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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


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

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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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