Poetry Night via ZOOM! Join us at 8 PM on Thursday, January 7th, 2021.
Dear Friends of Poetry,
On Thursday, January 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 host and the other attendees.
This short (30-minute) reading will feature poetry by Oswaldo Vargas, Dr. Charles Halsted, and Richard Loranger. As David Mamet says about the arc of a good play, “Come in late and get out early.”
Charles Halsted is a retired academic physician from UC Davis. To prepare for a new poetry career, he took ten on-line courses from Stanford Continuing studies. Thus far, he has published one chapbook and one full length book. Dr Halsted’s second full-length book, On Razor-Thin Tires, will is new this month (January, 2021) from Finishing Line Press. He will read from this collection. Of Halsted’s poetry, Lauren Hilger has said this: “Charles Halsted finds the powerful, haunting, tiny moments within a story and shows his reader there are entire worlds in them.”
Richard Loranger is a multi-genre writer, performer, musician, visual artist, and all-around squeaky wheel, currently residing in Oakland, CA. He is the founder of Poetea, a monthly literary conversation group. He has a brand-new book of poetry titled Be A Bough Tit (as in “be a songbird on a branch”) from Be About It Press in Richmond, CA. He’s also the author of the books Sudden Windows, Poems for Teeth, The Orange Book, ten chapbooks, and work in over 100 magazines and journals. Before COVID, he curated the reading series Babar in Exile, and the queer talk and reading series #we; now he mostly curates his kitchen and has become a notorious zoomophobe. He also spent seven of the last ten months alone in his apartment writing a draft of his first novel. You can find more about his work and scandals at www.richardloranger.com.
Opening for Halsted and Loranger will be recent UC Davis graduate Oswaldo Vargas.
Oswaldo Vargas is a Michoacán native raised in northern California. He is a former farm worker and graduate from the University of California, Davis where he studied history, human rights and Jewish studies. Publications include Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, Green Mountains Review, The Louisville Review and the Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century anthology.
The Poetry Night Reading Series, taking place on the first and third Thursdays of the month, is generously supported 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.
Please join us on Thursday, January 7th, at 8 PM via ZOOM!
Dr. Andy
Find the Facebook Event Page for this Reading Here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/399953277928075
“This is perhaps the most noble aim of poetry, to attach ourselves to the world around us, to turn desire into love, to embrace, finally what always evades us, what is beyond, but what is always there – the unspoken, the spirit, the soul.” Octavio Paz
