Poetry Night via ZOOM! Join us at 8 PM on Thursday, February 4th, 2021.
Dear Friends of Poetry,
With Groundhog Day upon us, and with so many of us feeling isolated and socially distant from one another, stuck in our homes, feeling as if we are reliving the same day over and over, a gloomy and overcast day with no hope of the light that comes from a variety of experiences or substantive entertainment, we may feel we are flirting with despair. Well don’t give up hope, for Thursday presents us with Poetry Night!
On Thursday, February 4th, at 8 PM PST, friends, readers, and aesthetes will gather together for 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 Barbara Ruth Saunders and Rick Lupert. Please join us, and bring your receptivity to delight and wonder, for, as Lucille Clifton says, “Poems come out of wonder, not out of knowing.”
Barbara Saunders writes about how history and myth manifest in biography. Born in New York City and raised in Westchester, she’s lived in the Bay Area since 1984. Barbara reads poems, tells stories, and performs her solo plays in San Francisco and Berkeley. Her work has won prizes or honorable mention from the Ina Coolbrith Circle, the Bay Area Poets’ Coalition, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her work has recently appeared in the Highland Park (IL) Poetry Muses’ Gallery. Since graduating from Stanford University, Saunders has studied writing with Adair Laura and Susan Griffin (one of Dr. Andy’s author heroes).
Rick Lupert has been involved in the Los Angeles poetry community since 1990. He is the recipient of the 2014 Beyond Baroque Distinguished Service Award for service to the Los Angeles poetry community. He served for two years as a co-director of the Valley Contemporary Poets, a non-profit literary organization, established in 1980, which produces readings and publications out of the San Fernando Valley.
The poetry of Rick Lupert has appeared in dozens of journals, he has edited three poetry anthologies, and he has authored 20 books. He writes the Jewish poetry blog From The Lupertverse for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. He hosted the long running Cobalt Café reading series in Canoga Park for almost 21 years (which launched again as a virtual series in 2020) and is regularly featured at venues throughout Southern California. Rick created and maintains the Poetry Super Highway, an online resource and publication for poets, and he writes and occasionally draws the daily web-comic Cat and Banana with fellow Los Angeles poet Brendan Constantine.
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 is Dr. Andy Jones, the poet laureate emeritus of the City of Davis.
Please join us on Thursday, February 4th, at 8 PM via ZOOM!
Dr. Andy
Find the Facebook Event Page for this Reading Here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/441363216914683
March and April featured poets will include Indigo Moor, Andrea Ross, and Julia Levine, all of whom will be reading from new books.
Doesn’t everyone want to feel in the night
the beloved body, compass, polestar,
to hear the quiet breathing that says
I am alive, that means also
you are alive, because you hear me,
you are here with me. And when one turns,
the other turns—
Louise Glück, from her poem “A Myth of Devotion”
