September 1, 2024
Last Poet Laureate Column from Elizabeth Herron
Dear Friends,
With this column I say goodbye to you as your Poet Laureate and welcome our new county Poet Laureate, Dave Seter, from whom you will hear more in the coming months.
What do I feel in passing the laurel wreath? Excitement at the prospect of return to a quieter time for my own writing. A slight melancholy that I did not reach farther into the wider community of the whole county. While I led many Being Brave Poetry Workshops, I did not get to our farthest edges. And so I will continue giving workshops even as I step back from my laureateship. In fact I have two workshops already in the offing. I’m grateful for the opportunity to continue this work.
Witnessing the revelation of what scares us and what gives us courage has been a truly profound experience for me. Again and again I saw participants discover the ultimate antidote to fear is in the heart. Love and courage arise together there. It is not by accident that Alexei Navalny held his hands in the shape of a heart over his chest from behind the glass of the Russian courtroom, or that others too have made this sign as they were imprisoned or arrested. The heart is home to both love and courage. Poems made from the heart’s deepest fears will carry the lyric qualities of both empathy and bravery. Those are poems that transcend time. Poems from our fears will find their unfolding in the heart.
In the Being Brave Poetry Workshops we discovered that finding poetic language for our fear leads also to a feeling of empowerment that enables us to become effective in places where we have felt frozen. Whether it’s the inevitable losses of an ever-warming world or a personal fear of being abandoned, through working to find language for what is frightening, we discover the courage we need to face our fears.
I turn now toward my own heart, following it back to the inner quiet where I listen to the voices often lost in the hubbub of activity in the outer world – I turn back to the deep listening where poems arise to follow where I am led.
Gratitude to each of you for the time we’ve had together these past two years. And welcome Dave! May your project bring us poems that welcome and celebrate all of who we are, along with poems that remind us of our privilege, living in one of the most beautiful places in the world.
One more thing – I just learned my last book, In the Cities of Sleep, has been short-listed for the Northern California Book Award for Poetry. On September 7, the final choice will be announced. Publication of In the Cities of Sleep was a risk for Fernwood Press — who would read a book centered on climate change? Who would read a book with so many long poems? I’m hugely grateful to Eric Muhr at Fernwood for taking a chance on this book. We are both surprised and excited about the nomination.
Elizabeth Carothers Herron
Sonoma County Poet Laureate 2022-2024
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October 1, 2023
Dear Friends,
First rain, and in the freshness of its aftermath, it’s time for our update!
The Being Brave Poetry Workshops keep unfolding, each one different from the last, each taking me to deep water in the soul-sharing that writing about fear and courage brings us in the workshops. How to live with courage in this difficult time. And these are difficult times. It’s hard to witness the calamities of our time without feeling discouraged. How can we find the wit and the words and the courage to write of what frightens us, what do we do with our feelings of despair besides turning away from them? The Being Brave Poetry workshops seem to be useful in finding images and language that reveals often surprising new directions on the path ahead. And we are encouraged when we work together. In that way, the workshops are successful in building community, which was one of my hopes for the project.
I think of our poems as a kind of tending and our writing as both ritual and communal ways of giving thanks and giving back, the two practices essential to the wellbeing of the whole. I mean Earth, her journey in the universe, her sister planets, her grandparent stars, her moon, her oceans and rivers and trees and canyons and prairies, her plants and animals, our redwoods and oaks, our Russian River, our black-tailed deer and our red-tail hawks – and each other. All needs our tending, our tenderness. We offer our poems by way of gratitude and affirmation.
In the midst of everything (workshops, readings, new connections) I managed to have an accident and was laid up with a shattered femur, the upper portion of which was removed and surgically replaced with a prosthetic bone. Some of you know all about this. The important thing is that I’m somewhat to my own amazement, perfectly fine now and back to life. Meanwhile, life has been barreling along with readings at AQUS hosted by Sandra Anfang, with Larry Robinson’s Saturday morning zoom poetry readings and house gatherings for recitation, Ed Coletti and Pat Nolan’s blogs, and more, and still more — all bringing us fine poetry to strengthen our hearts. All the while, Bill Vartnaw was working away to bring us the Petaluma Poetry Walk, a very complicated task, involving venues, bookstore, poets (known harder to herd than cats), and schedules. With Dave Setter lending a hand and poets appearing out of the woodwork throughout the day and into the fabulous Poets Laureate reading to close the Walk – it was altogether another astonishing feat of organization and presentations. Hats off to all and especially to Bill (and Bridget). Hip Hip Hooray!
Ed Coletti had a good idea when he decided to close his poetry series at Café Frida with a Festival of the Long Poem. What an event that was — the culmination of the season. Each poet trotting out the long poems they can never read at readings because they are just too long. And they (both poets and poems) were fabulous!
Now, back to the personal. I was privileged to be part of both the Poetry Walk in the good company of the other laureates, and at the Festival of the Long Poem. Much of the pleasure was in hearing my fellow poets and in visiting with them before and after. Such gatherings are rare, a crowd of poets? rare as a gathering of witches. You can understand why that comparison would come to mind, here on the cusp of October.
The new long-awaited exhibition Stories of Sonoma opened at the Museum of History and Arts in Santa Rosa, and I spoke and read poems to close the opening ceremony. I firmly believe poetry ought to be part of all civic events to bring the heart and soul to the fore, and this occasion was an opportunity to demonstrate just how effectively that can be done. I followed in the steps of the Director, Eric Stanley, who labored before during and after covid to bring the exhibit together. The Mayor of Santa Rosa, Natalie Rogers, and our beloved Gaye LeBaron were there, along with museum board members and friends of the museum, members and non-members alike. Everyone welcome. I’d been appreciating the effort being made in this on-going exhibit to bring us stories of ourselves and our place, our home place, who we are. There is a Sonoma County identity, and we need to share it with each other so it isn’t lost. Years ago Land Paths had the idea to host an annual storytelling where local people told stories from their lives to each other and especially to people new to the area. The museum exhibition now will serve a this role. Stories of Sonoma is that mirror – who we were and who we are reflected in objects and in stories themselves, recorded and audible in the exhibit, from our earliest First People of the bioregion to the grand mix of all the others who have come here, Russian fur trappers and traders, Spanish cowboys, Chinese laborers, Japanese farmers, Mexican field workers, and so it goes, blending over time into the great WE of Sonoma County. It was an honor to participate in the opening event and I loved sharing my poems of the land itself and its wild life.
In closing this missive, I want to thank all who have been with me in the Being Brave Poetry Workshops, and the hosting bookstores and individuals who have gathered and invited me to join them. I had not imagined the level of intimacy, trust, play, and deep feelings the workshops would evoke. It’s been exciting and enriching and humbling. I look forward to more, although the months of November and December will be quieter, giving me time for my own writing. Apart from several events already scheduled, including the Great Books Poetry Weekend (info on line), I look forward to quieter days of rain and the coziness of home in my study with my books! And my papers, and my word program. And possibly a new puppy!
I raise a glass to you. Let’s celebrate — welcome autumn!
“Be joyful though you have considered all the facts,” as Wendell Berry instructs.
Elizabeth
your Poet Laureate
socopoetlaureate@gmail.com
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April 2023
Dear Friends,
Here’s my Poet Laureate quarterly update. And a busy quarter it’s been these past three month!
It’s turning out to be wonderful work leading the Being Brave Poetry Workshops. There have been five since the beginning of the year. Two more are scheduled and four more await their dates. The workshops are comprised of between 7 and 15 people, who gather with me to make poems about what being brave means to them. For more about this, please visit www.elizabeth-herron.com and if you want to know even more, email me for the project folder.
I’ll be doing a reading and workshop for the Wildlands Preserve, a non-profit north of Jenner sometime in the next few months, possibly on the Summer Solstice.
The Being Brave Poetry Workshop is moving out of the county as I’ll be facilitating a group at The Mesa Refuge for Writers, open to interested supporters of the Refuge as well as Refuge writers. That event will be in late June.
It is deeply gratifying to be able not only to share my writing as your Poet Laureate, but to do what I know I do well working with groups of all sorts around finding poetic language for what scares us, spreading poetry and building the strength of community through my Being Brave Poetry Workshops. I’m immensely grateful for the opportunity to do this work.
My next focus will be on the east side of the county — Kenwood, Sonoma, Glen Ellen where I hope — with the Kenwood School, just haven’t yet fixed the date. And I’d like to do a reading and workshop in the Sonoma area, possibly at the Sonoma Valley Museum.
I had the pleasure of visiting Steve Trenam’s JC class — a wonderful experience of reading and conversation about poetry; and I read at Sande Anfang’s Rivertown poetry series, also really rewarding. She has established a wonderful audience. At Spring Lake Village I spoke to around 40 people, reading, doing a mini-Being Brave workshop, and discussing writing.
Gail King and Pat Nolan and Jonah Raskin and I read to a full house on a rainy night in Guerneville a few weeks ago. And April 18th, I’ll be reading with Bill Vartnaw and Jack Crimmins at 1 o’clock on KRCB. Tune in if you can.
On April 20th at Artaluma in Petaluma I will be reading with Iris Jamahl Dunkel, and Merlin Coleman will be presenting her sound art installation, Quarry. Merlin’s forthcoming residency in San Francisco, Iris’ new biography, and my own new book, In the Cities of Sleep, poems centered on climate chaos, which finally came out in February, will be the subjects for Q&A following each segment of the program. If you haven’t seen In the Cities of Sleep, please ask for it in your local bookstore; you might mention it is available through Ingram. That makes it easy to add to their orders. Of course, It is also available online.
I have also accepted an invitation to be the guest poet for the Great Books Poetry Weekend next fall, an event I eagerly look forward to.
The Freedom of New Beginnings anthology that Phyllis Meshulam gathered and published, with the assistance of Gail King and Terry Ehret, has had a nice debut, and I’ve been able to participate in that by joining in two of the book’s group readings. If it fits to do more, I certainly will.
I have initiated the Being Brave Poetry Podcast. My webmaster will assist with the technical part of stringing together audio files of being brave poems, which will be on my elizabeth-herron.com website on the Being Brave pages. We are getting this off the ground, synchronistically, during National Poetry Month, with an invitation to past Poets Laureate of the county to send me an audio file of a poem on the theme of being brave.
Lastly, I am encouraging all of you – even if you have not written much poetry – to participate in National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, April 27th. I myself intend to stuff my pockets with my own Being Brave Pocket Poem (something almost as short as a fortune cookie fortune, something no longer than a haiku), which I will hand out to friends and strangers as I go about the day on the 27th. “Here,” I’ll tell them, “It’s National Poem in Your Pocket Day. Here’s my pocket poem about Being Brave.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all day you were being handed little poems by strangers? Join me, and tell me what happens.
My warmest good wishes to all of you,
Elizabeth
Elizabeth Carothers Herron
Sonoma County Poet Laureate 2022-2024
socopoetlaureate@gmail.com
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December 2022
Dear Friends,
Another busy month and as I write, we are officially in the holiday season with Thanksgiving two days past.
The Being Brave Poetry Workshops are off the ground and have taken wing with three behind me and four more ahead. The first was sponsored by the Unitarian Church of Santa Rosa and the most recent by the Burbank Community of Sebastopol. Each workshop is a little different depending on the chemistry of the group, but each centers on the subject of bravery. With prompts to overcome inertia we write the bones of poems, letting them teach us what being brave means in our own lives. The workshops have led into conversation about what it means to live courageously and the role of community in that process. I’m privileged to facilitate these workshops which I find surprisingly exciting, creative and thought-provoking. I’m eager to present the Being Brave Poetry Workshops in all areas of the county, so please contact me if you are interested in participating. I’ve also had the opportunity to do several readings this past month.
Most exciting was Ada Limon’s reading last week at SRJC. Thanks to Steve Trenam for persuading first Ada to come and second the JC Arts & Lectures series to sponsor her. Ada read to a full-house, and she charmed us all with her generosity of spirit, her gentle humor, and her commitment to bringing personal poems that lift the spirit and open the heart of every audience. Her new book, The Hurting Kind is now on my shelf and you might like it on yours!
On November 18, Maya Khosla and I presented poems along with Merlin Coleman’s sound installation, Quarry, a Song Cycle, at Sebastopol Center for the Arts in a program to accompany the exhibition of Jos Sances magnificent sculpture, Or the Whale (on exhibit there for two more weeks). This event was a further extension of the international EXTRACTION, Art at the Edge of the Abyss project supported locally by the Sebastopol Center for the Arts. We had a wonderfully responsive audience and I’m grateful to SebArts for the opportunity to present this work.
As usual, Rivertown Poets, Poetic License, and now Larry Robinson’s Saturday Morning poetry reading have sallied forth bringing more poetry for the people with lively readings by some of the Bay Area’s best.
When next I write we will be on the cusp of a new year. May your coming days be joyful, may we have peace, and may there be poems to fill your cup, your stocking and your heart.
With all good cheer,
Elizabeth
Elizabeth Carothers Herron
Sonoma County Poet Laureate 2022-2024
socopoetlaureate@gmail.com
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November 2022
Hello dear friends,
Here we are – November! As usual there seems to be a lot going on for poetry here in Sonoma County. Ed Coletti’s poetry series at Café Frida had a great lineup last Sunday, with more ahead for November. David Magdelene has done a great job of EMCing while Ed recovers from surgery, and we look forward to Ed’s return before too long.
At the arranging of Steve Trenam, the Junior College is bringing Ada Limon for a reading on the 22nd, free and open to the public. Steve and the rest of the Poetic License crew hosted Sandra Anfang the end of September and gave me time to share my work just a week or ago. I tried a mini-sketch version of the Being Brave Poetry Workshop as participated. Dave Setter will be reading for Poetic License this month on the 29th.
And keep an eye out for the First Monday Rivertown poetry readings hosted by Sandra. As many of you know, it’s a great series going strong in Petaluma the first Monday of the month at Aqus Cafe. This next will be November 7th.
The short video I made for Dia de los Muertos this year is up on their website: https://poetryofremembrance.com/
With everything else going on I do want to mention that the Being Brave Poetry workshops are officially off the ground with four already scheduled this month, and I still haven’t gotten to The River and west or the other side of the Mayacamas. I’m glad I’ll have two years to get all around the county. Check in with me if you would like to know more.
All my warmest wishes,
Elizabeth
Elizabeth Carothers Herron
Sonoma County Poet Laureate 2022-2024
socopoetlaureate@gmail.com
________
October 2022
Hello dear friends,
September is the month of changes — kids are back in school, folks are home from vacation, and we have shifted gears into autumn, ready for October. Here we go! Poetry seems to be everywhere. And where it hasn’t flowered, there seems to be a yearning for it. Writers and audience — makers and listeners, listeners as makers, we are aswim in poetry here in Sonoma County.
First some news about the past month. The Petaluma Arts Center had a poetry contest on the theme of Poetry and Memory as part of the events associated with their exhibition Agri-CULTURED. The winning poets read their work at the gallery. Along with the poets whose poems were selected, Jodi Hottel read her winning poem “Mochi Tsuki.” If you haven’t read Jodi’s book, Heart Mountain, winner of the Blue Light Press Poetry Prize, I recommend it.
Larry Robinson, whose poetrylovers@lists.sonic.net has long delighted so many of us — within and outside Sonoma County, has started a reading series available by zoom. The readings are from 10 to 10:30 the fourth Saturday morning of the month, and Larry was kind enough to invite me to read at the end of August. I was remiss in not alterting you to this till now, but I urge you to contact Larry through the poetrylovers list so as not to miss the October reading.
I also read on September 17th at the Bodega Land Trust 30th Birthday party. A grand crowd had turned out for the celebration which included a shared meal of great homecooked food and a local band. I read just a few poems all written in the Salmon Creek watershed where for many years I have monitored the steelhead salmon population and gathered native hawthorn berries to make the traditional heart remedy for my mother. I loved sharing poems from that part of my life with others who live in the watershed.
The crown of poetry in September is the Petaluma Poetry Walk. A light rain seemed far more a blessing than a hinderance to the festivities. My own part took me to Artaluma https://artaluma.com/, Elizabeth McKoy’s new venue on Keller Street where Jack Crimmins and I were scheduled to read. Artaluma is a wonderful airy space with a smooth wood floor that must be a dream to dance on and walls Elizabeth took down to the original brick. The main room accommodates a sizeable audience and invites performance. (I’m looking forward to returning there in March when poet and biographer Iris Jamahl Dunkle and sound artist Merlin Coleman will appear with me in an evening of three women artists.) Inspite of last minute changes necessitated by the rain, this year the Poetry Walk brought out a great crowd. It had a strong line-up and all the enthusiasm of returning live after the worst of the pandemic.
Petaluma also hosts the annual El Dia de los Muertos/Day of Remembrance, though as I understand it that event will again be online this year. As your Poet Laureate, I will offer a brief reading to open the event, followed (I’m almost certain) by Ella Wen, Sonoma County’s first Youth Poet Laureate. I’m looking forward to other occasions when Ella and I can team up, so if there’s something you’d like the two of us to work with you on, please let me know.
Lastly, an update on the Being Brave Poetry Project. The first several workshops have been scheduled for early November. I’d like to get to all corners of the county and don’t yet have workshops scheduled on The River or the east side of the county. If you are at all interested in the project, don’t hesitate to contact me at socopoetlaureate@gmail.com and please spread the word. A description of the project is on my SquareSpace website: www.elizabeth-herron.com.
My very best to each of you,
Elizabeth Carothers Herron
Sonoma County Poet Laureate 2022-2024
socopoetlaureate@gmail.com
________
September 2022
Following the very moving reading given by Phyllis Meshulam, Phyllis crowned me with laurels, which I am now wearing, whether you see it or not, as I lope along in my new role as your Poet Laureate.
Many thanks to the Sebastopol Center for the Arts for hosting the event to a full house.
I was also wearing a beautiful lei brought to me by my family from Hawaii, which caused someone to joke that I was wearing the new poet’s lariat along with my laurel crown.
A semi-circle of past Poets Laureate on-stage supported first Phyllis and then me through the ceremonial changing of the post, followed by a reception that included two beautiful cakes, one with a welcome message to me as the new Poet Gloriat. While there was some speculation at the time about this possible ‘misspelling,’ I was charmed by the word play; I hope you were too.
During the ceremony I introduced my Being Brave Poetry Project, and during the reception answered questions about it and encouraged interested people to contact me later. I have subsequently received at least five invitations to present the Being Brave Poetry Workshop, the first of which is scheduled for November 14th when Brendan and I return from our annual vacation trek north. That first workshop will be for the Burbank Community.
I will offer the workshop, or some variation of it, wherever I am invited to do so. So please keep that in mind and spread the word.
I am also taking the names of individuals who would like to be in a workshop but are not part of any specific huddle or herd so I can put together a group especially for creative stragglers.
Forgive my imagery this morning. I woke with a half-gibberish poem about the cow who jumped over the moon. So I’ll stop now and before the adult demands of the day carry me off, and go back to the other side of night where I left the cow singing to the stars.
May each of you be blessed. May the world’s leaders be blessed. May we find our way to peace with poetry.
Elizabeth Carothers Herron
Sonoma County Poet Laureate 2022-2024
socopoetlaureate@gmail.com
________
August 2022
The Being Brave Poetry Project
What does living bravely look like in a time of radical climate change, war, inflation – flood and famine, and violence that invades our churches, our schools, our local grocery and even our neighbor’s house? In fact it takes courage just to read the news. It takes courage to accept the contradictions in our lives – that I am safe while others are living through war. That I have food while others are starving. It takes courage to admit a mistake or to apologize and sometimes just to tell the truth.
Supported as Poet Laureate and with matching funds from Poets & Writers, I will offer workshops to foster the writing of being brave poems where people who may never have written a poem before can find words for what being brave means in their lives. The workshops will include conversation about what our poems tell us of what it means to live courageously. And along with each workshop I will give a reading with other poets of that area of the county.
The world of poetry has been enlivened by voices unheard in the past; it has been enlivened by spoken word, by rap and by hip-hop. The infusion of language from the street up has brought story back into poetry and the poet back into the poem. So it is a very good time to support a project designed to evoke poems from all voices and all corners of Sonoma County.
Already I have received a poem from a woman who writes about risking everything familiar, something that took her a lot of courage, to escape an abusive home. Wherever we notice our fear or hesitancy, there’s an opportunity to be brave. Courage should be celebrated for its most humble moments, which usually remain invisible, to its grand inspirations in someone like Volodomyr Zalensky.
Whether it’s a private moment from one’s own life or an homage to an inspirational other – if we share such poems and make time for conversation about them, we will learn things about ourselves and each other that cannot help but deepen our understanding and respect and bring us all closer. By directing us to the question of how to live bravely in this time and place, I hope the Being Brave Poetry Project will evoke the imagination we need to navigate the future as individuals and in community.
And despite everything we need the courage to celebrate what goes on living and what goes on blooming and what gives us joy.
I expect Being Brave Poetry workshops and readings will be held in a variety of community spaces from churches to libraries to community centers and coffee houses – and house concerts –wherever I am invited, I will come. I hope one way or another all of you will be participants. So I ask that you connect with me about where you think such events might be welcome, especially if you can offer a direct contact. Email me at <socopoetlaureate@gmail.com>
Aldo Leopold, father of the modern environmental writing, famously observed we take care of what we feel affection for, and Toni Morrison says that “Beauty makes the unbearable bearable.” My own poetry is always an effort to find the beauty that compels affection, even when the subject is otherwise unbearable. We want our hearts awakened, and poetry is about the heart. In the Being Brave Poetry Project, we will hear the heart speak.
Elizabeth Carothers Herron
Sonoma County Poet Laureate 2022-2024
socopoetlaureate@gmail.com
________
July 2022
Dear Friends,
Here is an introduction to my theme for the coming two years: Being Brave.
When we are courageous, it has something to do with the heart. And poetry most often arises from the heart. These days we need courage in almost every part of our lives. We have to be brave in facing the uncertain future of the climate. We have to be brave about the possibility of fire. We have to be brave to protect others who are more vulnerable. It takes courage to apologize, and it takes courage to try again when we fail. We see leaders who are courageous, and we witness courage around us every day in tiny moments we hardly notice. If we you look for them, what will we see?
I invite you to look at your own hidden courage. What are you being brave about right now in your life? I invite you to make and to find and to share Being Brave poems. Email them to friends. Host a Being Brave Garden Gathering and read these poems to each other. Ask your library or community center or school or church to host a reading of Being Brave Poems where you talk about what it means to have the courage to stand up for what is right, to fight injustice, to be a better person, to sacrifice to make a better world. We have so much to learn from each other!
When you gather for a Being Brave poetry reading and conversation, please let me know. And let me know if as your Poet Laureate I can help to bring about such an event.
Elizabeth Carothers Herron
Sonoma County Poet Laureate 2022-2024
socopoetlaureate@gmail.com
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Sonoma County Literary Update 
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