Events
Upcoming Readers
Pushpa MacFarlane
February 2013
Matthew Zapruder
March 2013
All
April 2013
Denny
May 2013
Dickerson
June 2013
The Venue
The Willow Glen poetry readings are sponsored by Poetry Center San Jose and Arts Council Silicon Valley. The readings are held at 7 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month at:
Willow Glen Branch Library
Community Room
1157 Minnesota Avenue
San Jose, CA 95125
Phone: 408-808-3045
Past Readers
Robert Sward
January 2013
ROBERT SWARD has taught at Cornell University, the Iowa Writers' Workshop and UC Santa Cruz. A Guggenheim Fellow, he was chosen by Lucile Clifton to receive a Villa Montalvo Literary Arts Award. His more than 20 books include: Four Incarnations (Coffee House Press), Rosicrucian in the Basement, The Collected Poems, and God is in the Cracks (Black Moss Press, Canada), now in its second printing. His latest, New & Selected Poems, 1957-2011, is being published by Red Hen Press.
Born and raised in Chicago, Sward served in the U.S. Navy in the combat zone during the Korean War and later worked for CBC Radio and as book reviewer and feature writer for The Toronto Star and Globe & Mail while living in Canada. Sward now lives in Santa Cruz with his wife, visual artist Gloria Alford.
"Here is Robert Sward, now in his 60s, still fresh, ingenuous, and funnier than ever. His life--and what a life!--is an open book. You can read it all here. What's more you will want to call your friends and read poems to them over the phone. I know. I've done it."-- Pulitzer Prize winner Carolyn Kizer
Nils Peterson
December 2012
Sally Ashton, Santa Clara County Poet Laureate
November 2012
All
October 2012
Marjorie Manwaring
September 2012
David Swanger, Santa Cruz Poet Laureate
August 2012
David Swanger is the second Santa Cruz County Poet Laureate. Swanger has received fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council. He has written a book about poetry, The Poem as Process, a book about aesthetic education, Essays in Aesthetic Education, as well as four books of poems. His most recent book of poems, Wayne’s College of Beauty, won the John Ciardi Prize in Poetry, and was a finalist in Fore Word’s Book of the Year Awards.
José Luis Gutiérrez
July 2012
José Luis Gutiérrez is a San Franciscan poet. His work has appeared in Spillway, Eratio, Margie, Letterbox, DMQ, Verse Daily, Jet Fuel Review, Otis Nebula and is forthcoming in Reunion: The Dallas Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, Spittoon and the Mutanabbi Street Anthology due out 2012 through PM Press.
John Landry
June 2012
John Landy has edited Patmos Press, publishing chapbooks by Everett Hoagland, Robert Lax, and others. He was co-editor of the anthology No End To Fall River (1984) and has served as New Bedford, Massachusetts, poet laureate. His poems have appeared in many journals and include many translations. He has served as a contributing editor for the 50th anniversary anthology of Beatitude, New College Review, and The Newport Review. His book who will prune the plum tree when i'm gone/quién va a podar los ciruelos cuando me vaya was published by Editorial Cuneta in Chile in February 2010.
Len Anderson
May 2012
Poet and retired physicist Len Anderson's was May's featured reader. His second collection of poems, Invented by the Night, was published by Hummingbird Press in November, 2011. He is also the author of Affection for the Unknowable, and a chapbook, BEEP: A Version of the History of the Personal Computer Rendered in Free Verse in the Manner of “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg.
Len was born in Menlo Park, grew up mostly in Los Altos, studied in Berkeley, worked at Measurex Corporation in Cupertino for 17 years, and is a major part of the Bay area poetry scene. He and his wife moved to Santa Cruz in 1998, where he helped found Poetry Santa Cruz and currently serves as Secretary-Treasurer.
You (and Friends)
April 2012
April was National Poetry Month. To celebrate this, Willow Glen has a longstanding tradition of making everyone the featured poet. Indeed, all who attend the April reading were invited to read one poem from their favorite poet, as well as one of their own poems. This traditional has proven very rewarding and a lot of fun.
Lee Rossi
March 2012
Lee Rossi is the author of four books of poetry including Ghost Diary and Wheelchair Samurai. His poems, reviews and interviews have appeared widely in such journals as The Harvard Review, The Sun, Poetry Northwest, Chelsea, The Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Southern Poetry Review. He is a staff reviewer and interviewer for the online magazine Pedestal. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Rossi is campaigning to install a Tomb of the Unknown Poet in Westminster Abbey, dedicated to "all those who have labored in Poetry’s vineyards without tasting any of her grapes.” He has graciously volunteered to be its first occupant.
Wild Violets Haiku Gala
February 2012
February's reading ws our first all-Haiku event, with four featured poets reading from Wild Violets, the Yuki Teikei Haiku Anthology for 2011.
PATRICIA J. MACHMILLER writes. Mostly she writes poems. Long poems. Or short. Very short. Haiku. Sometimes she writes essays. Once she wrote a poetic journal. Once a poetic performance. It was performed-once. She lives here. In Silicon Valley. Where she worked. Once. She is a charter member—almost—of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society.JOAN ZIMMERMAN is the editor, along with Jerry Ball, of Wild Violets, the 2011 Yuki Teikei Haiku Society's Membership Anthology. Her haiku and tanka have been published internationally (including Australia, Germany, and the UK). She is co-editor & contributor for "Poetry at Ariadne's Web." Born in Northwest England, she wrote her first poems in attempts to avoid exercising or helping with household chores. She likes chocolate. She lives in Santa Cruz.JUDITH SCHALLBERGER enjoys writing haiku and tanka poetry and collaborated in the design of the Yuki Teikei Haiku anthologies, Wild Violets (2011) and Autumn Deepens (2010) and is a very active member of Yuki Teikei. She is a graduate of SJSU, School of Art and a former ceramicist. Her haiku have been published in Mariposa, Notes from the Gean, Remembering: Poems Read at Willow Glen Books, Haiku Society of America, and Yuki Teikei Anthologies.CAROL STEELE writes haiku and lyric poems. She has been a member of Yuki Teikei since 2000, is a past president and the soon-to-be editor of the GEPPO, Yuki Teikei's bi-monthly study-newsletter. She also enjoys flowers and the study of ikebana, traditional Japanese flower arranging.
Kathy Issac-Luke
January 2012
Kathie was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She has a Master’s degree in Nursing, and during her work in that field she visited a number of countries. Her poetry, which reflects her travels as well as her Louisiana origins, has been published in various journals and anthologies.
Her short story has recently appeared in The Call: An Anthology of Women’s Writings, published by Dragonfly Press. She was formerly a program coordinator for Poetry Center San José, where she edited the journal Cæsura for five years. Her poetry collection, Chrysalides, was published in 2010 by Dragonfly Press and was nominated for the 2011 Independent Publisher Book Award in poetry.
She and her husband now live in the Sierra foothills of California.
Nils Peterson
December 2011
As per our Christmas tradition, Nils Peterson, Poet Laureate Emeritus of Santa Clara County read from his selection of Christmas poetry and wonderment.
Nils Peterson is Professor Emeritus at San Jose State University where he taught in the English and Humanities Departments. He has published poetry, science fiction, and articles on subjects as varying as golf and Shakespeare. A chapbook of poems entitled Here Is No Ordinary Rejoicing was published by No Deadlines Press, a collection of poems entitled The Comedy of Desire with an introduction by Robert Bly was published by the Blue Sofa Press, and a collection of poems entitled Driving a Herd of Moose to Durango appeared in 2005. He was nominated for a 2005 Pushcart Prize.
His newest book of poetry, A Walk to the Center of Things, came out in June 2011, published by Poetry Center San Jose.
Casey FitzSimons
November 2011
Casey FitzSimons’ poetry appears in print and online in Fresh Hot Bread, The Prose-Poem Project; flashquake, Leveler, EarthSpeak; The Newport Review, and others. She has been a finalist in the River Styx and Writecorner Press poetry competitions. She has collected her works annually in chapbooks, most recently Altering the Lay of Land (2010) and Forgetting My Errand (2009).
Casey is an Army brat, having lived in Brazil and Germany, and derives some content inspiration from moving seventeen times by the age of seventeen. She has taught high school and college math, practiced law, and done significant pro bono work in fair housing. She has a master’s degree in Fine Arts from San Jose State University and taught art in San Francisco for many years, publishing her studio drawing book, Serious Drawing, with Prentice Hall, and reviewing many exhibitions for Artweek. She is a frequent reader at San Francisco Bay Area venues. About being a poet, Casey says, “My father was a Milton scholar, so what chance did I have?”
She lives in Redwood City near her daughter, son-in-law, and three granddaughters. When not writing poetry, Casey tutors children and adults in reading and mathematics in Redwood City and Half Moon Bay, and plays fingerpicking blues guitar.
Dean Rader
October 2011
Dean Rader has published widely in the fields of poetry, American Indian studies, and popular culture. His debut collection of poems, Works & Days, won the 2010 T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize, judged by Claudia Keelan. In 2009, Kelly Cherry selected his poem "Hesiod in Oklahoma, 1934" for the prestigious Sow's Ear Review Prize and in 2008, his poem "Frog Loses Sleep Puzzling Over Parallel Universes" won the Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize. Other poems have appeared or will appear in Cincinnati Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Quarterly West, Colorado Review, Poet Lore, Salamander, POOL, Connecticut Review and many others.
He is the author of a best-selling textbook on writing and popular culture, The World is a Text (with Jonathan Silverman), which just went into its fourth edition. With poet Janice Gould, he co-edited Speak To Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry (University of Arizona Press, 2003), the first collection of essays devoted to Native American poetry. Most recently, he curated a special issue of Sentence that focused on recent American Indian prose poetry. His newest scholarly book, Engaged Resistance: American Indian Art, Literature, and Film from Alcatraz to the NMAI is forthcoming in 2011 from the University of Texas Press. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the State University of New York at Binghamton.
Rader has served on the editorial board for Studies in American Indian Literatures and is currently on the editorial staff of DMQ Review. A former executive committee member of the Commonwealth Club's Inforum, Rader now serves on the poetry jury of the California Book Awards. He blogs about the intersection of literature, culture, politics and media at The Weekly Rader, and he reviews poetry regularly for The Rumpus and The San Francisco Chronicle, where he also writes a regular column for the City Brights Section. Rader is a professor of English at the University of San Francisco.
A Native of Western Oklahoma, Rader lives in San Francisco with his wife Jill and their son Gavin.
Erica Goss
September 2011
Erica Goss's poems, articles, and reviews have appeared in many journals, most recently Hotel Amerika, Pearl, Main Street Rag, Rattle, Eclectica, Blood Lotus, Cafe Review, Zoland Poetry, Comstock Review, and Perigee. Her chapbook, Wild Place, will be published in 2011 from Finishing Line Press. She won the first Edwin Markham Poetry Prize in 2007, judged by California's Poet Laureate Al Young, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2010. Erica teaches creative writing and humanities in the Bay Area and is a contributing editor for Cerise Press. She holds an MFA from San Jose State University.
Nick Butterfield
August 2011
Nick Butterfield has attended the Willow Glen Poetry Readings since it’s early inception in the mid 1990’s, recalling Bill and Jean Emerson’s hosting of the monthly event at the Willow Glen Bookstore. Nick and many other enthusiastic poets alike have contributed to the newly published Willow Glen Book Store Poetry Anthology, Remembering. Nick still comes regularly to the Willow Glen Poetry Readings.
“I wrote my first poem when I was 13 years old next to a newly planted apple tree in my backyard in Boulder Colorado.” The poem was called “My Darkened Room.” Nick draws from his life experiences as a Nurse and Nurse Practitioner in the emergency room and community clinics and homeless projects in Santa Clara County for the last 25 years. Also, an avid Cross Country runner with the Spartan Running Team and a long distance traveler ranging from Papua New Guinea to Mt. Sinai, Peru, Guatemala to the China Wall Marathon in 2006 and Running with the Bulls in Pamplona Spain in 2003. “I include Death Valley National Park experiences as one of my favorite places to write about.”
Nils Peterson
July 2011
Nils Peterson is the former Poetry Laureate of Santa Clara County and is Professor Emeritus at San Jose State University where he taught in the English and Humanities Departments. He has published poetry, science fiction, and articles on subjects as varying as golf and Shakespeare. A chapbook of poems entitled Here Is No Ordinary Rejoicing was published by No Deadlines Press, a collection of poems entitled The Comedy of Desire with an introduction by Robert Bly was published by the Blue Sofa Press, and a collection of poems entitled Driving a Herd of Moose to Durango appeared in 2005. He was nominated for a 2005 Pushcart Prize. His newest poetry book came out in June 2011, published by Poetry Center San Jose.
Keith Ekiss
June 2011
Per Michael Collier: "Pima Road Notebook, Keith Ekiss's remarkable first collection, contrasts the finite imagination of the American dream with the enduring serenity and mystery of the Sonoran Desert, where the ridiculous--fairways and greens--compete with the sublime--saguaros and palo verdes. No one has written poems with such a dispassionate and calm eye about the Cadillac desert as Ekiss. Free of sentiment and dream trance, Ekiss is a fair witness to one of America's most sundered lands."
Keith Ekiss is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University and the past recipient of scholarships and residencies from the Bread Loaf and Squaw Valley Writers' Conferences, Santa Fe Art Institute, Millay Colony for the Arts, and the Petrified Forest National Park. He lives in San Francisco. His poems, and his translations of the Costa Rican poet Eunice Odio, have appeared in Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, New England Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, The Christian Science Monitor, and elsewhere. Pima Road Notebook, his first book, is recently out from New Issues Poetry & Prose.
Harry Lafnear
May 2011
Harry Lafnear is a founding member of the Association of Poetry Podcasting, and of the Willow Glen Poetry Project. He is also the Assistant Treasurer of Poetry Center San Jose. Harry an award winning poet and a showcased poetry performer. His work has been featured on IndieFeed Performance Poetry, Cloudy Day Art, Slam Idol, PoetGuru, and in Poems About Santa Clara County. His audio podcast, The Everyday Muse, was syndicated on BZoO Worldwide Radio Online. Professionally, Harry has co-authored the classic Time Bandit video game series, plotted data from the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, and run a Las Vegas sign shop specializing in fine-art giclée. His present occupation also mixes technology and art: Harry is a technical publications expert and graphic designer for IBM. His new chapbook is Tracing the Line. Harry lives in Milpitas, California, with his spouse, Stephen.
You (and Friends)
April 2011
April was National Poetry Month. To celebrate this, Willow Glen has a longstanding tradition of making everyone the featured poet. Indeed, all who attend the April reading were invited to read one poem from their favorite poet, as well as one of their own poems. This traditional has proven very rewarding and a lot of fun.
Tim Myers
March 2011
Tim Myers is a writer, songwriter and professional storyteller living in Santa Clara, California, where he teaches in the Education and English departments at Santa Clara University. His essay in the Kyoto Journal, “Glimpsing Tokyo,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He’s published over 110 poems (South Carolina Review, Rattle, Northeast), has a chapbook out from Pecan Grove Press (That Mass at Which the Tongue Is Celebrant), and won a national poetry contest judged by John Updike. He also has articles in Media Ethics and New York State History, has placed stories with Indy Men’s, The MacGuffin, ELF, and The Bryant Literary Review, and won a prize in an international science fiction contest. His children’s book Basho and the River Stones is a Junior Library Guild selection, his Tanuki’s Gift got an excellent boxed review with art in the New York Times, and his Basho and the Fox, a New York Times bestseller and Smithsonian Notable Children’s Book, was also read aloud on NPR. He has ten children's books out and one on the way.
Cheryl Dumesnil
February 2011
Winner of the 2008 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, Cheryl Dumesnil is the author of In Praise of Falling, editor of Hitched! Wedding Stories from San Francisco City Hall, and co-editor, with Kim Addonizio, of Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos. Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, Indiana Review, Calyx, and Many Mountains Moving, among other literary magazines. Her essays have appeared on literarymama.com, hipmama.com, mamazine.com and in Hip Mama Zine. For over fifteen years she has taught creative writing at universities, conferences, K-12 schools, and in private settings. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her wife and their two sons.
Tamam Kahn
January 2011
For our first reading of the new year, our featured reader will be San Rafael poet/author Tamam Kahn whose latest book, Untold: A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad, is a prosimetrum (prose with lyric poetry embedded in the narrative). This non-fiction/poetry writing provides a vehicle for presenting history that hasn't been told to most of us – the story of the wives of Prophet Muhammad. Tamam is also the editor of The Sound Journal.
Nils Peterson
December 2010
Nils Peterson is the current Poetry Laureate of Santa Clara County and is Professor Emeritus at San Jose State University where he taught in the English and Humanities Departments. He has published poetry, science fiction, and articles on subjects as varying as golf and Shakespeare. A chapbook of poems entitled Here Is No Ordinary Rejoicing was published by No Deadlines Press. A collection of poems entitled The Comedy of Desire with an introduction by Robert Bly was published by the Blue Sofa Press, and a collection of poems entitled Driving a Herd of Moose to Durango appeared in 2005. He was nominated for a 2005 Pushcart Prize.
Connie Post
November 2010
Connie Post served as Poet Laureate of Livermore, California from 2005 - June 2009. Her work is widely published and has appeared in such journals as Calyx, Kalliope, Cold Mountain Review, Chiron Review, Comstock Review, DMQ Review, Dogwood, Iodine Poetry Journal, Main Street Rag, White Pelican Review, RiverSedge, Up The Staircase, and The Toronto Quarterly. She was the winner of the Cover Prize for the Spring 2009 issue of The Dirty Napkin and the winner of the 2009 Caesura Poetry Awards from Poetry Center San Jose. She runs a popular reading series in the Bay Area - the Valona Deli Second Sunday Series. Her new book Trip Wires (Finishing Line Press) will be out in June 2010.
Ken Weisner
October 2010
Ken Weisner is a poet, teacher, and editor living in Santa Cruz. He has published poetry in journals including The Antioch Review, Seneca Review, The Brooklyn Review, and Berkeley Poetry Review; recent poems have appeared in The Music Lover’s Poetry Anthology from Persea Books, Sam Hamill's Poets Against the War website, and on Garrison Keillor's The Writers Almanac. His first full length collection, The Sacred Geometry of Pedestrians, was published in 2002 by Hummingbird Press. His 2010 volume, Anything on Earth, was also published by Hummingbird. Weisner won numerous awards for his fifteen years as editor of Quarry West magazine, published out of Porter College at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He now edits Red Wheelbarrow, De Anza College's literary journal. Born and raised in Oakland, Weisner has a B.A. from Oberlin College, an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers Workshop, and a Ph.D in Comparative Literature from U.C. Santa Cruz where he also taught writing for many years. For over a decade, he was active as a Poet-in-the-Schools throughout the Central California Coast. Ken teaches full time at De Anza College in Cupertino, where he is currently English Department Chair. He is also a French horn player, baseball aficionado, husband to the pianist and potter Kit Birskovich, and father to two grown sons.
