BAY AREA POETS SEASONAL REVIEW 

Judy Hardin Cheung, Natica Angilly, Kay Ryan (U.S. Poet Laureate, 2009) and City ofAlameda poet laureate, Mary Rudge featured in a Spring 2009 BAPSR profile.

In this 32-page issue, we featured  the 40th-anniversary of Berkeley's Small Press Distribution, one of the largest distributors of poetry books in the country, and profiled City of Alameda's poet laureate, Mary Rudge. We wrote about the former poet laureate of the City of Livermore, Connie Post, and published poems by several Bay Area authors: Mark Taksa, Judy Wells, Randy Fingland, Marc Kockinos, Adam David Miller and more.

Laverne Frith of Sacramento, publisher of Ekphrasis literary magazine was this year's keynote speaker at the Poets' Dinner

Sacto Poets Beat Out Bay Bards

in 83rd Annual Poets' Dinner

“Serengeti Dawn” by Gail Peterson of Berkeley was the Grand Prize winner at the 83rd Annual Poets’ Dinner held Saturday, March 21, at Francesco’s Restaurant in Oakland. The event, attended by over 100 people, is sponsored by the Ina Coolbrith Circle. Organizers of this year’s poets’ dinner included Richard and Natica Angilly, Roberta Bearden, Cleo Griffin, Judy Hardin Cheung, Dorothy Benson, David Alpaugh, John Rowe, and Maggie Morley.

Poets took awards in several thematic categories: “Beginnings and Endings,” “Light or Humorous,” “Nature,” “Love,” “Spaces and Places,” “People,” “Surprise,” and a catchall category called “Poet’s Choice.” The majority of the prize winners this year hailed from the Sacramento area, including poet Jenny Jiang, last year’s Grand Prize winner, who won two awards again this year. Poets came from Oregon, Northern California and the Central Valley, including members of the Poets of the San Joaquin, as well as  Alameda and Contra Costa counties.
   

Mary Rudge and Susan Coons
Susan Coons and her husband drove from North Bend, Oregon. “I come each year because I hear very good poetry and get a benchmark on what‘s happening among contemporary writers, but I also enjoy seeing old friends,” said Coons. Daughters of Marion Brown, a long time Poets’ Dinner attendee, now deceased, showed up honor their mother’s love for poetry on her birthday.
   

Laverne Frith, publisher of the literary journal Ekphrasis, gave the keynote speech on the  “golden thread” that runs through American poetry, beginning with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous exhortation in the “American Scholar” essay for citizens of the new Republic to create a new type of poetry.

All poets, Frith  said, are challenged by the fact that the golden thread “can sometimes get a knot in it,” as when a writer’s work is censored, and “sometimes you have to take extreme measures to get it untied.”

Gail Peterson of Berkeley, California won the Grand Prize at this Spring's 83rd Annual Poets' Dinner. The winning poem is printed below.

Serengeti Dawn

The earth, awake, stretches into lion,
lumps into elephant; its breath
etches antelope, spirals into horn.
    Birds are sparks, poured out hot,
dripping iridescent blue and green.
Pools mirror small jaws that can break wildebeest.
In treetops, lakes of white stork.
    Africa: imagination’s rough edge
rolled out in plains, tufted into scrub, acacia,
bundled into baobab, gouged by the hooved and
the heavy-footed wheels of land cruisers.

Where rock erupts out of savannah,
a languid cheetah watches
the line of zebra passing below.
    Lion’s brown grumble
sends word through the kingdom
that death blesses the living, the urge to run
swelling lungs, muscle, heart.
    When night swoops down,
black air shrieks chilling messages,
thrums, or silent, hides the claws
of hunters parting black grass.

Vast and fierce, a wilderness
invisibly spotted, sinews poised,
where thoughts grow fine hairs           alert
to sudden interruption.
    Africa: life-bearing moon of the world,
plains, mountains, mother.
    With every cell attentive, focused,
how do I capture footprints on memory,
a full palate of open wing to keep on my desk
and make of my pallid heart a sun?