Poetry in Davis

Brett Eugene Ralph is a poet, musician and college professor whose performed poets are not to be missed. Kids writer and director Harmony Korine calls Ralph “a true beast of a man with insight and beauty to spare,” and Ralph’s work has been described by musician and actor Will Oldham as “an excuse for hope . . . sustaining, inspiring, even rescuing.”

The work of Brett Eugene Ralph has appeared in publications such as Conduit, Mudfish, Willow Springs, and The American Poetry Review, as well as in the McSweeney’s Book of Poets Picking Poets and The Stiffest of the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader anthologies. His first full-length collection, Black Sabbatical, was published in 2009 by Sarabande Books. Ralph grew up playing football and singing in punk-rock bands in Louisville, Kentucky. He has taught at the University of Massachusetts, Missouri State University, and the Central Institute of Buddhist Studies in the Himalayas of northern India. He now lives in Empire, Kentucky, teaches at Hopkinsville Community College, and rocks out with his country-rock ensemble, Brett Eugene Ralph’s Kentucky Chrome Revue.

Poetry Night at Bistro 33, hosted by Andy Jones and produced by Brad Henderson, occurs on the first and third Wednesday of every month at 9 P.M. with an open microphone segment at 10 P.M.

Happy New Year! This coming Wednesday the stage poet Maxwell Kessler will be performing his work at Bistro 33 as part of a West-Coast tour (he currently hails from Massachusetts). Will you join us January 6th for the first Poetry Night of the new year?

Performance poet Maxwell R. Kessler was born and raised in the Idaho wilderness, and he continues to draw strength and inspiration from the Rocky Mountains. An artist in multiple media, Kessler has performed in a heavy metal rock band, he has written and acted in locally-produced plays and films, and today video of many of his performed poems can be found online.

Kessler has been a member of two Emerson College Slam Teams (including the 2009 College Nationals Finalists) and a member of the 2009 Cantab Team, and he was awarded the title of Champion of Champions at the Boston Poetry Slam. In addition to performing his work throughout New England, he is the co-founder and coordinator of the Emerson Poetry Project, a weekly poetry reading at Emerson College. In 2009 Kessler was named “Emersonian of the Year.”

Maxwell Kessler will bring significant stage experience, energy and talent to the first Poetry Night of the new decade. We hope you will also bring yourself to this performance, and then stick around for the always surprising and diverse Open Mic.

Poetry Night at Bistro 33 is proud to welcome Brighton-based poet Rosy Carrick on Wednesday, October 21st at 9 P.M.

Rosy Carrick’s poetry has been described as simultaneously shocking, sensual and comedic.  Longtime host of Hammer and Tongue, Brighton England’s largest monthly poetry and spoken word event, Carrick teaches writing workshops for adults and youths.  She spends much of her time traveling through the UK and abroad reading poetry, and is currently on tour.  Carrick holds a B.A. in English and Writing from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and an MA in Critical Theory and Creative Writing from Sussex University.  In addition to performing her poetry, Rosy may discuss some of her recent academic publications, including essays with titles such as ‘Getting Lost: Death, Bliss and Creativity,” and “‘Avant-Garde Poetry: Disordered Eating or Unpalatable Truth?” This fall and winter she will participate in “The Cinderella Project,” an innovative multimedia collaboration which seeks to “blur the boundary between paint and performance to create an immediate, visceral and interactive experience for its audience.” Visit her website, www.rosycarrick.co.uk for more information, to read samples of her poetry, and purchase her latest CD, VOLODYA.

Attendees are encouraged to arrive early to secure a table, and to sign up for a spot on the Open Mic list.  Poetry Night at Bistro 33, hosted by Andy Jones and produced by Brad Henderson, occurs on the first and third Wednesday of every month at 9 P.M., with an open microphone segment at 10 P.M.

You are also invited to join the Poetry in Davis mailing list on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2290130152&ref=ts

Tonight, Friday September 18, the Blue Moon is releasing their fourth issue. The John Natsoulas Center for the Arts will be hosting the event at the corner of first and E.

Come by at 7pm for wine, appetizers, and fantastic readings from the upcoming issue, which features beautiful artwork by local artist Pat Mahoney, the winner of the Will Albrecht Young Writer Contest, and much more.

Yosefa Raz is an Israeli-American poet and UC Davis graduate who impresses audiences with the sensitivity and international flavor of her poetry. Raz has published poetry, fiction and translations in Glimmer Train, ZYZZYVA, Tikkun Magazine, Lilith, Bridges and Zeek. Her full length poetry book, In Exchange for a Homeland, was published in 2004 by Swan Scythe Press in Davis. She has been an editor for Bridges: A Feminist Journal, and is currently the poetry editor for Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought & Culture. Originally from Jerusalem, Yosefa Raz currently divides her time between Tel Aviv and Berkeley, where she is working on a PhD in Hebrew Literature.

For more information about Yosefa Raz and samples of her writing, visit her blog at www.yosefaraz.blogspot.com.

Attendees are encouraged to arrive early to secure a table, and to sign up for a spot on the Open Mic list.

Poetry Night at Bistro 33, hosted by Andy Jones and produced by Brad Henderson, occurs on the first and third Wednesday of every month at 9 P.M., with an open microphone segment at 10 P.M.

Poetry Night at Bistro 33 is proud to welcome Jenny Overman on Wednesday, September 2nd at 9 P.M. She will be performing her one-woman show titled “Worries on Wall St. and Mr. Jones.”

Jenny Overman is a performance poet, artist, dancer and actress who looks forward to presenting a new piece of theatrical poetry, “Worries on Wall St. and Mr. Jones,” at Poetry Night at Bistro 33. A native New Yorker now living in Oakland, Overman is the author of the poetry collection I am So White in Some Ways, a book that explores topics concerning social status, race, body image, sexuality and religion.

“Worries on Wall St. and Mr. Jones” is a poetic and personal telling of Jenny Overman’s relationship with New York City, Wall Street, and the economic crisis. The performance will addresses themes of loss, wealth, Judaism, anti-Semitism, and creativity. Included will be a narrative poem about Bernie Madoff as well as other poignant and topical pieces that respond to personal, social, and economic insecurity.

More information about Jenny can be found at www.jennyoverman.com.

Attendees are encouraged to arrive early to secure a table, and to sign up for a spot on the Open Mic list.

Alice Anderson is a gifted, intense, lucid, and absolutely fearless young poet. Human Nature marks a splendid debut. – Thomas Lux

The poet here is someone new in American letters. . . These poems are shocking and bravem relentless in their obsessive power. – Garrett Hongo

Alice Anderson is willing to investigate the darkest of answers . . . her ferocious map of the past also points the way out. “Welcome,” she tells us “to the living.” – Mark Doty

Beware, all who enter here. Anderson’s remarkable first book, winner of the 1994 Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Emerging Writers, is like an outcropping of hell-the reader is compelled by fascination and horror to keep reading. These are poems of paternal incest and complicity: the brother brought into the sister’s room to watch her sexual activity with the father; the mother talking about it with the daughter as if “we’re in this together”; the woman grown, betrayed, enraged, and convinced that “no man will ever adore me that way again.” Dedicated to Sharon Olds, these poems bear her influence: the unflinching look at a difficult reality, the rich attention to physical detail, the rush of overwhelming experience, the aesthetic control. The book’s last line-”It’s the human’s nature to survive, welcome to the living”-which also gives the book its grim and hopeful title, celebrates survival. Anderson’s life force is implicit in the language throughout these
poems, objective, exact, charged with an emotional force given only to those who have been to hell and returned to tell the tale. – Publisher’s Weekly, starred review

Poetry Night at Bistro 33 is proud to welcome Alice Anderson on Wednesday, August 19th at 9 P.M.

Author of the New York University Press book Human Nature, which has won two major first book prizes, Alice Anderson is a strikingly talented poet. One can find her work in journals such as New York Quarterly, New Letters, Agni and The Plum Review; and in anthologies such as On The Verge: Emerging Poets and Artists in America; American Poetry, The Next Generation; and The Why and Later: Poets Speak on Rape. Anderson’s classic poem “The Split” appears in the 20th anniversary edition of The Courage to Heal. A longtime advocate for victims of incest and domestic violence, Alice Anderson now writes out of Sacramento, having escaped the post-Katrina Mississippi coast. Her poetry addresses difficult subjects with eloquence and grace.

Opening for Alice Anderson will be Patrick Grizzell. Co-Founder and former President of the Sacramento Poetry center, Patrick Grizzell is a poet, songwriter and visual artist who has published Dark Music: Selected Poems and Stories (edited by D.R. Wagner), Chicken Months, and The Goat of Esmeralda.

Attendees are encouraged to arrive early to secure a table, and to sign up for a spot on the Open Mic list.