “Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question… Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use.” Among the questions we’re learning to love and live, let’s add this one about the path we are walking, alone or together, into this unfamiliar world.

I encourage you all to write into the uncertainty, whether the language you find for this is in “a very foreign tongue” or brushes up against familiar forms that help us carry forward with hope. And if you are so inclined, please consider sending your work, prose or poetry, to me for possible inclusion an upcoming Literary Update. I’m especially looking for poems or prose that may help us start the new year. You’ll find submission guidelines at the end of this post.

Literary Events for December

Of course, there are many upcoming events you’ll want to get onto your calendars. Here are two I want to give a shout-out to.

On Monday, December 2, 6:15 p.m. Rivertown Poets goes live at Aqus Café, featuring Rivertown Poets founder and host Sandra Anfang, visiting from her new home in Las Vegas, and co-hosts Monica Volker and Shawna Swetech. Open mic follows the features. Open mic slots are three minutes each, including any introduction or backstory. If you’d like to be added to the list or, have any questions send an email to rivertownpoet@gmail.com. The list fills very quickly; it’s better to sign up and then cancel later, if necessary.

And on Saturday, December 14, 2:00 p.m. Book Passage presents Left Coast Writers®. Featured book: Wandering in American Deserts: Discovery, Visions, Redemption. Speakers TBA. Work by: Madeleine Adkins, J. R. Barnett, Daphne Beyers, Hugh Biggar, Michael J. Fitzgerald, Peg Wendling Gerdes, Cyndi Goddard, Thomas Harrell, Naomi Lopez, Mary Jean Pramik, Anne Sigmon, Tatum Tomlinson, Maw Shein Win, Judy Zimola and more …. Details: bookpassage.com/event/left-coast-writers%C2%AE-wandering-american-deserts-discovery-visions-redemption-corte-madera-store

Call for Submissions for SCW’s Women Artists Datebook

One of my favorite publishers is the Syracuse Cultural Workers in New York state. I’ve promoted their work here before because it is rare to find a group so committed to the creative folk who move our collective vision forward, and so inclusive in their promotion of artists.

This year’s 2025 Women Artists Datebook is available on their website at https://syracuseculturalworkers.com/products/2025-women-artists-datebook-1. You could order a copy for yourself, or to give as gifts. Or browse the website for other items that might suit your taste and needs.

If you like what you see, consider submitting your art or poetry for the 2026 datebook. The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2025, but early submissions are welcome. Submission guidelines can be found here: https://syracuseculturalworkers.com/pages/call-for-art.

You can submit these at datebook@SyracuseCulturalWorkers.com. They are also accepting submissions of artwork for their 2026 Peace Calendar, posters, holiday cards, etc.

Annual Call for Submissions for Book-Length Poetry Manuscripts

Sixteen Rivers Press, a shared-work poetry collective with a three-year commitment, invites Northern California authors to submit full-length poetry manuscripts between November 1, 2024 and February 1, 2025. All manuscripts will be read blind, and typically one or two manuscripts are selected for publication. The winner(s) will be announced on the press’s website during summer 2024. Selected manuscripts will be scheduled for publication in spring 2027.

Online Submissions: Send an e-mail to submissions@sixteenrivers.org with your name, address, phone number, and the name of your manuscript. Attach a PDF of your manuscript to the e-mail address (name the PDF with the title of your manuscript). In the body of the e-mail, please include a personal statement (350 to 500 words) about why you want to work in a publishing collective, including any special experience or skills you might contribute, and tell us where you heard about the press and our call for submissions. The manuscript must be e-mailed no later than February 1, 2025. Note: We do not accept hard-copy manuscripts sent by US mail. Please do not include your name anywhere in your manuscript, as it is important that your manuscript be a blind submission. The manuscript must be single-spaced and between 60 and 90 pages. Manuscripts must be previously unpublished, although individual poems may have been published online or in print. The manuscript should include a title page without the author’s name and address, a table of contents, and an acknowledgments page listing previous publications of the poems.

Sixteen Rivers values diversity. We encourage poets of color, young poets, and LGBTQ poets to submit.

______

Two Poems for December

Last December, as 2023 was coming to an end, Dan Coshnear sent this poem, which I saved for the right occasion. It speaks to me this December, and so I share it with you.

Which Password?

A poem like this could bore you.
It’s about fish farm management,
the history of concrete,
the mating rituals of lepidoptera,
and the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit.
It’s about lipids and saturation.
It’s about somewhere in some city
something called an Archdiocese.
It’s about toting your heavy heart
and two cases of cat food in cans
up six flights of stairs.
Your thumbs aren’t fast enough
to get past this poem. It’s about
your thoughts while you’re waiting
to renew your password. Send it.
Send it already! It’s about the time
you looked up to see
the face of the stripper.
So naked everything seemed.
It’s about the groan of your engine
and searching the dark, dusty shed
one more time
for the jumper cables.

Daniel Coshnear is the author of a previous collection of stories, Jobs & Other Preoccupations (Helicon Nine Editions), which was awarded the Willa Cather Prize in Fiction. He teaches in a variety of university extension programs, including University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco State University. Coshnear works at a group home for homeless men and women with mental illness. He lives in Guerneville, California with his wife Susan and their children Circe and Daedalus.

____

And here’s a poem for the year’s end by Jodi Hottel.

Threshold

I distill the year just passed
‘til amber liquid gleams—
but it’s a bitter draught,
not the honey it would seem.

I weave a fabric from alone,
a garment stitched from days,
wrap myself in lonely
‘til its seams begin to fray.

Under mulch and ash I burrow,
cloak myself with leaves,
wait for warmth to follow—
yearning for relief.

I cross into the new year,
So full of hope
full of fear.

Jodi Hottel’s recent chapbook is Out of the Ashes from Pandemonium Press. Previous chapbooks are Voyeur from WordTech Press (2017) and Heart Mountain, winner of the 2012 Blue Light Press Poetry Prize. Jodi’s been published in Nimrod International, Spillway, Ekphrasis, and anthologies including the University of Iowa Press and the Marin Poetry Center. Her work has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Sonoma County. jodihottel.com

____

Send Us Your Poetry/Short Prose Selections for 2025

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.

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).

____

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor

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Posted by: wordrunner | November 1, 2024

2024-11 Update Blogpost

Dear Literary Folk,

It feels like we have all been wringing our hands these past few weeks leading up to Tuesday’s election. Some of us feel like the hands we have been figuratively (or literally) wringing. I hope you will all take the time to vote, and if you already have, thank you! So much is at stake.

Back in the fall of 2016, I led a workshop at the Sitting Room called “Singing in Dark Times: Reading and Writing Political Poems.” Certainly you all remember that particular election. Dark times indeed. One of the poems we read together was “Enemies,” by Wendell Berry:

____

Enemies

If you are not to become a monster,
you must care what they think.
If you care what they think,

how will you not hate them,
and so become a monster
of the opposite kind? From where then

is love to come—love for your enemy
that is the way of liberty?
From forgiveness. Forgiven, they go

free of you, and you of them;
they are to you as sunlight
on a green branch. You must not

think of them again, except
as monsters like yourself,
pitiable because unforgiving.

____

Today I marked my ballot and dropped it in the ballot collection box outside the Veteran’s Memorial Building. On Monday, the sun poured in through the open doors of the cemetery chapel where my family and I set our sister’s urn in her niche. On Saturday, my daughter sang Bach’s “Ave Maria” and “Make Me a Channel of Your Peace,” the latter an adaptation of the Prayer of Saint Francis, which is framed in stained glass in that cemetery chapel. But how to be a channel of peace? Is there a way to hone ourselves, keep ourselves in tune so when we are called to place a calming hand on this troubled world, we’re ready?

I’ve learned over many years of writing and teaching that the gift, whatever that is, comes not so much to us as through us. And with whatever writing practice we’ve adopted, we are tuning ourselves as instruments. Maybe voting is a kind of exercise, certainly an exercise in hope, like taking the time to breathe through a difficult moment. And in breathing, we take in the ghosts around us, so full of the hope we’re needing.

This time of year, our dead come close to us, like the Super Moon in the perigee of its elliptical orbit. Make room for them. Gather them up like windfall apples. Think of them in the small acts of remembrance you may be inclined to on this Día de los Muetos. Ask them to guide us toward the kind of liberty, child of forgiveness, that Wendell Berry speaks of in his poem. Ask them to help us preserve that other liberty we are in danger of losing. But such prayers are not enough. We each have to do our part. As Mary Harris “Mother” Jones once said, “Pray for the dead. Fight like hell for the living.” And as another wise woman, Grace Paley, put it “Hope is action.” Let’s hone our instruments and get to work!

Poetry from the North Country: Lynne Knight and Katherine Hastings

I’m looking forward to zooming in for Monday’s Rivertown Poets, partly because the two featured readers are dear friends who have moved out of our geographical circle, but who are very much part of the work we all do here in the Bay Area. Katherine Hastings, our former Sonoma County Poet Laureate and director of WordTemple Reading Series, will be joining us via zoom from her new home in upstate New York, not far from the Canadian border. And Lynne Knight, colleague at Sixteen Rivers Press, will be joining us from her new home in British Columbia, Canada.

The reading will be on Monday, November 4, 6:15 p.m., followed by open mic. Open mic slots are three minutes each, including any introduction or backstory. If you’d like to be added to the list or, have any questions send an email to rivertownpoet@gmail.com. The list fills very quickly; it’s better to sign up and then cancel later, if necessary. Join Zoom Meeting: us06web.zoom.us/j/6508887879. Passcode: 2241991

West Side Stories: Less than Perfect

Join the chorus of Sonoma County storytellers on Wednesday, November 13, 7:30-9:00 p.m. when Dave Pokorny presents West Side Stories. Theme: Less than Perfect. The event takes place at Polly Klaas Community Theater, 417 Western Avenue, Petaluma. Details and ticket ($21.50) purchase: davepokornypresents.com/west-side-stories.

Annual Call for Submissions for Book-Length Poetry Manuscripts

Sixteen Rivers values diversity. We encourage poets of color, young poets, and LGBTQ poets to submit.

Two Poems for November

I received two submissions this month, and found I wanted to include them both, as they each speak so eloquently to the season and its embrace (and transformation) of grief.

____

Visitation
by Lisa Shulman

Sometimes the dead drop in for a visit
unannounced they slip past me on the step
having no need for doors locked or open
they make themselves at home, kick off their shoes
rest cold bones on empty creaking rockers
thumb through yesterday’s newspaper, old
New Yorkers, dusty books of poetry
or argue idly over the remote.

Sometimes the dead settle in the back seat
without asking, tag along for the ride
press pale cheeks to cool glass, watch flickering
reflections of light play on wet pavement.
I hear them whisper wordless seashell sounds
behind my back, as if I were the ghost.

Sometimes I think they fiddle with the knobs
on the radio when I’m not looking.
Why else would these hot tears spring to my eyes
at an old song I’ve never heard before?
Why else would I mourn at a certain turn
where crooked arms of valley oaks reach out,
an empty embrace holding a cold sky
reminding me of all that I have lost?

Sometimes I doubt, but if the dead do not
stop by, why then do I push back my plate
the bread in my mouth turned ash and dust?
Why then do I wrap myself in blankets,
warding off the dull chill of silent rooms
that are at once empty and too full to bear?

____

Lisa Shulman is a writer, children’s book author, and teacher. Her work has appeared in New Verse News, ONE ART, Poetry Breakfast, Catamaran, Minnow Literary Magazine, California Quarterly, The Best Small Fictions, and a number of other magazines and anthologies. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Lisa’s poetry has also been performed by Off the Page Readers Theater. Her chapbook Fragile Bones, Fierce Heart is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Lisa lives in Northern California where she teaches poetry with California Poets in the Schools. http://www.lisashulman.com

____

So Easy to Forget
by Raphael Block

Grief has its rocks, waves, tides,
spiraling depths—
and, like the vast ocean,
it’s full of life, its folds filled
with cod, squid, salmon, and kelp.

The ones I’ve lost swim inside—
some closer than in life—
their fins brushing against my skin.

They knock on my ribs, sometimes
to wake me from reverie,
and, in the night, their blessings
murmur in my blood.

____

Raphael Block is the author of five poetry books, The Dreams We Share (2023), At This Table, Strings of Shining Silence, Spangling Darkness, and Songs from a Small Universe. Raphael produces the monthly Earth-Love Newsletter which can be viewed at raphaelblock.com along with a National Geographic selected 5-minute documentary.

____

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.

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).

____

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor

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Posted by: wordrunner | October 1, 2024

2024-10 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.

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).

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor

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Posted by: wordrunner | September 1, 2024

2024-09 Update

Dear Literary Folk,

News from Budapest
Actually, I’m enjoying a quiet morning in the town of Eger, center of Hungary’s wine country. The landscape looks a little like home, except it’s so remarkably green and has a few more castles.

I’ll be going wine tasting this afternoon before heading to Budapest where we will spend a few days (and no, I won’t be driving—we have a Hungarian guide and a Slovenian driver getting us from place to place).

My husband and I have been two weeks in Central Europe, first visiting relatives in Prague, and then with a small tour group making our way through Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, and Slovenia.

I’ve been posting photos and travel notes on Facebook, if you’re curious about the details.

Because this post is being typed one-fingerstyle on my iPhone, I’ll keep it short and ask your understanding if an event or announcement doesn’t get the shout-out it deserves.

Remembering Maureen Hurley
I imagine many of you reading this post knew Maureen Hurley. She was a vital force in the Sonoma County writing scene, especially the Russian River Writers Guild and California Poets in the Schools. She was truly a dynamic and energizing poet, artist, and teacher. When I moved to Sonoma County in 1990, Maureen was one of my mentors with California Poets in the Schools, and over the years we got to know each other’s lives and poetry pretty well, even discovering we have some common Irish relatives.

On July 15, 2024 Maureen Hurley suddenly and tragically died.

Maureen went to College of Marin to earn her AA, working in the theatre with Robin Williams, Michael Pritchard and a whole cast of characters. Maureen went on to Sonoma State University to complete her bachelor’s in Art, discovering her ability to tell stories in writing and poetry.

Maureen took jobs with local independent newspapers honing her writing and photography skills. She had fabulous editors who helped her learn and thrive in this creative world she discovered. Maureen also worked as an Artist in Residence for California Poets in the schools, teaching students poetry and art from pre-K through high school. Sonoma County was her stomping grounds at any or all the schools that supported the Arts hired her to teach. Maureen completed her last residency in May 2024 at Alexander Valley School after more than 40 years.

Maureen travelled the world studying ancient Celtic sites in Europe. 1986 travel to the USSR for cultural poetry and writing exchange, she lived in Moscow. She also travelled in Mexico, Central and South America, learning, seeing and experiencing indigenous cultures. She saw the wonder in the Galapagos Islands, swimming with dolphins and turtles.

A more complete obituary is posted online at Legacy.com, also the location for a celebration of life will be announced there.

Petaluma Poetry Walk
The Petaluma Poetry Walk is an annual poetry festival founded in September 1996 by the late poet Geri Digiorno. It features 25 poets reading their work at eight venues. The event has grown over the years, attracting notable poets and a diverse audience and includes readings in both English and Spanish.

During this day-long “movable feast,” participants walk to different locations to enjoy a variety of poetic performances. It has become a cherished tradition in Petaluma, reflecting the city’s rich cultural and literary heritage.

Go to petalumapoetrywalk.org for the full day’s schedule of poets and venues.

Poets: Christina Lloyd, Alice Templeton, Murray Silverstein, Emily Schulten, Lynn Watson, Gene Berson, Jonah Raskin, Lisa Summers, Stacey Tuel, Avotcja, Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş, Nancy Miller Gomez, Lee Herrick, Genny Lim, Ellery Akers, Lee Rossi, Georgina Marie Guardado, Jodi Hottel, Elizabeth Jiménez Montelongo, Emilie Lygren, Kirk Lumpkin, Chris Olander, Lin Marie deVincent, Fran Carbonaro, Dave Seter.

Event Presenters: Terry Ehret, Gwynn O’Gara, Daedalus Howell, Elizabeth Herron, Iris Jamahl Dunkle, Francesca Bell, Sabine Wolpert, John Johnson, Bill Vartnaw, and Kary Hess, with Steve Shain on standup bass.

Venues: Hotel Petaluma, The Petaluma Cheese Shop, Keller Street CoWork, The Phoenix Theater, Copperfield’s Books, Usher Gallery, The Petaluma Historical Library and Museum, and Aqus Café.

Sixteen Rivers Poetry Reading in Berkeley

Ed Coletti’s Fall Poetry Festival
final reading event of the year at Café Frida Gallery, 300 South A Street, Santa Rosa, on the outdoor stage, will happen on Sunday, September 29th at 1 PM. Any of you who have attended regularly know this series to be a joyful festival which began following the height of the pandemic when poets and audiences were hungering to get out and mingle. Each subsequent gathering has been similarly well-received by large (at least by poetry reading standards) audiences. Come one, Come all! Come early to enjoy lunch and listen to the jazz! Readers, not necessarily in this order, will be: Elizabeth Herron, Dave Seter, Pat Nolan, Ed Coletti, Nancy Dougherty, Arthur Dawson, Brian Martens, Jodi Hottel. Steve Shain will provide accompaniment on bass.

Call for Micro-Prose Submissions
Sonoma-County based Wordrunner eChapbooks, a hybrid literary journal and chapbook publication, has a new call out in September for MICRO-PROSE, to be published online in October. Free submissions, one per author. A maximum of 200 words (fiction or nonfiction). Submit your polished gem of a micro before September 30. Guidelines: echapbook.com/submissions.html#micros

A Labor of Love
Are any literati reading this interested in a labor of love? Jo-Anne could use some help keeping the Literary Update up to date and thus re-vitalized. No technical skills are required. Some of our pages are sadly out of date and need to be checked for accuracy. Are all ongoing groups still ongoing? Have writers’ connections expired? If interested, you may contact her at: editor@socolitupdate.com.

______

Poem for September

Safeway
by Elizabeth Bennett

Your shapeless pink knit dress
hangs straight down your shapeless legs
to the toes of your black slippers.
The tag “Blair” sticks out from your collar.
You don’t know.
In the slow line of “Express < 15 Items”
we stand.
You inspect Carmello and Hershey bars
content to plan an evening of chocolate.
You don’t know how sad I am
standing behind you.
I offer to fix your tag
and we meet in a sliver of dignity.

“Safeway” is from the chapbook The Price of Saffron, which can be purchased at Copperfield’s Bookstore in Sebastopol for $11.95.

Elizabeth Bennett‘s career has been as a teacher of English and ESL. Snce 2022, she has extended her love of teaching as a California Poet in the Schools. She has published two other chapbooks, Frog Takes Her Leap (1996), and The Colors of Apricots (2008). She takes immense pleasure in sharing and receiving the inspiration that poetry creates. She lives in Sebastopol, California.

______

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-editor

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Posted by: wordrunner | August 1, 2024

2024-08 Update

Dear Literary Folk,

I want to let you all know that I will be traveling in Central Europe August 18 through September 8, visiting Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, and Slovenia. If I’m able to get internet service, I’ll try composing a post for September from Budapest. It may be just a brief description of a highlight or two, along with some photos. Alas, I will miss the upcoming reception for our next Poet Laureate Dave Seter on August 18, but I’ll be back in plenty of time for the Poetry Walk on September 15. Information about both these events is included below and on our calendar page.

Emily Wilson’s Modern Vision of Ancient Myths
Hats off to the team of writers and directors of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference! Last week’s conference was brimming with readings, craft lectures, workshops—some free and open to the public. Though I wasn’t able to attend as a participant, I made the trek from Petaluma to Napa twice to attend a craft lecture and reading by classicist and translator Emily Wilson. Wilson is quite extraordinary as a scholar, poet, and storyteller, and I am especially grateful to Iris Dunkle for introducing me to her.

I was captivated by her presentations, and especially moved when, at the close of her craft talk on translation, Emily Wilson read a scene from Homer’s Iliad in which King Priam, who has lost his son and heir, Hector, in battle, takes off his crown and goes secretly in the night to the enemy camp and the tent of the Greek chieftain Achilles, the man who has killed his son. He goes at great risk to his life and against the wishes of his queen to ask for Hector’s body. Achilles has kept the body to desecrate in full view of the Trojan king and his people, trying to find some solace for his own grief, rage, and guilt over the loss of his dear friend Patroclos at Hector’s hands. The two men meet, and in this very human moment, Priam touches his enemy’s knees.

It is an ancient gesture, a sacred request to be heard, to be granted some blessing one has no right to ask for. The one who receives this gesture must think very carefully before responding.

Achilles hesitates. He, too, is risking much. But Priam takes Achilles’ hand in his and kisses it–kisses the hand that has slain his son. Finally Achilles agrees to hear what the old man has come to say. For a brief time, they speak, not as enemies, not as king and warrior, Trojan and Greek, but as two human beings who are grieving. Achilles agrees to return Hector’s body and to allow a temporary truce for both sides to bury their dead. After that moment, the two return to their roles and their worlds. The war resumes. Within a year they will both be dead, and the worlds they knew will vanish.

I don’t know why this scene moves me to tears. It was clear many in the audience felt the same way, as did Wilson herself. There is an old adage that war is men’s tears, and this scene certainly illustrates that. But it also holds out the hope that beyond the power of fickle gods, corrupt governments, or self-serving corporations with their disregard for human life, it is possible for enemies to share their deepest humanity and to act with decency and honor, to carve out a small space of peace against all odds.

I wish this for all of us in our time of division and violence, warfare and injustice from which there seems no respite or reprieve. Wilson pointed out that both Homer’s world and our own are societies in their last days where violence is glorified and pain is entertainment. And yet, although ostensibly an epic of war, Homer’s Iliad does not celebrate warfare. This scene, as well as others in the epic, speaks to our common humanity and offers us a glimpse of what came before the clashing shields and swords of patriarchal Bronze Age Europe, and what we might take into our own world, if we seize the chance to remake it.

You can learn more about Emily Wilson and her work on this website: emilyrcwilson.com.

Petaluma Poetry Walk GoFundMe Campaign
The 2024 Petaluma Poetry Walk is coming up on September 15, but we need your help to fund this year’s event. The goal is to raise $2,000 to cover some expenses and to make sure the featured authors are paid a small stipend—usually enough to cover their expenses for gas and food. John Johnson and Dave Seter are organizing this fundraiser on behalf of Bill Vartnaw.

If you can contribute something, however small, please check out the GoFundMe page:
gofundme.com/f/PetalumaPoetryWalk2024

The Poetry Walk begins 11:00 a.m. at Hotel Petaluma and winds up for the Grand Finale at Aqus Cafe, 6:00-8:00 p.m. The schedule may be found at: petalumapoetrywalk.org

Celebrate Our Poets Laureate Elizabeth Herron and Dave Seter
You are all invited to a reception to honor outgoing Poet Laureate, Elizabeth Herron and our new Laureate, Dave Seter on Sunday, August 18, 2-5 pm at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 282 S High St Sebastopol CA. This link will get you to the SebArts website where you can register for this event. The event Is free, but donations welcome. sebarts.org/classeslectures/p/soco-poet-laureate-inauguration-dave-seter

You can also hear Dave read on Monday, August 5 at 6:15 p.m. Rivertown Poets will be live at Aqus Cafe. Featured poets are Abby Bogomolny and Fred Carroll. Our new Sonoma County Poet Laureate Dave Seter will open the reading. Open mic follows the features. First come, first read. Come early for dinner and a spot on the list. Please time your reading to no more than 3 minutes total and no more than two poems, so that everyone has a chance to share. Sign up at Aqus, 189 H Street, Petaluma. Questions? Email rivertownpoet@gmail.com.

Poem for August
This month, we are featuring a poem by Fran Carbonaro. I will continue posting 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. You can check at the end of this post for submission guidelines.

_______

You Turn

by Fran Carbonaro

In the absence of kindness
take one deep breath
and then let it go
into the heat of confusion
or an echoless emptiness
where it may be swallowed up
like a dove in a black hole
listen as it coos gently in the dark

The next breath may disorient you
that’s a good sign
go ahead
lose your way
your point
your imitation
of someone you don’t
now recognize

You’ve made a U-turn
and like a boomerang
struck by lightning
random acts of kindness
now seem as natural
as being breathed into self
one who has forgiven
any part of the whole that
might have believed
you were not enough

from Out of the Blue, published by northern California fmsbw press

Fran will read from, Out of the Blue, followed by a short reception and open mic on Saturday, August 24, 2:00-4:30 p.m. Location: Church of the Incarnation, 636 Cherry St., Santa Rosa. A portion of book sales will benefit the Journey Center in Santa Rosa. More details: journeycentersantarosa.org/event/poetry-book-launch-open-mic

_______

Send Us Your Poetry/Short Prose Selections for 2024
Since January of 2024. I have selected a poem or short prose piece by a Sonoma County writer to include at the end of each monthly Literary Update post. 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).

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update co-editor

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Posted by: wordrunner | July 1, 2024

2024-07 Update

Dear Literary Folk,

Congratulations to Our Next Sonoma County Poet Laureate, Dave Seter!

The Sonoma County Poet Laureate Selection Committee is proud to announce that Dave Seter has been named Sonoma County Poet Laureate 2024-2026 from a field of gifted and well-qualified finalists. His term runs from August 2024 through July 2026.

Every Poet Laureate is a Sonoma County resident whose poetry manifests a high degree of excellence, who has produced a critically acclaimed body of work, and who has demonstrated a commitment to the literary arts in Sonoma County.

Dave Seter is a civil/environmental engineer, poet and essayist. He is the author of Don’t Sing to Me of Electric Fences (Cherry Grove Collections, 2021) and Night Duty (Main Street Rag, 2010). He writes about social and environmental issues, including the intersection of the built world and the natural world. He is also an emerging translator of contemporary Lithuanian poetry. His poems have won the KNOCK Ecolit Prize and received third place in the William Matthews competition. He is the recipient of two Pushcart nominations. His poems, essays, and book reviews have appeared in various publications including Appalachia, Cider Press Review, The Florida Review, The Hopper, The Museum of Americana, Poetry Northwest (forthcoming), and others. He has been an Affiliate Artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts, and has served on the Board of Directors of Marin Poetry Center. He earned his undergraduate degree in engineering from Princeton University and his graduate degree in humanities from Dominican University of California.

Dave’s project will be a county-wide initiative based on “Our California,” a poetry project developed by California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick and the California Arts Council. The first phase of “Our California” encourages individual Californians to write poems and submit them for posting on the arts council’s website. Dave will expand the concept in Sonoma County into more of a community-based project incorporating workshops and supportive readings of “Our Sonoma County” poems generated in the workshops. “The idea is to encourage dialogue on what it means to live in Sonoma County, and to assemble a poetic collage of Sonoma County’s history which incorporates a wide range of voices from diverse cultural backgrounds.” Workshops and readings associated with this project would take place primarily within our county library system and would be distributed throughout as wide a range of geographic locations within the county as possible. All events would be free to the public. No prior experience with poetry would be necessary for anyone wishing to attend and participate.

The Sebastopol Center for the Arts, along with the Poet Laureate Selection Committee, invites the public to a reception on Sunday, August, 18, 2024 at 2 PM. We’ll be honoring our outgoing Poet Laureate Elizabeth Herron and our new Laureate Dave Seter. Register for the reception on the SebArts website at sebarts.org/classeslectures/p/soco-poet-laureate-inauguration-dave-seter.

Remembering Jackie Kudler

43 years ago at the Napa Valley Poetry Conference (it was strictly poetry in its first few years), I met the brilliant poet Jackie Kudler. Though she lived and taught in Marin County and served on the board of the Marin Poetry Center, she was also well-known and loved by many of us in Sonoma County. 25 years ago, Jackie and I and five other Bay Area poets joined our visions to launch Sixteen Rivers Press. Her wisdom, candidness, humor, poetry and articles on local hikes were gifts for which she will long be remembered. Jackie died in June of complications of ALS. This fall Sixteen Rivers will release a posthumous collection of her poems, Ripenings. Her previous publications are Sacred Precinct and Easing Into Dark, both available at shop.sixteenrivers.org/collections/all.

To read one of Jackie’s poems, “The Machines,” scroll down to the Poem for June at the end of this post.

Petaluma Poetry Walk GoFundMe Campaign

The 2024 Petaluma Poetry Walk is coming up on September 15, but we need your help to fund this year’s event. The goal is to raise $2,000 to cover some expenses and to make sure the featured authors are paid a small stipend—usually enough to cover their expenses for gas and food. John Johnson and Dave Seter are organizing this fundraiser on behalf of Bill Vartnaw.

If you can contribute something, however small, please check out the GoFundMe page: gofundme.com/f/PetalumaPoetryWalk2024

The Poetry Walk begins 11:00 a.m. at Hotel Petaluma and winds up for the Grand Finale at Aqus Cafe, 6:00-8:00 p.m. The schedule may be found at: petalumapoetrywalk.org

Poetry Readings for Reverberations

For Reverberations 2024, Sebastopol Center for the Arts (SebArts) is bringing together 56 rarely-seen works from curated Sonoma County collections along with 56 original ekphrastic poems written by some of the Bay Area’s most notable poets. These works offer an intimate adventure into realms of visual and literary art, shown side-by-side, supporting and enhancing meaning and expression.

The SebArts gallery is open Tuesday-Sunday: 10 am-4 pm with extended hours on Fridays: 10 am-7 pm. Reverberations 2024 will be on display through August 10. This month there will be two poetry readings by poets whose work is featured in the Reverberations Exhibit.

Tuesday, July 9, 2:00-4:00 p.m. This reading features Margaret Barkley, Amrita Skye Blaine, Terry Ehret, Robin Gabbert, Patricia Hartnett, Alicia Hugg, Karl Kadie, Briahn Kelly-Brennan, Patricia Nelson, Jean Wong.. Readings are free (separate $25 admission to Reverberations art show). Details/registration: sebarts.org/classes-lectures/poetry-readings-reverberations-2024-jul-9-2024

Sunday, July 21, 1:00-3:00 p.m. This reading feature: Susan Ackerman, Barbara Armstrong, Laura Blatt, Abby Bogomolny, Fran Carbonaro, Nancy Dougherty, Rebecca Evert, Gwynn O’Gara, Linda L Reid, Lee Rossi and Robert Thomas. Readings are free (separate $25 admission to Reverberations art show). Details/registration: sebarts.org/classes-lectures/poetry-readings-reverberations-2024-jul-21-2024

In the Dark

Off the Page Readers Theater and Redwood Writers invites local North Bay writers of all genres to submit up to five pieces of writing that may be selected for a dramatic reading. The theme is “In the Dark.”

It happens to us all, doesn’t it?

Someone comes to us, expecting something, and we feel clueless about the particular circumstance….. or, we find ourselves in a place and time that we don’t recognize.

Then there’s the literal meaning …The physical dark holds the unseen, mystery, romance, danger, nightmares and sweet dreams…

… What does it mean for you?

For details about submitting your work and submission guidelines, visit redwoodwriters.org/2024-in-the-dark/

Signups are Currently Open for the Poetry Postcard Fest!

Do you love to write? Want to expand your horizons?

Organized by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, the Poetry Postcard Fest is a self-guided 56 day workshop that involves receiving a mailing list of other poets to whom they will send 31 first draft poems on postcards. The structure of the fest allows for flexibility of time to write and send the postcards, but it is suggested the poems be written and sent between July 4 and August 31st. Postcards can be purchased or hand-made, and participants are encouraged to be creative with themes and images!

It’s a great way to jump-start your creative spirit and enhance your writing career and connect to other writers! In fact, in 2023 the fest had 517 participants in 8 different countries and 44 different states and 5 Canadian provinces.

The fest is open to people who contribute at least $22 U.S. to the Cascadia Poetics Lab and register by July 4th. Register here: cascadiapoeticslab.org/ppf-2024-event-registration

What is this all about?

Throughout the duration of the fest, participants are encouraged to put poetry in the forefront of their lives by perceiving every moment as possible material for poetry, as well as putting aside time in their day to write postcard poems and read poetry for inspiration. The festival is seen as an exercise of both community and discipline, to dedicate oneself to writing thirty-one poems in 56 days, using limited space and mailing the postcards to other participant poets around the world. As described by participant Ina Roy-Faderman in a testimonial describing the 2016 Poetry Postcard Festival, “the words are out in space to touch someone else. And someone is sending you an essential moment of themselves–out of the goodness of their hearts, out of a willingness to commit to a piece of deep honesty and trust–which you get to hold in your hands.”

Find out more here: cascadiapoeticslab.org/how-it-works

But I’m not a poet! Can I still participate in this event?

Yes! Writers who already create poetry will naturally gravitate towards poetry events and contests, but what about writers who have never written a poem? This event is for you as well.

Cascadia Poetics Lab encourages the love of poetry and gives writers the opportunity to finish a project. Short form writing is invigorating, fun, and life changing. Think of how much joy the receiver will get when your poem arrives in the mail. Then, think of what it will feel like to finish a poem and release it to the world. This is truly the writer’s life.

We believe that poetry is the nexus at which self-knowledge, bioregionalism and expansive creativity converge. Cascadia Poetics Lab is a vibrant community whose workshops, festivals, and opportunities for connection can open the door to transformative experiences.

When does registration close?

July 4th, so get your registrations in soon! cascadiapoeticslab.org/ppf-2024-event-registration

Literary Event Schedule for the 2024 Napa Valley Writers’ Conference

July 21 – 26, 2024 – NVWC 2024 – 43rd anniversary conference
Maybe you’re already planning to attend this year’s Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, working closely in workshop with a writer you admire, attending craft lectures and readings. If so, lucky you! This year’s line-up is stellar!

But maybe you can only get away for an evening reading or a morning or afternoon lecture. Consider attending these events ala carte, so to speak. I hope to attend Emily Wilson’s craft lecture on translation and Bruce Snider’s “ Poetic Form in the Age of Trump.” Surely there’s something here that peaks your curiosity and fits your budget. There are even free drop-in community classes with Maw Shein Win and Carolyn Goodwin. I can highly recommend both these excellent teachers/writers who will provide insight and discussion of the evening’s featured readers and their work.

For details about these events, check out this month’s calendar page.

EVENING READINGS
(Performing Arts Center, Napa Campus, Napa Valley College)
Sunday, July 21, 6:30 pm – Bruce Snider & Jamil Jan Kochai
Monday, July 22, 6:30 pm – Jane Hirshfield & Peter Ho Davies
Tuesday, July 23, 6:30 pm – Jan Beatty & Lysley Tenorio (reading takes place at Silverado Vineyards)
Wednesday, July 24, 5:30 pm – C. Dale Young & Lan Samantha Chang
Thursday, July 25, 6:30 pm – Emily Wilson & featured participants

DAILY CRAFT TALKS
(Performing Arts Center, Napa Campus, Napa Valley College)
Monday, July 22:
9 am – C. Dale Young – “Doubt and Uncertainty: The Adverbial Gesture as Rhetorical Strategy”
1:30 pm – Lan Samantha Chang – “Scope and Scale in the Novel and Short Story”
3 pm – Emily Wilson – “Re-translation, Why and How?”

Tuesday, July 23:
9 am – Bruce Snider – “SESTINAMERICA: Poetic Form in the Age of Trump”
1:30 pm – Jamil Jan Kochai – “Showing through Telling”

Wednesday July 24:
9 am – Jane Hirshfield – “Past? Present? Future? Verb Tense As Life Sense”
1:30 pm – Peter Ho Davies – “Truth or (Auto)Fiction?”

Thursday, July 25:
9 am – Jan Beatty – “The Beauty of Collision”
1:30 pm – Lysley Tenorio – “And Then We Came to the End: Notes on Endings.”

Friday, July 26:
9 am – First Books Panels in Fiction and Poetry – Please check back for locations

FREE DROP-IN COMMUNITY CLASSES
(Community room, McCarthy Library, Napa Campus, Napa Valley College)
Monday, July 22 – Friday, July 26 Poetry Encounter with Maw Shein Win 10:30 am
Monday, July 22 – Thursday, July 25: Guided Reading Class with Caroline Goodwin 4:30 pm

Each daytime event takes place on the Napa Valley College main campus, at 2277 Napa Vallejo Hwy, Napa, CA 94558.
Tuesday’s evening event will be held at Silverado Winery.

2024 PRICING for public admission
(tickets sold on-site prior to each Reading and Craft Talk)

Individual reading: $20
Individual craft talk: $25
Full week pass (all craft talks and readings): $275
Lectures-only pass (all 9 craft talks): $200
Readings-only pass (all 5 readings): $90
Single-day pass (two lectures and one reading): $65

______

Poem for June

The Machines
by Jacqueline Kudler

First the grill ignition failed,
then, not ten days later and
two months after you died,
the fridge condenser went, but slowly—
for days I watched
the glacier crawling down
along the back wall.
It wasn’t too much longer
before the timers in the double
oven and the upright freezer
quit, as if some universal
clock had simply stopped
somewhere, all dials fixed
at midnight.

By his fourth call,
the National Appliance guy
opined he’d never witnessed
such a run of luck—
everything breaking down
like that around me.
He hoped (with eyes
accustomed to assessing
hairline cracks and fissures)
that I was holding up okay.

I told him how my days,
amazingly enough, go well.
I wake, bathe, lunch with
friends, call the kids,
and at night, when I sit
down at the table, I light
a candle at your place.
Oh, I’m doing well
enough, I said,
but given their histories,
the nature of their finely
wired dispositions,
I wouldn’t presume
to speak
for the machines.

International Day of Protest

Phyllis Meshulam’s New Book (Re)Creations

Sixteen Rivers Book Launches in April

Here’s a Quick Sampler of What’s in the April Calendar

2025 Writers Conferences Accepting Applications

Poem for April

Send Us Your Poetry/Short Prose Selections for 2025

Toss Repeat Wins 2024 James Tate Prize

Spring Workshops with Dave Seter

Other March Readings and Events

New Books from Sixteen Rivers

Poem for March

Send Us Your Poetry/Short Prose Selections for 2025

After Seeing A Complete Unknown

New Release of “Meeting Light/Encontrando La Luz”

Barbara Baer’s New Novel: Masha & Alejandro Crossing Borders

Start Your Year with a Meditation and Writing Workshop

Spring Workshops with Dave Seter

Poetry Flash Needs Our Help

Annual Call for Submissions for Book-Length Poetry Manuscripts

Volume Three of Plagios/Plagiarisms Is Coming Soon!

Poems for January

Literary Events for December

Call for Submissions for SCW’s Women Artists Datebook

Annual Call for Submissions for Book-Length Poetry Manuscripts

Two Poems for December

Send Us Your Poetry/Short Prose Selections for 2025

Poetry from the North Country: Lynne Knight and Katherine Hastings

West Side Stories: Less than Perfect

Annual Call for Submissions for Book-Length Poetry Manuscripts

Two Poems for November

Send Us Your Poetry/Short Prose Selections for 2024

Congratulations to Our Next Sonoma County Poet Laureate, Dave Seter!

Remembering Jackie Kudler

Petaluma Poetry Walk GoFundMe Campaign

Poetry Readings for Reverberations

In the Dark

Signups are Currently Open for the Poetry Postcard Fest!

Literary Event Schedule for the 2024 Napa Valley Writers’ Conference

Poem for June

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