WEALTH OF IDEAS

June 9 [Tim]: F.D. Reeve and Al Garcia June 16 [Rebecca]: Summer Solstice Reading June 23 [Tim] James Lee Jobe and Gailmarie Pahmeier June 30 [Frank]: Stephen Kessler and Jeff Knorr July 7 [Frank]: Asian Poetry Reading with Frances Kakugawa July 14 [Emmanuel]: Ali Salim July 21 [Rebecca]: July 28 [Tim]: Susan Palwich and Ellen Klages August 4 [Frank]: Mary Mackey August 11 [Emmanuel]: Brad Buchanan August 18 [Rebecca]: August 25 [Tim]: Ann Keniston and June Saraceno

Effective July 14, 2008, I will be hosting poetry readings at the Sacramento Poetry Center. My first event is on July 14 at 7:30; Ali Salim will read. If anyone out there is interested in being the second reader of the night let me know. It's always good to feature two readers per night. On August 11, I'll host a reading by Brad Buchanan, a skilled poet whose Miracle Shirker I just finished reading. So, as you can see, I will host readings on second Mondays. I look forward to the enriching experience. Also, I'm going to be writing book reviews for Poetry Now . The July issue will carry a review of Quinton Duval's Among the Summer Pines , August is likey to feature Chad Sweeney's An Architecture . If you are a publisher contact me so I can review your poetry publications. Poetry Now is read in a wide stretch of Northen California, although we have out-of-state subscribers and contributors.

Frank Dixon Graham of the Sacramento Poetry Center invites the interested to an artistic evening at Time-Tested Books on Monday, June 2, 7:30 pm. 1114 21st Street Sacramento. Come listen to Theresa McCourt (Poet), Sasha Tkacheff (Violinist) & C-Sus Vocal Jazz Group (including Sacramento Poetry Center president Bob Stanley) Theresa McCourt On May 14 this year, she was awarded the Albert and Elaine Borchard Fellowship in poetry through the University of California, Davis, creative writing program for the 2008 Tomales Bay Workshops. In both 2007 and currently in 2008, she has been part of the Artist Residency Institute, through the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission. In January 2007, her poetry won a 1st place recognition in the Maggi H. Meyer Memorial Contest and in fall 2006 she won a 1st in the Ina Coolbrith Poetry Contest. In 2005, she won a 3rd in the 79th Annual Berkeley Poets' Contest. In March 2007, she received an honorable mention in the Sacramento Poetry Center...

"YOUNG writer Reuben Pakaenda has died", reports Memory Chirere in The Herald of May 27, 2008. "His friends in the Budding Writers Association of Zimbabwe (BWAZ) across the country", writes Chirere, "will sorely miss him." Exerpt: Rarely do young men and women leave their beer and fashion shows and hole themselves up in the lonely business of writing. Writing in Zimbabwe does not pay. It fares very badly when put against the lure of selling five litre pitchers of petrol by the road side. But Reuben would not quit. He knew the power of art as a tool. In 2004, he eventually published 13 brilliant poems in the ZPH anthology called Zviri Muchinokoro Kunaka! alongside his heroes, Ignatius Mabasa and Chirikure Chirikure. Read the rest of Chirere's article here .

Below is an invitation sent by poet Amy King: The Stain of Poetry Reading Series Friday, May 30, 2008 (7:00 PM) May 30th @ 7 p.m. - Stain Bar - Williamsburg, Brooklyn ** Stein, Marks, Edmiston, Klassnik, and Peterson ** Leigh Stein is the author of many chapbooks, including How to Mend a Broken Heart with Vengeance (Dancing Girl Press, June '08). Other work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Bat City Review, h-ngm-n, Diagram, No Tell Motel, and MiPOesias. Originally from Chicago and briefly in Albuquerque, she now lives in Brooklyn and works for a comic book publisher. Justin Marks' latest chapbook is [Summer insular] (Horse Less Press, 2007). His poems have recently appeared in Cannibal, Soft Targets, Tarpaulin Sky and the Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel – Second Floor, and are forthcoming in Handsome, the New York Quarterly and Wildlife Poetry Magazine. He is the founder and Editor of Kitchen Press Chapbooks and lives in New York City. Will Edmiston's poems have appeared...

Sacramento Poetry Center presented Chad Sweeney and Joshua McKinney at HQ for the Arts, 1719 25th St., Sacramento. The reading started at 7:30 and ended at 9:03 pm. Chad Sweeney read first. We were taken through an expedition of poetic surrealism, where voices collide and coalesce into dream and back. He read from his manuscript-in-progress and An Architecture, a book I plan to review for Poetry Now . Listening to him read, I was reminded of Zimbabwe's Dambudzo Marechera. Joshua Mckinney of the Saunter fame read some very promising poems in his manuscript Mad Cursive . He explained that the idea of mad cursive is based on Japanese caligraphy and deals with the paradoxes of contemporary life. Chad Sweeney is coeditor of Parthenon West Review and the author of two full-length books of poetry, An Architecture (BlazeVOX, 2007) and Arranging the Blaze (Anhinga, 2009), as well as the chapbook, A Mirror to Shatter the Hammer (Tarpaulin Sky, 2006). He was chosen for Best American Poe...

Sometime in 1983 or 84, Marechera wrote: A queue as long as the Original Snake Has since dawn waited to buy cooking oil Paraffin, petrol, and matches... Marechera's persona, homeless in "Throne of Bayonets", observes the life, or lack thereof, of night time Harare: "I look at Harare, my hair stands on end". The marginalized speaker, who sleeps in Cicil Square (now Africa Unity Square), observes Harare life with an eye for great detail. His life contrasts with the splendor (and horror) of the city around him. That the speaker, with nothing to give and nothing to lose, nothing to call his except the poetry in his head, notices the struggles of the people around him, perhaps better than they do, is revealing. These people's lining up at dawn for the basics surely attracted the attention of the homeless persona. Fast forward to 2008 Harare and perhaps the persona would not even know what the people were queuing for-- the matches, the petrol, the paraffin, and th...

Somehow this connects to the UK Marechera conference: I never got to see Marechera because I didn't move to Harare until after 1987. I had visited the city on school holidays in 1982 and 1985, but after 1987, actually in January 1988, I moved to Harare to do my A-Level. By then someone had already given me a copy of House of Hunger , which I read, on and off, in Mazvihwa, wondering, who was this man whose writing had such captivating expressions? The person who had given me the book, someone from a place called Chakavanda, a place that makes the Santa Cruz terrain look like a joke, had told me that since I was telling the village I was a writer, I needed to be in the company of real writers: he made it a point -- the next time he went back to Harare -- to buy the book for me. Since then, I have been reading the book on an off, with the most intense reading of it happening in 1999 and 2000, when I worked in a bookstore in Sacramento, while going through a Master's program that ...

A friend just informed me about a conference called "Dambudzo Marechera: A Celebration", to be held in Oxford, UK, on May 15-17, 2009. It is intended as a multi-media festival aimed to encourage a deeper engagement with Marechera's writing through creative approaches. Its additional aims are to promote African literatures in English in the UK, foster interest in the issues of postcoloniality, and discuss the challenges of teaching and studying African literature within the context of a university in the West. Confirmed speakers include Flora Veit-Wild, Ben Okri, James Currey, Norman Vance, Robert Fraser, Gerald Gaylard, Brian Chikwava, Helon Habila, Nhamo Mhiripiri, and Heeten Bhagat. Several Zimbabwean artists will also pay tribute to Marechera, including Chimanimani, an eclectic music ensemble. The festival website, www.marecheracelebration.org, will be launched next month. What can I say? This is just some good stuff. I plan to attend, and encourage other African writ...

Click image to enlarge poster.

Sacramento High School is the venue for Cornel West and Black Men Who Mean Business (BMWMB)'s 1st Annual Community Listening Party Reunion, where the group's new CD will be on sale. The event occurs on May 31, 4 - 6 PM. The admission is free. A meet-and-greet session is scheduled to take place at Underground Books afterwards. About Cornel West Dr. Cornel West is a professor of religion and African American studies at Princeton University and is considered one of America’s most gifted, provocative, and important public intellectuals. He has won numerous awards, including the American Book Award, and has received more than 20 honorary degrees. In his scholarly work, he has authored more than 17 books including the best-selling Race Matters which has sold nearly 400,000 copies to date and continues to influence a national dialogue on race. A political theorist who’s worked on presidential bids by Bill Bradley, Al Sharpton and now Barack Obama, West has also been involved with such...

My first poetry collection, Forever Let Me Go , is currently in production. Below are the the photos I have submitted to the publisher for the front and back cover designs. Front Cover picture. Back Cover picture

You should have seen me during the first week of April, glued to my computer or scrolling down cable channels to catch video and sound bites on Zimbabwe; I was ready to see real change and to join the subsequent nation-rebuilding dialogue. And I was already brainstorming on what my national-scale contribution would be, but all hopes crumbled when it became apparent that nothing would change that fast, that it would take some time before we knew the results of the elections; then when the results finally came, a strong fog of uncertainty was already hanging over the troubled country. But see, I am out of the country and my anxiety has also been exacerbated by not being on the ground to witness the reality attending to the people. I have become more aware of the uselessness of the media sources that I have relied on to raise my hopes for change. I have, however, noticed that the world has many questions about the Zimbabwean situation, questions leading to more questions, questions that s...

The May edition of Poetry International Web features podcasts of Zimbabwean poets Cde Fatso, G.O.D. Obori, Mybruthazkeepa, Outspoken, and Ticha Muzavazi. These poets perform frequently in the House of Hunger Slam at Book Cafe in Harare. "A House of Hunger. Hungry for freedom. Hungry to be heard. Hungry to fill the room with words. This is the House that we, as poets and spoken word activists, built two and a half years ago. Today, The House of Hunger Poetry Slam, Zimbabwe’s first poetry slam, has grown from a handful of poets performing to each other to a cult event overflowing with performers and audience members alike...." writes Comrade Fatso in an essay published in IPW. Their poetry shows these poets' commitment to building a house of words where a house of stone (Zimbabwe) seems to be crumbling. They are intent on keeping the legend of the house alive.

The new edition of African Writing (AW) is out. It features short stories by Zimbabwe's Ambrose Musiyiwa and Christopher Mlalazi. Nice poetry by Amatoritsero Ede, Richard U. Ali, Isiaba Irobi and others.