NAME, M/DD NAME, M/DD NAME, M/DD NAME, M/DD Express %26 Inspire Development %26 Publication
join our mailing list

Get selected timely event updates and news about Poetry Flash in your email inbox.

x

Bert Meyers Tribute: Eric Gudas, David Shaddock, Anat Silvera

22 JUNE 2023 — thursday

Poetry Flash presents a reading celebrating the publication of Bert Meyers: On the Life and Work of an American Master, readers include poets Eric Gudas, David Shaddock, and Anat Silvera, the poet's daughter, in person, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 7:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).

Thank you for continuing to support Poetry Flash and our reading series.
Bert Meyers: On the Life and Work of an American Master will be available at the event and online at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash(a portion of the proceeds support Poetry Flash).

Bert Meyers: On the Life and Work of an American Master, the latest volume in The Unsung Masters Series, offers a large selection of his very best poetry alongside essays and appreciations from José Angel Araguz, Jim Bogen, Victoria Chang, Amy Gerstler, Garrett Hongo, Daniel Meyers, Barry Sanders, Ari Sherman, Maurya Simon, and Sean Singer, among others. The Unsung Masters Series exists to bring great but largely overlooked writers to new readers. This volume is edited by Dana Levin and Adele Williams.

"Bert Meyers is an American original—a brilliant poet whose use of tone and figurative language was so emotive, intelligent and nuanced, it became inimitable, became its own unique perspective on our world. I wouldn't be surprised if mid-twenty-first century scholars announce that in Bert Meyers we have overlooked the best poet of his generation." —Ilya Kaminsky
MORE ABOUT THE READERS

Eric Gudas is the author of Best Western and Other Poems, winner of the Gerald Cable Book Award, and Beautiful Monster, a chapbook. His work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, Poetry Flash, Los Angeles Review of Books, Raritan, and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles.

David Shaddock is a poet and psychotherapist. His most recent poetry book is A Book of Splendor: New and Selected Poems on Spiritual Themes. He has a regular column in Poetry Flash, "Poetry and Healing," and is the author of Poetry and Psychoanalysis: The Opening of the Field (Routledge), and two books on relationships and couples therapy. He lectures widely on those topics, and maintains a private practice in Berkeley.

Anat Silvera, Bert Meyers's daughter, is one of the founders of Silvera Jewelry School in Berkeley. Before and after college she studied with artists and craftsmen, apprenticing as a metalsmith and learning how to create fine beadwork. She is the author of a book on her craft, and has exhibited her work all over the U.S., including as featured artist at the Oakland Museum of Art Collector's Gallery.

The son of Romanian and Polish Jewish immigrants, Bert Meyers (1928-1979) was born in Los Angeles. Always rebellious and a questioner of authority, he dropped out of high school and became a poet. For many years he worked at manual labor jobs, including printer's apprentice, until he became a master picture framer and gilder. Here he found satisfaction in craftsmanship and attention to detail, the same approach he used in composing his poetry. Throughout those years he continued to write, feeling that a poet should be immersed in the world, and should have real world things to write about. Meyers wanted to be self-taught. He read everything he could get his hands on and had a prodigious literary memory. He frequented the vibrant circles of LA poets at the time, with Thomas McGrath and others. His fellow poet and friend Robert Mezey said, "Bert Meyers belonged to no school or coterie and had no use for fashion. He was that rarest of creatures, a pure lyric poet. His poems are very much what he was—gentle, cantankerous, reflective, passionate and wise." Although he had never taken undergraduate classes, and had no high school diploma, in 1964 he was admitted to the Claremont Graduate School on the basis of his poetic achievements. By 1967 he had a Ph.D in English Literature and was hired to teach poetry and literature at Pitzer College in Claremont, where he taught until 1978. During his life as a professor, Meyers finally had the time to focus on his writing; he also had an important and lasting influence on his students, a new generation of poets and writers, including Dennis Cooper, Amy Gerstler, Garrett Hongo, and Mauyra Simon among others.

He published at least eight collections of poetry, including Early Rain (1960), The Dark Birds (1968), Sunlight on the Wall (1976), Windowsills (1979), The Wild Olive Trees (1979). Before he died, he selected the core poems of In a Dybbuk's Raincoat: Collected Poems (2007). His widow, Odette Meyers, son Daniel Meyers, and poet Morton Marcus shepherded the book into posthumous publication. Meyers's precisely framed poems are image driven and often quite short. Noting that "the image is unequivocally at the center of his work" in her introduction to In a Dybbuk's Raincoat, Denise Levertov lamented that "Bert Meyers death has deprived us of one of the best poets of our time." (Information from bertmeyers.com)




Daily Listings

< previous month  |  show all SEPTEMBER  |  next month >


22 SEPTEMBER 2023 — friday

  • Beyond Baroque presents poet Teresa Mei Chuc, celebrating the launch of her new book, Incidental Takes, joined in a reading by authors Tanya Ko Hong, The War Still Within, Angelina Sáenz, Edgecliff, Lisbeth Coiman, Uprising / Alzamiento, and traci kato-kiriyama, Navigating With(out) Intruments, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, 681 Venice Blvd., Venice Beach, Los Angeles, free, 7:30 pm PDT (Register to attend: www.beyondbaroque.org)

23 SEPTEMBER 2023 — saturday

  • Point Reyes Books presents poet and essayist Jane Hirshfield, The Beauty, longlisted for the National Book Award, reading from her new collection, The Asking: New and Selected Poems, copies of the book will be available for purchase, Point Reyes Presbyterian Church, 11445 CA-1, Point Reyes Station, $10, 3:00 pm PDT (Register to attend: www.ptreyesbooks.com/event/jane-hirshfield)
  • Arts of Point Richmond, with the Marin Poetry Center, present Lily Iona MacKenzie, reading from her two new books, Dreaming Myself into Old Age: One Woman's Search for Meaning, a hybrid memoir, and California Dreaming, a collection of poems, in conversation with Christine Cote, editor and publisher of Shanti Arts Press, online via Zoom, free, Noon-1:00 pm PDT (RSVP to attend: www.artsofpointrichmond.com/events/book-launch-for-two-books-by-lily-iona-mackenzie)
  • Beyond Baroque presents "Beyond Barock: A Day of Latinx Punk, Social Justice, and Literature," featuring Juanita Mantz, Portrait of a Deputy Public Defender, Richard T. Rodriguez, A Kiss Across the Ocean: Transatlantic Intimacies of British Post-Punk and U.S. Latinidad, Michelle Cruz Gonzales, The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk, and Margaret Elysia Garcia, the daughterland poems, with a musical performance by punk band Bad Boys Dance Party, free, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, 681 Venice Blvd., Venice Beach, Los Angeles, event starts at Noon PDT, the open mic reading is at 2:00 pm (Register to attend: www.beyondbaroque.org)
  • Fourth Saturdays presents a reading with featured poets Angela Peñaredondo, All Things Lose Thousands of Times, winner of the Hillary Gravendyk Regional Book Prize, and Nancy Murphy, The Space Carved by the Sharpness of Your Absence, books will be available for purchase at the event, free, Claremont Library, 208 N. Harvard Ave, Claremont, 2:00 pm PDT (More information here: www.facebook.com/fourthsaturdayspoetry)
  • Marin Poetry Center presents Prartho Sereno, former Poet Laureate of Marin County and author of Indian Rope Trick, winner of the 2018 Blue Light Book Award, reading from her new collection, Starfall in the Temple, with musical accompaniment, refreshments will be served at the event, free, Redwoods Presbyterian Church, 110 Magnolia Ave, Larkspur, 2:30-4:00 pm PDT

24 SEPTEMBER 2023 — sunday

  • Poetry Flash Reading Series presents their festive season opening, a book launch for poet and writer Judy Bebelaar, Sky Holding Fall, reading with poet Jeanne Wagner, Everything Turns Into Something Else, followed by refreshments and music, The Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar Street, Berkeley, free, 3:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).

25 SEPTEMBER 2023 — monday

26 SEPTEMBER 2023 — tuesday

  • Cobalt Poets presents a reading by featured poet Vayl Luella Larkin, followed by an open mic, online via Zoom, free, 7:30 pm PDT (Register to attend: www.poetrysuperhighway.com/cobalt/calendar.html)
  • The Booksmith presents novelist Adam Mansbach, Go the Fuck to Sleep, celebrating the launch of his new book, The Golem of Brooklyn, in conversation with comedian and director W. Kamau Bell, Do the Work!, First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, 2619 Broadway, Oakland, $10 general admission, $25 ticket includes a signed copy of the book, 7:00 pm PDT (Purchase tickets here: (www.booksmith.com/event)

27 SEPTEMBER 2023 — wednesday

28 SEPTEMBER 2023 — thursday

  • Writers Read Ukiah presents poet Robin Gabbert, Diary of a Mad Poet, who will give a lecture on ekphrastic poetry and read from her new book, The Clandestine Life of Paintings in Poem, Grace Hudson Museum, 431 South Main Street, Ukiah, $5 suggested donation, 7:00 pm PDT

29 SEPTEMBER 2023 — friday

30 SEPTEMBER 2023 — saturday

  • 42nd Annual Northern California Book Awards, honoring the published works and authors of Northern California, as well as California translators state-wide, presenting the FRED CODY AWARD, RECOGNITION and GROUNDBREAKER AWARDS, and awards in FICTION, POETRY, CREATIVE NONFICTION, GENERAL NONFICTION, CALIFORNIA TRANSLATION IN POETRY, CALIFORNIA TRANSLATION IN PROSE, CHILDREN'S LITERATURE, YOUNGER READERS, MIDDLE GRADE, YOUNG ADULT, bookselling follows, selected by Northern California Book Reviewers and sponsored by Poetry Flash, Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco, free, 2:00 pm PDT (Check back for updates, poetryflash.org/programs/?p=ncba_2023 or https://sfpl.org/events)
  • Sacramento Poetry Alliance presents a poetry reading by Camille Norton, Corruption, and Stella Beratlis, Dust Bowl Venus, Sacramento Poetry Alliance, 1169 Perkins Way, Sacramento, free, 4:00 pm PDT (More information here: www.facebook.com/sacramentopoetryalliance)

< previous month  |  show all SEPTEMBER  |  next month >

© 1972-2021 Poetry Flash. All rights reserved.  |