C.S. Giscombe

C.S. Giscombe and Mary Gilliland

1 FEBRUARY 2024 — thursday

Poetry Flash presents a reading by poet and eco-activist Mary Gilliland, The Devil's Fools, and poet and professor C.S. Giscombe, Negro Mountain, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 7:00 pm PST (poetryflash.org).


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MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Mary Gilliland's recent poetry collections are The Devil's Fools, winner of the Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award, and The Ruined Walled Castle Garden, Bright Hill Press Chapbook Prize-winner. Cynthia Hogue says, "[This] magisterial new collection, The Devil's Fools, opens in myth and magic, but its vast reach is deeply rooted in her reverence for earth and all earthly creations.…At once eco-sensual and erudite, Gilliland writes a nuanced poetry that richly investigates humanity's contradictory capacities to destroy and to love." Mary Gilliland is a recipient of the Stanley Kunitz Fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center, a Cornell University Council on the Arts Faculty Grant, and the 2023 International Literary Seminars Kenya/Fence 1st Prize in Poetry. Her forthcoming books, In the pool of the sea's shoulder and Ember Days, will be published in 2024. She lives in Ithaca, New York.
C.S. Giscombe's new collection of poetry is Negro Mountain. Tyrone Williams says, "In the dreamscapes of these poems, survival depends on both 'Negro luck' and a knack for being a bit 'country.' A wolf (or coyote) in sheep's clothing, the fool on the hill is s/he who exposes 'the story's / sham,' that 'tiresome trope' of captivity or freedom, criminality or servitude, violence or resignation. Negro Mountain turns the tables on the sacrosanct." C.S. Giscombe is the author or co-author of fourteen books, including Giscome Road, winner of the Carl Sandburg Prize; Prairie Style, an American Book Award-winner; Border Towns; Ohio Railroads; and Train Music, in collaboration with book artist Judith Margolis. His honors include the African-American Literature and Culture Society's Stephen Henderson Award and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is professor and the Robert Hass Chair in English at University of California, Berkeley