Dear Friends of Poetry,
The Poetry Night Reading Series is excited to feature a poetry reading by Julia Levine and Murray Silverstein at 7 PM on Thursday, November 7th, 2024, on the first floor of the John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 1st Street in Davis.
We are excited to welcome back Julia B. Levine, poet laureate emerita of Davis, California. Julia B. Levine’s poetry has won many awards, including a 2021 Nautilus Award for her fifth poetry collection, Ordinary Psalms (LSU press, 2021), as well as the 2015 Northern California Book Award in Poetry for her fourth collection, Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight (LSU, 2014). Recently she has won s 2024 Pushcart Prize, the 2023 Oran Perry Burke Award from The Southern Review, the 2022 Steve Kowit Poetry Prize, the 2020 Bellevue Literary Review Poetry Award, as well as a 2022 American Academy of Poetry Poet Laureate Fellowship for her work in building resilience in teenagers related to climate change through poetry, science and technology. Her work has appeared in many literary journals, including Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, The Nation and Prairie Schooner. She earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from University of California, Berkeley and an MFA in poetry from Pacific University. Find out more about Julia and her work at sites.google.com/view/juliablevine
Reading with Julia Levine will be the prominent Bay Area poet Murray Silverstein. Red Studio (2024) is Murray Silverstein’s third book of poems from Sixteen Rivers Press. His first collection, Any Old Wolf (2007), received the Independent Publisher’s Bronze Medal for Poetry and was followed by Master of Leaves (2014). His poems have appeared in Rattle, ZYZZYVA, The MacGuffin, The Brooklyn Review, West Marin Review, Plainsongs, Nimrod, and Under a Warm Green Linden, among other journals. The senior editor for two Sixteen Rivers anthologies, America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience (2018), which received the Independent Publisher’s Silver Medal for anthologies, and The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed (2010), he also directs the Sixteen Rivers Press Youth Poetry Project, which has published three chapbooks by teen poets: Anthems (2022), Dear Earth (2023), and Our Own Light (2024). A practicing architect for forty years and coauthor of four books on architecture, including A Pattern Language (Oxford University Press) and Patterns of Home (The Taunton Press), Silverstein lives in Oakland, California.
Our Levine and Silverstein event will take place on the first floor of the John Natsoulas Gallery (521 1st Street in Davis) at 7 PM on Thursday, November 7th, 2024. An open mic will follow the featured performers. Open mic performances will be limited to four minutes or two items, whichever is shorter. As Robert Southey says, “Be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams – the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.” The open mic list typically fills by 6:45 PM, so please arrive early if you would like to perform something during the 8 o’clock hour. Attendees who request to be added to the list after 7 PM will be invited to try again at a subsequent event. Julia Levine events draw significant crowds, so please plan accordingly.
Find the Facebook event for this much anticipated evening of poetry at https://www.facebook.com/events/2007284049712626
The Poetry Night Reading Series, taking place on first and third Thursdays of the month at 7 PM, is generously supported by the people and poets of the Sacramento Valley, by John Natsoulas, and by Thea and the other members of the staff at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Your host will be Dr. Andy Jones, the poet laureate emeritus of the City of Davis.
Find out more about the Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting https://www.poetryindavis.com. Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, check out his weekly podcast at https://poetrytechnology.buzzsprout.com/.
Upcoming Events:
November 7: Julia Levine and Murray Silverstein
November 21: Francisco Aragon, Gerald Fleming, and Florencia Milito
December 5: The Young Eco Poets of Davis
Please Google any of these poets to discover their many poetic accomplishments. Additional future readers will include Julia Connor, Katie Peterson, Clarence Major, Chris Erickson, Patrick Grizzell, and other favorites.
The Poetry Night Reading Series has been committed to serving the literary and arts community in the city of Davis since 2006. Happening every 1st and 3rd Thursday of each month at the Natsoulas Gallery, each reading contains two featured poets followed by an open mic. Poetry in Davis was voted “Best Open Mic” in The California Aggie’s “Best of Davis″ edition and has been featured in Davis Life Magazine. The more than 375 featured poets have included UC Davis faculty Francisco X. Alarcón, John Boe, Zinzi Clemmons, Joshua Clover, Jack Forbes, Sandra Gilbert, Laurie Glover, Brad Henderson, Pamela Houston, Andy Jones, Clarence Major, Sandra McPherson, Maceo Montoya, Katie Peterson, Kim Stanley Robinson, Margaret Ronda, Joe Wenderoth, and Alan Williamson, as well as many regional and traveling poets, including Molly Peacock, Jane Hirshfield, Dana Gioia, and James Ragan.
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