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Poetry Flash is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, federal tax ID #94-3096270. Donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

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If you would be a poet, write living newspapers….

Don't ever believe poetry is irrelevant in dark times.

—Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Dear Friend and Reader,

As Poetry Flash begins its 40th anniversary year, there is a lot to be grateful for. We have launched a new look and vision for Poetryflash.org, with monthly issues. The clean design updates daily literary events for all of California in an easy to find format. Poetryflash.org, a kind of "living newspaper," also features book reviews, essays, tributes, contest and submission news, poems, and the online Archive. Thousands of you have visited the new site. Currently featured on our February issue's front page is a review round-up by John Oliver Simon, on Firefly Under the Tongue by Coral Bracho, translated by Forrest Gander, Solar Poems by Homero Aridjis, and Before Saying Any of the Great Words by David Huerta. Also featured is Megan Harlan on Jennifer Sweeney's Laughin Award-winning How to Live on Bread and Music, poems by Terry Ehret and Murray Silverstein, a New & Noted column by Richard Silberg covering recent books by Julie Carr, David Meltzer, Matthew Rohrer, Holly Iglesias, and Tom Sleigh. Mimi Albert reviews Heidegger's Glasses, a novel by Thaisa Frank; and a Berkeley memoir by Victoria Nelson is also featured.

Last issue featured Jack Foley's retrospective essay on Lawrence Ferlinghetti's work, focused on the 50th anniversary edition of A Coney Island of the Mind; a full-length interview, "A Rage for Wildness," with southern California poet Tony Barnstone; reviews of Lisa Robertson's R's Boat by Melissa Mack, Eugene Ruggles's Roads of Bread by Richard Silberg, Dean Rader's Works & Days by Zara Raab, Amina Saïd's The Present Tense of the World by Zack Rogow, and novelist Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot by Jessy Goodman; an essay on reading Anne Carson's Nox by Lauren Crux; and poems by Matt Shears, Mary Mackey, and Ben Bloch. All of that tasty content is fully accessible under "Archive" under the masthead on our front page.

Poetryflash.org serves California and beyond. In northern California, Poetry Flash has curated and presented readings since 1982, now at Moe's legendary new and used bookstore in Berkeley at least two Thursdays a month, and one Sunday a month at beautiful Diesel, A Bookstore, in Oakland. In keeping with the Flash's project of celebrating all the voices, the reading series has featured a vibrant spectrum of poets, nationally famous to locally acclaimed, experimental to mainstream, Beat to maverick. Among the poets we presented in 2011 are Willis Barnstone, Sharon Doubiago, Paul Hoover, Mary Mackey, Eliot Schain, Gary Young, David Meltzer, Joseph Lease, Donna de la Perriere, Gloria Frym, Maxine Hong Kingston, James Ragan, Maxine Chernoff, Jaime Robles, Matthew Shears, Atsuro Riley, Alexandra Teague, Andrew Joron, Jack and Adelle Foley, Michael McClure, Al Young, Xochiquetzal Candelaria, Robin Ekiss, Keith Ekiss, Genine Lentine, Derek Mong, Joni Wallace, Bruce Isaacson, Toni Mirosevich, Brian Teare, Peter O'Leary, Barbara Henning, Steve Katz, Lynn Emanuel, Ish Klein, Joshua Edwards, Dan Bellm, Tiffany Higgins, Fred Marchant, Richard Tillinghast, Alan Williamson, Deborah Bogen, Gerald Fleming, Julie Carr, Lightsey Darst, John Oliver Simon, Judy Grahn, Megan Harlan, Mari L'Esperance, Katherine Hastings, and more. The Poetry Flash reading series is one of the longest running, diverse, and acclaimed bookstore reading series in the country.

Your contribution will also make possible the 31st Northern California Book Awards, June 10, 2012, at San Francisco Main Library's Koret Auditorium. Sponsoring these awards with Northern California Book Reviewers and celebrating (and recommending) these books strengthens our shared culture. Your support will also facilitate the 17th annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival at Berkeley's Civic Center Park, next fall, September 29, 2012, with its Watershed Poets presentation at Berkeley High School and Strawberry Creek Walk through downtown Berkeley.

Our outline for the future is a dynamic mix of online and print publication. We believe that Poetryflash.org and a print Poetry Flash will, in the future, work best in tandem, and together are of great utility and significance. In 2012, we will continue to develop this idea. Your support is needed to keep Poetry Flash's publication vision alive.

Poetry Flash continues to provide literary experiences, insights, information, and inspiration to the West Coast and beyond. We build community through literature and make more contemporary literature accessible, whether through events, readings, awards, or publication. Back to wise Ferlinghetti, who wrote: "Poetry the common carrier/ for the transportation of the public/ to higher places/ than other wheels can carry it." In 2012, Poetry Flash will continue to explore contemporary poetics and creative writing. We need your support to continue our shared publishing adventure and our literary projects that have served poetry and creative writing so well. We especially need your help now. Please join us by sending a tax-deductible donation to the address below, or visit Poetryflash.org/give to contribute by credit/debit card.

Warmest thanks,

Joyce Jenkins, Editor/Executive Director

Poetry Flash / Poetryflash.org
1450 Fourth Street, #4
Berkeley, California 94710
editor@poetryflash.org
(510) 525-5476

Make a Donation Today

Mail your donation download form

OR

Donate online

Poetry Flash is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, federal tax ID #94-3096270. Donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.