Patrick Donnelly and Robert Thomas

30 MARCH 2014 — sunday

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Patrick Donnelly and Robert Thomas, wheelchair accessible, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, dieselbookstore.com)

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Patrick Donnelly's recent book of poems is Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin. Jane Hirshfield says of it, "Patrick Donnelly’s urgent and brilliant poems embrace the omnivorous bonfires of transience and desire; by that permeable vow, they enter the surety of the lasting." The book was a 2013 finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. His first collection is The Charge. Donnelly was also the co-translator of the 141 poems in The Wind from Vulture Peak: The Buddhification of Japanese Waka in the Heian Period. He is an associate editor for Poetry International.
Robert Thomas’s new book, a work of fiction tentatively titled Bridge, is forthcoming this fall. His first book of poems, Door to Door, was the winner of the 2001 Poets Out Loud Prize from Fordham University, chosen by Yusef Komunyakaa, and his second is Dragging the Lake. Chase Twichell said, "Thomas can enter another consciousness, century, or personal history with as much facility as he moves through his own life and world.…this is poetry written in the pure American English of the present moment. Dragging the Lake is smart, funny, moving, and profound." Thomas's poems have been widely published in magazines including The Atlantic Monthly, Field, and The Iowa Review.