Contemporary poetry and poets
As part of our local Community Voices series, Farnaz Fatemi and Dion O’Reilly interview Watsonville-based poet, teacher, and fiction editor at Watermelanin Magazine, Christopher Soriano, reading his poetry and talking about his life. Find Christopher Soriano on Instagram and Twitter @chsoripalma and at christophersorianowrites.
Poetry Santa Cruz welcomed Sally Ashton and Ken Weisner to read for an appreciative audience at Bookshop Santa Cruz, on April 9, 2019.
Sally Ashton’s latest poetry collection is titled The Behaviour of Clocks. Learn more at her website: https://sallyashton.com/
Ken Weisner also has a new poetry collection, Cricket to Star, which he launched with a reading at Bookshop Santa Cruz on January 27, 2019. If you missed it, we have the podcast.
For March 31, 2019, Danusha Lameris of The Hive on KSQD welcomed singer/ songwriter Sarah Cruse, who led in a discussion with other members of In Her Shoes, a local event that features African-American women sharing their experiences through poetry/ spoken word.
In this episode of the Hive Poetry Hour, Meg Frietag, author of the award winning collection Edith, reads poems and discusses parakeets, love, childhood, teeth, consciousness and the pitfalls of calling fiction fiction.
Following the interview is the Hive poetry calendar.
This episode was broadcast on Sunday, March 24, 2019, on KSQD-FM, Santa Cruz, CA.
The monthly Poetry Santa Cruz reading on March 12, 2019, featured poets Christopher Buckley and Gary Young.
About Christopher Buckley, from Poetry Foundation:
Poet and editor Christopher Buckley earned his BA from St. Mary’s College, MA from San Diego State University, and MFA from the University of California-Irvine. He is the author of over twenty collections of poetry, including most recently Star Journal: Selected Poems (2016). With Gary Young he has edited the anthologies The Geography of Home: California’s Poetry of Place (1999), Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poetry and Poetics from California (2008), and One for the Money: The Sentence as a Poetic Form (2013).
Buckley has won numerous honors and awards for his work, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He is professor emeritus at the University of California-Riverside.
About Gary Young, from UCSC faculty page:
Gary Young is a poet and artist whose honors include grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Vogelstein Foundation, the California Arts Council, and two fellowship grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. His latest book of poems, That’s What I Thought, won the Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award from Persea Books. He was Santa Cruz County’s first Poet Laureate, and he teaches Creative Writing and directs the Cowell Press at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Farnaz Fatemi and Dion O’Reilly talk to Wilma Marcus Chandler about In Celebration of the Muse– an acclaimed event in its 37th year featuring woman writers reading their work. We hear a little of the history of The Muse from Wilma, one of the founders, and then some participants read their poems.
Featured poets are Nancy Gomez, Rosie King, Maggie Paul, Carol Brensel, Jessica Cohn, Danusha Lameris, Dion O’Reilly, and Farnaz Fatemi. In Celebration of the Muse will take place March 23rd at 7:00 PM at the Center Stage Theater in Santa Cruz.
This edition of The Hive poetry collective was broadcast on KSQD Santa Cruz, on Sunday, March 10, 2019.
Episode two of The Hive, in which poet Dion O’Reilly, and Santa Cruz Poet Laureate Danusha Lameris discuss the work of poet Tony Hoagland, who died in October of 2018. We tell a story or two, read some of his poems, and discuss his craft, controversy, and legacy.
Broadcast Sunday, March 3, 2019 on KSQD Santa Cruz, FM 90.7.
On February 17, 2019, local poet Dane Cervine joined host Dennis Morton to read from and discuss the new anthology Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California.
Dane is one of 149 California poets who contributed to this outstanding new collection, edited by Lucille Lang Day and Ruth Nolan, published by Scarlet Tanager Books.
This broadcast was the debut of the weekly Sunday evening poetry hour on KSQD, 90.7-FM in Santa Cruz, California. See also our previous podcast, of the February 12 Poetry Santa Cruz reading, featuring Dane and five other poets from Fire and Rain.
