Dear Friends of Poetry,
Please join us for a reading by two of northern California’s top poets: Leonore Wilson and William O’Daly. We meet at the John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 1stStreet in Davis, from 8 to 9 PM for the featured poets. An open mic begins at 9 PM.
Leonore Wilson is the poet laureate emerita of Napa, California, and has taught English and Creative Writing at various colleges and universities in the Bay Area. Winner of fellowships to Villa Montalvo Center for the Arts and University of Utah for her writing, Wilson has been nominated for four Pushcart awards in poetry. Her work has been published in such magazines as Quarterly West, Third Coast, Laurel Review, Madison Review, etc. She is on the MFA and River of Words advisory boards at St. Mary’s College, California. The author of the poetry books Western Solsticeand Tremendum, Augstem, Wilson lives in Northern California on her family’s historic cattle ranch which she hopes to preserve for decades to come. She is the mother of three grown sons.
William O’Daly has translated eight books of the late-career and posthumous poetry of Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, and most recently Neruda’s first volume, Book of Twilight, a finalist for the 2018 Northern California Book Award in Translation. All nine Neruda translations are published by Copper Canyon Press. O’Daly’s books of poems include The Whale in the Web, also published by Copper Canyon, as well as The Road to Isla Negra(Folded Word Press, 2015), Water Ways(Folded Word, 2017, a collaboration with JS Graustein), and Yarrow and Smoke(selected as the 2018 Folded Word “Masters Series” title).
A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, O’Daly was a finalist for the 2006 Quill Award in Poetry and was profiled by Mike Leonard for The Today Show.A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, his poems, translations, essays, and reviews have been published in numerous journals and as part of multimedia exhibits and performances. His essay “Creative Collisions: Poetry as a Transformative Act” was a finalist for Tiferet Journal’s2018 Writing Contest. He has received national and regional honors for literary editing and instructional design, was a co-founder of Copper Canyon Press, and served on the national board of Poets Against War. In 2016, he was awarded by the State of California for his written and editorial contributions to the California Water Plan.
Following the featured readers will be an open mic, with participants limited to two items or five minutes, whichever is shorter. Arrive by 7:45 to add your name to the open mic list. It is almost always filled by 8 PM.
Future Poetry Night Features:
February 21 – Lee Herrick
March 7 – Joshua McKinney
March 21 – Don Schofield
April 4 – The Poets’ Quartet
April 18 – Angela James and Friends
Please also remember to add your name to the Poetry in Davis mailing list and the Poetry in Davis Facebook group.
