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Poetry Flash Reading Series
Mary Mackey and Susan Kelly-DeWitt
5/18, Berkeley
more info
Dan Alter, Judy Halebsky, Maw Shein Win
5/29, Berkeley
more info
Susan Browne and Jeanne Wagner
6/12, Berkeley
more info


John Sibley Williams

John Sibley Williams, Rusty Morrison, Alexis Sears

12 JUNE 2022 — sunday

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Rusty Morrison, Beyond the Chainlink, John Sibley Williams, Scale Model of a Country at Dawn, Cider Press Review Book Award-winner and The Drowning House, Elixir Press Poetry Award-winner, with Alexis Sears, Out of Order, Donald Justice Poetry Prize-winner, online via Zoom, free, 3:00 pm PDT (Register to attend: please click here; you will receive an email with a link to join the reading)


Please join us for a Poetry Flash virtual reading on Sunday, June 12 at 3:00 pm PDT. We are excited to bring you this event via Zoom. To register for this reading, please click on the link in the calendar listing above. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Thank you for continuing to support Poetry Flash and our reading series.

This reading is co-sponsored by Moe's Books in Berkeley. Featured books for this reading are available at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Rusty Morrison's most recent collection, Beyond the Chainlink, was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. Library Journal wrote, "As these eloquent, perfectly faceted poems attest, life is at heart our burningly patient negotiation with the everyday. We're followed by 'dangerous ideas,' risk the 'little hurt' of impulse, attempt to construct meaning (even in the backyard), and always, always desire ('This wanting, a pocket mirror I'll rub / until the silver backing rubs off.') James Laughlin Award-winner Morrison delivers poetry that feels affirmative, radiant, and lived." Her previous books include After Urgency, Tupelo's Dorset Prize-winner, the true keeps calm biding its story, winner of the Ahsahta Press Sawtooth Prize, James Laughlin Award, Northern California Book Award, and DiCastagnola Award. She is a recipient of a Civitella Ranieri fellowship, and other artist retreat fellowships. She was one of eight fellows in the 2020 UC Berkeley Art Research Center's Poetry and the Senses Program. Co-publisher of Omnidawn Publishers, she teaches and offers writing consultations.

Alexis Sears's debut collection is Out of Order, winner of the 2021 Donald Justice Poetry Prize. David Yezzi says, "If you have never read Alexis Sears, prepare yourself. Her poems draw blood. It's hard to think of a debut collection since Heart's Needle [by W.D Snodgrass] that is at once so deeply felt and so finely tuned. In her hands, form is the fist that delivers the blow, conveying the pure force of language. With so much at stake—identity, melancholia, a father's suicide in a distant place—feeling could easily overwhelm and blur, but Sears's poems remain precise and richly textured. Her poems do not succumb; they triumph, as we do, thrillingly, through them." She earned her BA in Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and her MFA in poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work has appeared in the Birmingham Poetry Review, Cortland Review, Northwest Review, Poet Lore, E-verse Radio, Hopkins Review, Literary Matters, Best American Poetry 2022, minnesota review, Cimarron Review, Able Muse, and elsewhere. She is poetry editor of the online literary journal, Up North Lit.

John Sibley Williams is the author of nine poetry collections, including Scale Model of a Country at Dawn (Cider Press Review Poetry Award). Susan Rich says, "To conjure is a recurring theme in this impressive collection—as if language holds the power to reconfigure a past, a mother, a child. And perhaps it can. Williams's words are that convincing." His books include The Drowning House (Elixir Press Poetry Award), As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press), and Summon (JuxtaProse Chapbook Prize). His collection, Sky Burial: New & Selected Poems, is forthcoming in translated form by the Portuguese press do lado esquerdo. A twenty-seven-time Pushcart nominee, Williams is the winner of numerous other awards, including the Laux/Millar Prize. He serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review and is founder of the Caesura Poetry Workshop series. His work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Yale Review, Verse Daily, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and TriQuarterly.




Daily Listings

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8 MAY 2025 — thursday

  • Nonfiction author Sarah Schulman reads from her book, The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity, in which Schulman challenges the traditional notion of solidarity as a simple union of equals, arguing that in today's world of globalized power structures, true solidarity requires the collaboration of bystanders and conflicted perpetrators with the excluded and oppressed, both onsite and online, see website for Zoom registration, City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, 7:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: citylights.com/events/sarah-schulman)

9 MAY 2025 — friday

  • The Tritone Poetry series features poets Melissa Mack, Dana Swensen, and Wren Farrell, Tamarack, 1501 Harrison Street, Oakland, 6:00-8:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: tamarackoakland.com)

10 MAY 2025 — saturday

  • Carol Moldaw, So Late, So Soon: New and Selected Poems, reads from her latest collection, Go Figure, with National Book Award-winning poet Arthur Sze, The White Orchard: Selected Interviews, Essays, and Poems reading from his newest collection, Into the Hush, Dance Palace, 503 B Street, Point Reyes Station, 4:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: ptreyesbooks.com/event/2025-05-10/arthur-sze-carol-moldaw)
  • Book launch and party for Miss Experience White, "an illustrated, surrealistic political poem cycle about destroying the demon of white supremacy and dealing with white privilege" by writer and multidisciplinary artist Milo Starr Johnson, with illustrator John Seabury; the celebration includes a reading by Milo Starr Johnson, and brief readings by Kim Shuck, San Francisco Poet Laureate Emerita, Pick a Garnet to Sleep In; Kimi Sugioka, Alameda Poet Laureate, Wile & Wing; poet Debby Segal, Fool's Apprentice; a Q&A with Milo Starr Johnson and John Seabury follows, hosted by Richard Loranger, free admission, books available for purchase, Clarion Performing Arts Center, 2 Waverly Place, San Francisco, 3:00 pm-5:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: www.theclarionsf.org)

11 MAY 2025 — sunday

  • Poetry reading by Stephen Ratcliffe, w i n d o w, author of more than twenty-five books of poetry, and Norman Fischer, poet, essayist, and Soto Zen Buddhist priest, at a private home in the north Berkeley hills, seating is limited, there is an admission, 5:00 pm PDT (For more information, including the location, email the event host at: Harry@fullplatemedia.com)

12 MAY 2025 — monday

  • Poet, translator, and teacher Arthur Sze celebrates two new books, Into the Hush and The White Orchard: Selected Interviews, Essays, and Poems, with lyric poet Carol Moldaw, Go Figure, both onsite and online, see website for Zoom registration, City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, 7:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: citylights.com/events/arthur-sze-with-carol-moldaw)

13 MAY 2025 — tuesday

14 MAY 2025 — wednesday

  • The Blue Whale Reading Series presents a poetry reading by Mary Kay Rummel, Little River of Amazements, former Poet Laureate of Ventura County, and poet and fiction writer Susan Chiavelli, open mic follows, second Wednesday of each month, Unity of Santa Barbara Chapel, 227 East Arrellaga Street, Santa Barbara, free, 5:30 pm PST (For more information, visit: www.facebook.com/groups/sbpoetrymonth)

15 MAY 2025 — thursday

  • San Francisco Poet Laureate emerita Kim Shuck celebrates non-English poetry by inviting Clara Hsu, Preeti Vangani, Keana Aguila Labra and special guests to read at SFPL's monthly poetry reading, the Main Library's Poem Jam poetry reading series takes place on the second Thursday of each month. unless otherwise noted, San Francisco Public Library, Latino/Hispanic Room, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco, free, 6:00 pm PDT (415/557-4400, on.sfpl.org/05-15-25)

16 MAY 2025 — friday

  • The Tritone Poetry Series features poets Juliana Spahr, Violet Spurlock, and Norma Cole, Tamarack, 1501 Harrison Street, Oakland, 6:00-8:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: tamarackoakland.com)

17 MAY 2025 — saturday

18 MAY 2025 — sunday

  • Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading featuring Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Frangible Operas, and Mary Mackey, In This Burning World: Poems of Love and Apocalypse, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 3:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).

19 MAY 2025 — monday

20 MAY 2025 — tuesday

  • Oakland Poetry Slam, monthly on the third Tuesday, Tamarack, 1501 Harrison Street, Oakland, 6:30-10:30 pm PDT (For more information, visit: tamarackoakland.com)
  • Shelby Van Pelt discussed her debut novel, Remarkably Bright Creatures, which traces a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus, with novelist and short story writer Karen Joy Fowler, We are all completely beside ourselves, Kepler's Books, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park, 7:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/shelby-van-pelt)

21 MAY 2025 — wednesday

  • Ron Chernow, whose novel Alexander Hamilton was adapted into the Broadway play Hamilton, will discuss his book, Mark Twain, in conversation with Jonathan Bass, Sydney Goldstein Theater, 275 Hayes Street, San Francisco, $80, 7:30 pm PDT (For more information, visit: www.cityarts.net/event/ron-chernow)
  • The ZYZZYVA Issue 129 Celebration and 40th Anniversary Kick-off, Issue 129 contributors reading include Katherine Franco, writer and futurist Dominica Phetteplace, fiction novelist Marian Palaia, and poet D.A. Powell, emceed by ZYZZYVA Editor Oscar Villalon, limited seating, Kerouac Alley, between City Lights Bookstore and Vesuvio Cafe, 257 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, 6:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: citylights.com/events/zyzzyva-issue-129-celebration-40th-anniversary-kick-off)

22 MAY 2025 — thursday

23 MAY 2025 — friday

  • The Tritone Poetry Series features poets José Vadi, Chipped: Writing From a Skateboarder's Lens, Hector Son Of Hector, and Christine No, Whatever Love Means, Tamarack, 1501 Harrison Street, Oakland, 6:00-8:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: tamarackoakland.com)

24 MAY 2025 — saturday

25 MAY 2025 — sunday

  • Michelle Tea celebrates the release of Witch: Anthology, which she edited, with readings and rituals featuring Lily Burana, Kathe Izzo, Molly Larkey, Shelley Marlow, Brooke Palmieri, Mia Tsang, and Sarah Yanni, limited seating; Secret location will be emailed to you after registration, San Francisco, 6:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: citylights.com/events/michelle-tea-and-friends)

26 MAY 2025 — monday

27 MAY 2025 — tuesday

  • Director, actor, essayist, playwright and screenwriter Ralph Remington reads from his book, Penetrating Whiteness: What Racism Really Is and What We Can Do About It, both onsite and online, see website for Zoom registration, City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, 7:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: citylights.com/events/ralph-remington)

28 MAY 2025 — wednesday

  • Nonfiction author Sophie Lewis reads from her book, Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation, both onsite and online, see website for Zoom registration, City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, 7:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: citylights.com/events/sophie-lewis)

29 MAY 2025 — thursday

  • Poetry Flash presents a book launch for Dan Alter, who will read from his new collection Hills Full of Holes; he'll be joined in the celebration by Judy Halebsky, Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged), and Maw Shein Win, Percussing the Thinking Jar, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 7:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).

30 MAY 2025 — friday

31 MAY 2025 — saturday

  • Sixteen Rivers Press presents a poetry reading with Rosa Lane, Called Back, and Camille Norton, A Folio for the Dark: Poems, Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda, Berkeley, 3:00-5:00 pm PDT (sixteenrivers.org)

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