Dear Friends of Poetry,
On May 7th 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.
Tonight’s short (about 30 minutes) poetry reading will feature two California poets, David Alpaugh and Connie Post. There is no cost to attend, though today is the Big Day of Giving, meaning that your gifts to local non-profits (such as the Sacramento Poetry Center or the Yolo Food Bank) may be matched by other local donors. See https://www.bigdayofgiving.org for more information, and to give a gift!
The two featured poets tonight are David Alpaugh and Connie Post.
David Alpaugh’s Spooky Action at a Distance presents 79 “double-title” poems,”a form he created “to give the sonnet, sestina, villanelle, pantoum, and ghazal a run for relevance in the quantum world we now inhabit.” Kathleen Lynch praises Alpaugh as “an excellent poetic space travel guide… who offers a cornucopia of delights, complications, and some truly moving insights.” Lynne Knight notes that the double-title form “could not be better suited to this poet’s “outrageous wit,” “musical ear,” and “brilliant, iconoclastic mind.” Alpaugh’s first, collection, Counterpoint, won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize from Story Line Press and will be reissued this year by Red Hen Press. His poetry has appeared in more than 100 journals, and his controversial essays on “po-biz” in Poets & Writers, Rattle, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Originally a “Jersey boy,” he is sufficiently “Californianized” to have been published in the Heyday Press anthology California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present, and to have been a finalist for laureate of the golden state. He teaches poetry for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at its Cal State East Bay campus.
Connie Post’s Prime Meridian is her second full length collection from Glass Lyre Press. As Juan Herrera says “We need this wisdom book, clear elixirs from the Source.” Poet Dean Rader describes the journey in this way “In poems both personal and political, Post manages to connect physical and geological ailments by way of her spare but unsparing lyrics.” Connie served as Poet Laureate of Livermore, California (2005 to 2009). Her work has received praise from Al Young, Ursula LeGuin, Ellen Bass. Her work has appeared in Calyx, One, River Styx, Slipstream, Slippery Elm, The Pedestal Magazine, Spoon River Poetry Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review and Verse Daily. Her Chapbook “And When the Sun Drops” received the Aurorean’s Editor’s Chapbook Award. Her other awards include the 2018 Liakoura Award, 2016 Crab Creek Review Poetry Award, the Caesura award and First Prize in the Prick of the Spindle Poetry Competition. Her first full length Book “Floodwater” (Glass Lyre Press 2014) won the publisher’s Lyrebird Award.
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
P.P.S. Find the Facebook event page for tonight’s reading at https://www.facebook.com/events/1125655211127169/
