THURSDAY, MAY 20, 7:30 p.m.
Poetry Reading at Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary & Garden Arts
ELIZABETH BILLER CHAPMAN and LYNNE KNIGHT
Please join us for a poetry reading by Elizabeth Biller Chapman, Light Thickens (Ashland Poetry Press, 2009), and Lynne Knight, Again (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2009).
Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary & Garden Arts
2904 College Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94705
510-704-8222
www.mrsdalloways.com
Elizabeth Biller Chapman’s second book of poems, Light Thickens, received the Robert McGovern Memorial Publication Prize for 2008. This is a mournful, hopeful collection with imagery as thick and sweet as molasses. Her poetry exhibits wisdom, humility, and awe, whether in the act of removing her shoes in “Wainscott, Like as the Waves,” where “the common stones jewel their swath whose light only the ocean’s constant washing gives; moving water, water moving. Let me remember who I am…”, or gathering her mother’s treasures—“Everything I chose was chipped.” These poems are well-worn, loved-upon pieces of art. Her collection Candlefish (2004) was one of four manuscripts chosen by Enid Shomer as part of their Poetry Series. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and Bellevue Literary Review, among others. Her poem “On the Second Porch” was included in Best American Poetry 2002. Elizabeth Biller Chapman lives in Palo Alto.
In Again, Lynne Knight’s musical and compelling fourth full-length collection of poetry, her measured and lyrical voice reveals desire and memory as physical presences: spirits invoked by the spell of the poem so that the reader embodies her stories of the body-of-damage and breakage, recovery and repair. Whether autobiographical or ekphrastic, the poems are equally genuine, bringing image to life, like “bright fruit constantly replenished.” Lynne Knight’s previous collections are Dissolving Borders, The Book of Common Betrayal, and Night in the Shape of a Mirror. Knight’s work has appeared in Best American Poetry 2000, and her awards include a Theodore Roethke Award from Poetry Northwest, a Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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MONDAY, MAY 24, 5:00 p.m.
POETRY READING at Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary & Garden Arts
DOROTHEA LASKY and JOE WENDEROTH
Please join us for a poetry reading by Dorothea Lasky, Black Life (Wave Books, April 2010), and Joe Wenderoth, No Real Light (Wave Books, 2007)
Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary & Garden Arts
2904 College Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94705
510-704-8222
www.mrsdalloways.com
In her brazen second collection, Dorothea Lasky cries out beyond prophecy and confession, through to an even more powerful empathy. On the verge of becoming pure substance and sensation, Black Life is emotion recollected not in tranquility, but in radically affirming intensity. Dorothea Lasky’s previous work includes her unforgettable debut book of poetry, Awe (Wave Books, 2007), and numerous chapbooks. She is the author of the educational text, Poetry Is Not a Project (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Paris Review, Boston Review, and Columbia Poetry Review, among other places. Dorothea Lasky lives in New York City and currently teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
Joe Wenderoth’s No Real Light is a clear-eyed fourth collection from a young poet, searching and solemn, dissatisfied with artificial condolences and pat maxims. Wenderoth’s determination in the face of harsh realities is what rescues us, and him, from hopelessness. Joe Wenderoth is the author of five books, including The Holy Spirit of Life: Essays Written for John Ashcroft’s Secret Self (Verse Press, 2005) and Letters to Wendy’s (Verse Press, 2000). Letters to Wendy’s, a work of fiction, is an outrageous, tragic, genre-bending novel written over the course of a year on comment cards from the fast-food chain restaurant Wendy’s; “a work of genius” —Philadelphia Weekly. Wesleyan University Press published his first two books of poems: Disfortune (1995) and It Is If I Speak (2000). Wenderoth grew up new Baltimore. He is associate Professor of English at the University of California, Davis.