
Bruce Isaacson
Paul Corman-Roberts and Bruce Isaacson
25 SEPTEMBER 2025 — thursday
Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Bruce Isaacson, Porpoisefully Wrong, and Paul Corman-Roberts, Bone Moon Palace, 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. Paul Corman-Roberts featured book will be available at the event and at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash. Bruce Isaacson's books are available at www.Zeigeist-Press.com. This event will be posted on the Poetry Flash YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UClwdR-uPFNz7XxbBbLcnoEA.
MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Paul Corman-Roberts is the co-founder of Collapse Press. His most recent books are 19th Street Station Volume 2, The Sincere, and Bone Moon Palace, Black Lawrence Press, a full-length poetry collection nominated for the CLMP Firecracker Awards. Genny Lim, San Francisco Poet Laureate, says of it, "These verses leave no slack. Gritty, rude, and raw to the bone, they express the political-human angst and turmoil of our combustible city and times, bursting forth, like an angry spigot, its elegy of love, sex and pain, contradictions and visions." He is a founder and organizer of the Beast Crawl Lit Festival in Oakland, California, and has taught workshops for the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute. He sometimes fills in as a drummer for the U.S. Ghostal Service, The Jennifer Blowdryer Band, and the Poznansky Sisters.
Bruce Isaacson's new book of poems is Porpoisefully Wrong. His previous books include Anthems of the Damned, in which the poet shows how it feels "to be human in an age of the ghosted soul," and Leningrad to Las Vegas; his novel is Vegas Dirt. He says of it, "These are human stories of the Great Recession—the salesman with two families, the mogul in misery, the erotic dancer who took the stage name America." Richard Silberg wrote in Poetry Flash, Isaacson "uses 'pop' language and images from news media, advertising, chews it up and spits it back, for subversion, and no one is slicker or deadlier at that than Isaacson…the ideal poetic guerrilla…a master of irony, the offbeat metaphor, poems that keep on ticking on the mind after they end in a sudden silence." Bruce Isaacson was a surprise finalist in the inaugural Nuyorican Poetry Slam; in San Francisco he was a coordinator of the Café Babar readings, part of an infamous SF Spoken Word resurgence. Bruce Isaacson was the first Poet Laureate of Clark County, Nevada, which includes Las Vegas. He's publisher of Zeitgeist Press, with over 150 poetry titles to date.


Daily Listings
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17 SEPTEMBER 2025 — wednesday
18 SEPTEMBER 2025 — thursday
19 SEPTEMBER 2025 — friday
- City Arts and Lectures presents Arundhati Roy reading from and discussing her new memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me, a soaring account of how the author became the person and writer she is, shaped by circumstance and her complex relationship to her extraordinary mother, in conversation with award-winning reporter Deepa Fernandes, Sydney Goldstein Theater, 275 Hayes Street, San Francisco, $59, 7:30 (www.cityarts.net/event/arundhati-roy-2)
20 SEPTEMBER 2025 — saturday
21 SEPTEMBER 2025 — sunday
- The 28th annual Petaluma Poetry Walk is an annual poetry festival founded in 1996, this year features 26 poets at eight venues: 11:00 am, Hotel Petaluma, Ballroom, 205 Kentucky Street: Sixteen Rivers Press kicks off the Walk with Judy Halebsky, Moira Magneson, and Patrick Cahill, with event presenter Terry Ehret; Noon, Keller Street CoWork, Main Lounge, 140 Keller Street: Unsolicited Press Poets, Cathryn Shea, LeeAnn Pickrell, and Kerry Donoghue, with event presenter Daedalus Howell; 1:00 pm, The Phoenix Theater, 201 Washington Street: Found Poets in The Round, Grayson Thompson, Original Giotis, and Bernice Espinoza, with event presenter Josh Windmiller; 2:00 pm, The Big Easy, 128 American Alley: Black Lawrence Press Poets, Cassandra Dallett, Tureeda Mikell, and Paul Corman-Roberts, with event presenter Ingrid Keir; 3:00 pm, Copperfield's Books, 140 Kentucky Street: The Headliners, Dorianne Laux, Life on Earth, and Joseph Millar, Shine, with event presenter Kary Hess; 4:00 pm, Usher Gallery, 1 Petaluma Blvd. North: the Translator Poets, Nancy Morales, Terry Ehret, Amanda Moore, with event presenter Dave Seter, Sonoma County Poet Laureate; 5:00 pm, The Petaluma Historical Library and Museum, 20 4th Street: The Library Youth Poets, Meg Hamill, Lisa Zheng, and Anaya Ertz, with event presenter John Johnson; 6:00-8:00 pm, Aqus Café, 189 H Street (this location is the farthest, you might want a ride for this venue): The Grande Finale: The Shape of Love with Jennifer Barone, Justin Cole Demeter, Ingrid Keir, Sonoma County Poet Laureate Dave Seter, Kelechi Ubozoh, Bill Vartnaw, with event presenter Kary Hess; all in walking distance across Petaluma, all free, 11:00 am to 8:00 pm (For more information, visit: petalumapoetrywalk.org)
22 SEPTEMBER 2025 — monday
23 SEPTEMBER 2025 — tuesday
24 SEPTEMBER 2025 — wednesday
25 SEPTEMBER 2025 — thursday
- Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Bruce Isaacson, Porpoisefully Wrong, and Paul Corman-Roberts, Bone Moon Palace, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 7:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).
26 SEPTEMBER 2025 — friday
27 SEPTEMBER 2025 — saturday
- Fourth Saturdays: Poetry at the Claremont Library presents a reading by the Fourth Saturdays Team, the organizers of the series: Lucia Galloway-Dick, Karen Greenbaum-Maya, Genevieve Kaplan, and George Hammons, Claremont Helen Renwick Library, 208 N. Harvard Avenue, in the Claremont Village, Claremont, free, 2:00 (909/621-4902, www.claremontlibrary.org/monthly-poetry-readings.html)
- The Sitting Room presents a Round Table Discussion on "The Poetry of Marianne Moore: Just Fiddle or Genuine?" led by Sonoma County Poet Laureate Dave Seter, bring your own favorite poems by Moore or poems of hers that you find challenging, The Sitting Room, Cotati, 2:00-4:00 (Registration required, sittingroomlibrary.org/events)
28 SEPTEMBER 2025 — sunday
- Rumi's Caravan returns to Berkeley for recitations of world poetry, featuring an improvised poetic conversation with music, the presentation quotes from the works Rumi, Hafiz, Mary Oliver, Kabir, Wendell Berry, Neruda, Rilke, Robert Bly, Yeats, Naomi Shihab Nye, William Stafford, Maya Angelou, Leonard Cohen, Seamus Heaney, Denise Levertov, Antonio Machado, May Sarton and others, ticket sales support the work of the Middle East Children's Alliance; The Freight & Salvage, 2020 Addison Street, Berkeley, $30 Advance or $35 Door, 7:30 pm (rumiscaravan.com)
29 SEPTEMBER 2025 — monday
30 SEPTEMBER 2025 — tuesday
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