Dear Friends of Poetry,
For the first time in the circa 15-year history of the Poetry Night Reading Series, tonight at 8 PM we will offer a poetry reading via ZOOM. To participate, visit https://ucdavisdss.zoom.us/my/andyojones at 8 PM, or a few minutes before if you wish to chat with the other attendees.
The reading tonight will be short (about 30 minutes), will feature three poets from three different parts of America, and will not offer an open mic. We recommend you keep your mic on mute. We will expand the offerings in the future, so they may involve you. There is no cost to attend, though you are encouraged to support your local independent bookstore by buying books of poetry.
The three featured poets tonight are Norelyn Parker, Jane Beal, and Joseph Mills
Norelyn Parker
Norelyn Parker is a Sexologist who lives in Sacramento with her partner and her dog, Scribble. She has a love-hate relationship with wind as she was born in THE Windy city but was raised in arguably the second windiest city—Cordelia, California.
Norelyn placed (second) in the most recent Jack Kerouac Poetry Contest and has read as a part of the Lyrics and Dirges poetry series in Berkeley. She was recently featured at the Speaking Axolotl Latinx reading series.
Jane Beal
Jane Beal, PhD is professor and chair of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. Her poetry collections include Sanctuary (Finishing Line Press, 2008), Rising: Poems for America (Wipf and Stock, 2015) and Song of the Selkie (Aubade, forthcoming 2020), as well as three recording projects combining music and poetry: “Songs from the Secret Life,” “Love-Song,” and “The Jazz Bird.” Her love for Pearl, a medieval dream vision poem, inspired her to write The Signifying Power of Pearl: Medieval Literary and Cultural Contexts for the Transformation of Genre (Routledge, 2017); to co-author and co-edit Approaches to Teaching the Middle English Pearl (Modern Language Association, 2017), and to edit and translate Pearl: A Middle English Edition and Modern English Translation (Broadview, 2020). Her Pearl translation has just been published to significant acclaim. A UC Davis graduate, Jane Beal also writes fiction, creative non-fiction, and music. To learn more about Jane, please see http://janebeal.wordpress.com.
Joseph Mills
A faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Dr. Joseph Mills has published six collections of poetry, including “Exit, pursued by a bear” which consists of poems triggered by stage directions in Shakespeare. His book “This Miraculous Turning” was awarded the North Carolina Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry for its exploration of race and family. In 2019, he published his first book of fiction, “Bleachers: 54 linked fictions.” Information about the poetry, fiction, and wine guides of Joe Mills is available at www.josephrobertmills.com.
The Poetry Night Reading Series, usually taking place on the first and third Thursdays of the month, is generously supported by the John Natsoulas Gallery and by the people and poets of the Sacramento Valley. Your host will be Dr. Andy Jones, the poet laureate emeritus of the City of Davis.
You should join us at 8 tonight. It’ll be easy!
Dr. Andy
