BAY AREA POETS SEASONAL REVIEW 

Poets Attending Last Year's Dinner including Mary Rudge (standing) and Susan Coos (Coos' husband is on the right)

84th Annual Poets' Dinner/Contest

The date of March 20, 2010 (11:30am-4 pm) has been set and the site is Francesco's Restaurant near the Oakland Airport for the 84th Annual Poets' Dinner and Contest Readings. The contest deadline was January 20, 2010, but you must be present at the dinner to claim your prize. 

This event is a hoot, with between 60-100 poets attending from all over the Bay Area and beyond. Last year, the San Francisco Bay Area was outdone by winning poets from the Sacramento and Central Valley. There are contests in many categories: "Beginnings & Endings," "Light or Humorous," "Nature," "Love," "Spaces & Places," "People," "Theme of 'Action'," and "Poet's Choice." You can enter in more than one category and there is no entrance fee. But, there are specific guidelines to follow so you should contact Richard Angilly, 1515 Poplar Avenue, Richmond, CA 94805-1662 to get information. 

The venerable Bay Area Poets Coalition is sponsoring their 30th Poetry Contest in honor of Maggi H. Meyer, although the entry period has closed. A Winners Celebration will take place in February of 2010.

All poets are welcomed at BAPC meetings held on 2nd Saturday afternoons from 3-5 p.m. at Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison Street, Berkeley. Check in at the front desk and you will be directed to the meeting room. All ages welcome. Come and enjoy a friendly and informal read-around, 3-5 minutes per poet. Just listening is fine too!

For more information, visit Bay Area Poets Coalition online: www.bayareapoetscoalition.org.

Current President: John Rowe

Vice-President & Secretary: Robert Collet Tricaro

Treasurer: A.M. Fonda

Publicity: Lisa Miller

Strawberry Creek Lodge Liaison: Nancy Wogan

From the Publisher, Jannie M. Dresser

Finds
Whenever a friend or family member travels and offers to bring me back something, I ask for a book of local poetry from wherever they go (if English editions are available, that is). Recently, I got a lovely collection of contemporary New Zealand poets this way after my sister returned from her trip there.

There is a world community of poets we are part of, though it rarely seems so. I’m always curious about what poets are doing elsewhere in the world, what styles and techniques they are playing with? MARY RUDGE, poet laureate of Alameda (profiled in this issue) and a member of the WORLD CONGRESS OF POETS, is off to Managua, Nicaragua, in July. I hope she will report back about her experiences and conversations with the many poet-diplomats she’ll meet. What are their concerns as writers in their native lands? In what ways are they, as poets, made significant or inconsequential?




Death Poems Book
In her oft-reprinted poem “The Sum- mer Day” MARY OLIVER concludes with: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"

Wow. Perhaps the most important question we have to ask ourselves-- again and again. But, recently, after doing a short presentation of my “Death Poems Book” at a meeting of COM- PASSION & CHOICES coordinated by poet/activist STEWART FLORSHEIM, I wondered about what each of us plans to do with our one wild and precious death? Since I have my very own hospice chaplain to converse with about such matters, JOCELYN ROSE WALLER, a dear friend and writing companion, I wondered if maybe in all our planning for retirement and the Big End, we hadn’t neglected to consider the actual dying process itself. Having recently attended three funerals in three weeks, it got me thinking. . . .

My “Death Poems Book” was born of the experiences of sitting at the beside of the dying and trying to imagine how best to bring comfort or joy. I read Psalms or sang, sometimes I read favorite poets mentioned by the person who was dying.

I decided I didn’t want to leave it to chance what will be read to me as I lay on my deathbed, assuming I’ll die in a deathbed and not go in some more abrupt way, keeling over while hiking in the backwoods or choking on a tuna-kabob.

I have many poems I have loved for a long time, and I keep finding new ones; they are like little treasures I’ve discovered and want to tuck away in a cigar box under my bed. Voilá! A “Death Poems Book” where each poem is carefully copied and placed into a colorful artistic design inspired at first by medieval illuminated manuscripts. Others have asked if I want to get it published which makes me laugh. No publisher would touch it! Colored inks and all, oversize format, no potential sales. Besides a “Death Poems Book” needs to reflect your favorite poems, not mine, each one would be unique.

I invite you to begin your Advanced Directive concerning the poetry and music, lighting and types of blankets, and the companionship you would like at life’s end, if by chance you have a dying that takes a few days or weeks, leaving you vulnerable to the opinions and stumbles, spiritual ideas and practices of others.

Don’t leave it to the last. One poem at a time, and over time you‘ll have a great Death Poems Book too. In all sincerity, I hope you won’t need to use yours for years to come, but when you need it, do your loved ones a favor: hand it to them to read aloud to you as you pass on to that great big Poetry Party in the Sky.

                                                         Jannie M. Dresser