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WATERSHED Saturday,
October 2, 2004
•
Noon to 5:00pm
•
Free For
Immediate Release: September 3,
2004 For
More Information Contact: Mark
Baldridge:
510-526-9105 Former U.S.
Poet Laureate Robert
Hass
and
Lawrence
Ferlinghetti,
San Francisco's first poet
laureate, head the list of
artists and activists inviting
the community to celebrate nature
at the Ninth Annual Watershed
Environmental Poetry Festival in
Berkeley's Civic Center Park,
Martin Luther King, Jr. Way at
Center Street, Saturday, October
2, noon to 5pm. A free day of
poetry, music, and interactive
environmental events, the
Festival will also feature
poets Pattiann
Rogers,
George
Keithley,
Lucille
Lang
Day,
and Marc
Bamuthi
Joseph,
environmentalist Peter
Warshall,
and Kathryn
Roszak's Anima Mundi Dance
Company,presenting
its dance-theater adaptation of
Maxine Hong Kingston's The
Fifth Book of Peace. In
addition, Bekka's
Frogland
Orchestra
will provide anphibious
interludes throughout the
afternoon. Each year, the
WATERSHED Festival explores the
connection between the American
literary imagination and our
landscape, natural history, and
sense of environmental urgency.
This tradition typically stems
from writers such as Henry David
Thoreau, John Muir, Robinson
Jeffers, Kenneth Rexroth, Wallace
Stegner, Gary Snyder, and Terry
Tempest Williams. While honoring
this tradition, WATERSHED also
seeks to examine the current
spectrum of the American literary
imagination. In addition to main
stage readings and performances,
the Festival encourages
involvement in local projects via
River Village, an area for
interactive arts, all-ages nature
activities, and literary and
grassroots
organizations. Again, this
year's event will discover
connections between literature
and place with a special "Creek
Walk," which begins at Oxford and
Center Streets at 10am. The
public is invited to join our
featured readers, local poets and
environmentalists for a short
hike along Strawberry Creek from
the UC Campus through downtown
Berkeley, tracing the route of
the creek as it tunnels beneath
the heart of the city to the site
of the festival. As Berkeley's
premier watershed, Strawberry
Creek flows open from the hills
through the campus but disappears
in a culvert under most of the
city as it makes its way to the
Bay. The walk will focus on the
project of "daylighting" the
creek. At several points
throughout the tour, featured
readers will offer their
insights, local poets will read
from their work, and restoration
advocates will discuss efforts to
daylight different parts of the
creek. At the WATERSHED Festival
site, the creek, which runs
directly beneath it, will be
"miked," letting it play gently
behind the readers as they
present their poems. For those
interested, UC Berkeley Extension
and Poetry Flash are sponsoring a
free symposium on Watershed:
Writers, Nature and Community at
2222 Harold Way, Berkeley, on
September 30, 7:30pm. Joining
Robert Hass on the panel will be
Peter Warshall, George Keithley,
and poet and nonfiction writer
Susan Griffin. Further details on
this event are available at:
www.unex.berkeley.edu/cat/038224. With a history
of artistic excellence and
grassroots support, this program
reaches a broad community of
school-age children, families,
poets, artists and
environmentalists with poetry,
art, and current information
about our natural landscape. The
Watershed Festival is a
collaboration between Robert
Hass, Poetry
Flash, the Ecology
Center/Berkeley Farmers'
Market, and EcoCity
Builders. Calendar
Editors Event:
Ninth Annual Watershed Poetry
Festival Featuring:
Former U.S. Poet Laureate
Robert Hass, poets
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Pattiann
Rogers, George Keithley, Lucille
Lang Day, Marc Bamuthi
Joseph, environmentalist
Peter Warshall, and
Anima Mundi Dance Company
with dancer/choreographer Kathryn
Roszak performing selections from
Maxine Hong Kingston's The
Fifth Book of Peace, plus
many other poets, environmental
activists, musicians, and
naturalists Also:
River Village environmental and
literary exhibits and interactive
events for the entire family; We
Are Nature Open Reading (sign up
at the Festival) When:
Saturday, October 2,
noon-5pm. Where:
Civic Center Park, Martin Luther
King, Jr. Way at Center Street,
Berkeley Pre-festival
event: Strawberry Creek Walk,
with featured poets and creek
restoration advocates, begins
10am. at Oxford and Center
Streets, Berkeley. Admission
to all events:
Free Sponsoring
organizations: Poetry
Flash, Ecology
Center/Berkeley Farmers' Market,
EcoCity Builders. Information:
(510) 526-9105 or
www.poetryflash.org Robert
Hass, U.S. Poet
Laureate 1995-97, was
the first U.S. Poet
Laureate from the West;
during his tenure he
attracted national media
attention to poetry and
to the importance of
American nature writing.
He has received two
National Book Critics
Circle Awards in
different categories,
once for his volume of
essays, Twentieth
Century Pleasures
and once for poetry. His
acclaimed books of
poetry include Human
Wishes,
Praise, Field
Guide, and, most
recently, Sun Under
Wood. The Los
Angeles Times called
it "…Hass at his
best. It is a book to
reread, always with the
lucky sense of walking
through a meadow with a
friend, deep in the best
kind of exchange." His
many literary honors
include the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur
Fellowship --the "Genius
Award"--and the Yale
Series of Younger Poets
Award. Robert Hass has
edited and translated
many books including
The Essential Haiku:
Versions of Basho,
Buson, and Issa and
Transtromer's
Selected Poems:
1954-1986. He has
also co-translated many
collections by the Nobel
Prize-winning Polish
poet, Czeslaw Milosz,
including
Unattainable
Earth and
Provinces, and
contributed to
Dante's Inferno:
Translations by Twenty
Contemporary Poets.
He is also the author of
Poet's Choice: Poems
for Everyday Life,
drawn from his
nationally syndicated
"Poet's Choice"
columns. Robert
Hass combines writing
and environmentalism in
his own poetry and in
his work for literacy
across the United
States. In addition to
initiating the Watershed
Festival, he founded
River of Words, an
environmental and arts
education organization
for students K-12. In
1997, he was selected
Educator of the Year by
the North American
Association on
Environmental Education.
Robert Hass is professor
of English at UC
Berkeley. It
was pure poetic justice
that Lawrence
Ferlinghetti became
San Francisco's first
poet laureate, since
from his publication of
Allen Ginsberg's
Howl in 1956, he
and his splendid City
Lights Books--which
celebrated its fiftieth
anniversary last
year--have been
instrumental in putting
Bay Area poetry on the
map. Ferlinghetti is a
phenominal poet, both in
his lyric and public
modes; his Coney Island
of the Mind is still
America's best selling
book of poems, and he's
published Americus, his
brand-new collection,
this year. Pattiann
Rogers, perhaps our
nation's finest poet of
nature. She has ublished
generations this
year, her ninth book of
poems; Denise Levertov
called her a "visionary
of reality" whose
language "springs up out
of a sense of how
various and endlessly
amazing are the forms of
life and our human
ability to notice them."
A wonderful reader,
she's won five Pushcart
Prizes and both
Guggenheim and Lannan
fellowships. Peter
Warshall, the
passionate environmental
polymath, Editor of
Whole Earth
magazine and
Anthropology Editor of
The Whole Earth
Catalog, will be at
Watershed for the first
time. He's consulted
with corporations on
improving their
environmental practices
and focusing in on the
world they're helping to
create; he has special
sympathy with farmers,
ranchers, loggers,
fishermen, miners---our
links between economic
flow and the natural
world; he's been taught
by endangered squirrels,
oil-slicked cormorants,
rhesus monkeys,
gorillas, as well as by
Harvard University and
structuralist
anthropologist Claude
Levi-Strauss; he teaches
at the Jack Kerouac
School of Disembodied
Poetics, and he believes
that music and poetry
are central human
needs. The
electric performance
poet Marc Bamuthi
Joseph will be
making his Watershed
debut this year. He
began as a choreographer
and dancer on Broadway
in Tony Award winning
shows and then moved to
performance poetry in
1998, winning San
Francisco's Grand Slam
three times and the
National Poetry Slam in
1998 with Team San
Francisco. Since then
he's performed all over
the country with the
biggest names in Spoken
Word, from Saul Williams
to Amiri Baraka, from
Beth Lisick to Gil Scott
Heron, developing solo
works, writing plays.
But his proudest work
has been with Youth
Speaks, mentoring
13-19-year-old writers,
several of whom will
appear with
him. Lucille
Lang Day is a rare,
sparkling combination of
poet and scientist; she
holds an M.F.A. in
Creative Writing from
San Francisco State and
a Ph.D. in Science and
Mathematics Education
from UC Berkeley. Her
first book of poems,
Self-Portrait with
Hand Microscope, won
a Joseph Henry Jackson
Award in 1982. Her other
poetry collections
include Wild One,
Fire in the Garden,
and Infinities,
which crosses
science with lyric,
inner with outer seeing.
She is director of
Berkeley's Hall of
Health.. Kathryn
Roszak's Anima Mundi
Dance Company
presents its
dance-theater adaptation
of Maxine Hong
Kingston's long awaited
The Fifth Book of
Peace. Anima Mundi
combines Christopher
Castle's music and
visuals with Kathryn
Roszak's choreography
and dance
performance. Co-directed
by Roszak and Castle,
the company has
performed locally at
Grace Cathedral and
Theatre Artaud, and has
been presented by La
MaMa Theatre in New
York, the Smithsonian in
Washington, D.C., and
the Copenhagen Cultural
Festival. The company
celebrates arts,
environment and
humanity. Recent
productions include
The Mathematics of
Life, Celtic
Fire, and Pensive
Spring: A Portrait of
Emily Dickinson,
which was presented at
the University of San
Francisco. Their
production of Gary
Snyder's Mountains
and Rivers Without
End was developed in
residencies at the Magic
Theatre, and was
performed at last year's
Watershed Festival,
Yoshi's Jazz Club in
Oakland, the Falkirk
Cultural Center in San
Rafael, and the Grass
Valley Center for the
Performing Arts in
Nevada City,
California. Bekka's
Frogland Orchestra
is a tribal avant funk
circle collaboration
creating cosmic
bootie-shakers and
elemental, cinematic
atmospheres. They
channel messages from
frogs and other
creatures, chaos theory,
love, peace on Mother
Earth, and freeing the
feminine energy in all
beings---all with the
greater purpose to be of
service in bringing a
sacred balance to our
present world.Their
first record,
Electric Lily
Pad, will debut at
the Watershed
Environmental Poetry
Festival. Bekka's
Frogland Orchestra is:
Bekka Fink
(composer, lyricist,
lead vocals, guitar,
spoken word), Sheryl
Mebane (drumset,
djembe), Bobby
Akash (piano,
congas, tone drum,
wing), Liana
Young (vocals),
Belinda Catalona
(violin, mandolin), and
special
guests |
