The Next SPC Reading Features Brad Henderson and Sharon Campbell

Brad Henderson and Sharon Campbell

Monday, December 12, 2011 at 7:30 PM
1719 25th Street
Host: Emmanuel Sigauke

Brad Henderson grew up as a city boy who summered on his granddad’s ranch in the Sacramento Valley foothills of California. He earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from California Polytechnic State College in San Luis Obispo, and his masters in creative writing (MPW) from University of Southern California. His recently completed a poetry book manuscript, The Secret Cowboy: the life & times of the rebel poet Beau Hamel, was named a semi-finalist for University of Arkansas Press’ 2011 Miller Williams Poetry Book Prize. He is also the author of two chapbook–Speed, Horse-sweat, & Unboxed Sky and Split Stock: Selected Poems (with Andy Jones). This coming year, Brad will co-direct the poetry track at the San Francisco Writers’ Conference 2012. His poems have appeared individually (or will appear soon) in The Journal, Asheville Review, Fourteen Hills, Southern California Review, PedestalMagazine.com, and others. As for other artistic endeavors, Henderson started playing drums when he was in the 4th grade, and has played drums ever since. His Phi Kappa Phi award winning Drums: a Novel is based his experiences playing in 1980s nightclub band. Henderson has worked as a cowboy, truck dock laborer, corporate engineer, and currently teaches writing at University of California, Davis. His latest prose project is a darkly humorous memoir about a frustrated writer’s ill-fated quest to “make it big-time” by the time he turns 50.
author website: http://www.bradhenderson.net/

slug forest alternative student housing park UC Santa Cruz

that night i lay in Silas’ trailer
above me, a skylight cut from tin
my son is asleep, a boy again
relaxed into his father’s presence
i, too, feel detached
from worry over his addictions
& academic malcontent
now i am just a dad
i unfocus into darkness—
feel outside air, its chilled
water breath. i could seek meaning
in the ferns & whiskered firs
& the constellations i remember
from summer camp
but i want to keep
this crinkled blackness
as quiet as a mind
on a Braille map
first published in Flatmancrooked’s Slim Volume of Contemporary Poetics I


Sharon Campbell grew up in exotic locales including Malaysia, Kenya, and Bethesda, Maryland. She studied the Great Books at St. John’s College-Santa Fe, and the University of Chicago. Her love of writing was rekindled on meeting her Muse in 2009. Her poem, “Little Boy Blue,” won first prize in the 2010 Jack Kerouac Poetry Contest and was nominated for the Pushcart prize. Recent publications include The Mom Egg and Song of the San Joaquin. The mother of two boys, she writes about motherhood, love, loss, and places far away from Davis, California, where she resides.

Lost Boy
When my son was very small
he wore a costume every day
dressed in character on waking
only answered to his stage name
Sweltered in a forest green
turtleneck one summer day
when ice cream stained his leafy
tunic, stalwart against hues unseen
in the wilds of Never-neverland.

Kindergarten

self-portraits were always drawn
with robes and wands, or somesuch
prop; told to draw himself as self,
he could not and left his face
an eyeless mouthless empty
crayon oval.