Beau Hamel, AKA Brad Henderson, is the producer and regular opening act of the Poetry Night Reading Series. He specializes in teaching writing to engineers and scientists during the day, and playing drums and writing poetry and prose at night. The research and publications of Tom Moran, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, NY, have distinguished Henderson as being one of the United States’ top twelve “literary engineers.” During the 1980s, Henderson played drums in a popular nightclub band called Newcastle and earned a BS in mechanical engineering at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He then worked as a design engineer for Parker-Hannifin Aerospace in Irvine, California, wrote three novels, earned an MFA in creative writing from University of Southern California, taught engineering writing at University of California, Irvine, and participated in John Rechy’s private Los Angeles fiction workshop. During the 1990s, Henderson’s book, Drums: a Novel, found a small-press publisher and achieved brief notoriety among modern music aficionados, as well as praise from several rock stars. Henderson moved to Corvallis, OR, and did another stint in industry as a technical education consultant and manager for Hewlett-Packard. In Oregon, he developed his alter ego, Beau Hamel, and played drums in The Love Handles, a blues-rock power trio. Henderson is now a full-time faculty for the University Writing Program (UWP) at UC Davis. His poetry has been published in Blue Unicorn, California State Poetry Quarterly, Cowboypoetry.com, Dominion Review, Embers, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Pedestal Magazine, Poetry Now, Poetry/L.A., Southern California Anthology, Squaw Review,The Blue Moon Literary & Art Review, and Tule Review.
A copy of his book, Split Stock: Selected Poems, can be purchased here.
Beau Hamel performed on February 18th, 2009.
