Livermore’s current Poet Laureate, Kevin Gunn, will host the continuing series, Ravenswood Poetry onSunday September 1, 2013. The program is from 2-4 p.m. The featured poets start at two and then there is an open mic that follows about 3 p.m.
The featured Poets for this event will beJeff Knorr and Bob Stanley.
Bob Stanley
Poet Laureate of Sacramento from 2009 to 2012, Bob Stanley has published two chapbooks: Eleven Blue Strings (little m press) and Walt Whitman Orders a Cheeseburger (Rattlesnake Press). He and his son John Stanley recorded and released a CD of original compositions entitled Songs from Random Lane. Bob serves as President of the Sacramento Poetry Center, and teaches English at Sac State and Sac City College. His new poetry collection, Miracle Shine, was published by CW Books in May 2013.
Jeff Knorr
Jeff Knorr is the current Poet Laureate of Sacramento. He is the author of the three books of poetry, The Third Body (Cherry Grove Collections),Keeper (Mammoth Books), and Standing Up to the Day (Pecan Grove Press). His other works includeMooring Against the Tide: Writing Poetry and Fiction(Prentice Hall); the anthology, A Writer’s Country(Prentice Hall). His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies including Chelsea, Connecticut Review, The Journal, North American Review, Red Rock Review,Barrow Street, and
Like Thunder: Poets Respond to Violence in America(University of Iowa).
The event is $5.00 for admission and light refreshments are served.
Open mic is after the featured reading!
Ravenswood is located at 2657 Arroyo Road In Livermore, California
He tells the story of the man with the inside out face who walks, dead feet on dead ground. He gets close to the description, showing small organisms feeding on the man’s wounds. The writer curls into his work; he carves the full range of pain, the wide swath of sorrow. As the sun sets, his colors fade to grey.
The poet draws the sketch of his own youth, newspapers on a windy hillside. Being slow, being fast, the things children remember, like sandwiches. The father is kind, the mother is kind. He doesn’t know how he became a writer, but that is what he has become. He hears that high pitch in his left ear, and waits for it to dissipate.
To be a child again, knowing books change the world. Running up the narrow stairs into soft, yellow light of the old Carnegie branch, and there they are, walls of them. Librarian smiles at Dad and me, kid exchanging finished stack for more.
Now I read titles of courses I will never get to take:The Nature of Culture;Form, Space, Vision; Primate Behavior. If I took all three at once, could I tell new stories, speak new tongues, or just appear an educated gibbon at art opening in midtown?
Clicking through the college catalog I see him - General Ed lurking deep inside, chanting the secret names of what we hope to come to understand:The Joy of Garbage,Urban Geography,Visualization, and he winks at us. What comes from all this work?
Community Engagement,Children and Television, The List Poem: No, not “knowing,” really, but still we climb towards that warm & yellow light.
May 25 at Sacramento Music Festival, Calif. State Railroad Museum, 2:45 pm. $10 Railroad Museum admission gets you into the full Poetry and Music show from 1 to 5pm, featuring Laura Martin, ElectroPoeticCoffee, Vincent Kobelt and Fo’Shang, Shawn Pittard and Clemon Charles, and William O’Daly with Louis V. Johnson.
Pete Gealey will also be joining Bob at the May 27 book release party at SPC as well! Free, 7pm.
