Poetry Flash

Poetry Flash builds community through literature, providing literary writing, access to literary activities, information and inspiration to writers and the public through publishing on Poetryflash.org and events such as the Poetry Flash Reading Series, Northern California Book Awards, and Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival. Poetryflash.org is what Lawrence Ferlinghetti called a “living newspaper.” We are committed to literary publishing that is rich in editorial content and provides access to literary experiences in the East Bay and across California. In 1972, our founding editors “flashed” on the idea of combining a poetry calendar with a literary review, so that poets could dialogue on their work and find each other. Publishing for over fifty years, Poetry Flash serves our vibrant literary scene, an independent voice on behalf of poets, poetry, and other genres of creative writing.
This year, Poetry Flash is celebrating our 50th Anniversary, and in the spirit of our events and publishing, we present four Bay Area poets to show the amazing power and range of our collective poetry place.

Joyce Jenkins will emcee this Beast Crawl reading! She is Director and Editor of Poetry Flash (poetryflash.org), and author of Portal and Joy Road, a chapbook Her poems have appeared in Ambush Review, Addison Street Anthology: Berkeley's Poetry Walk, ZYZZYVA, The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Watershed, and elsewhere. She received the American Book Award, PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Lifetime Achievement Award, National Poetry Association's Distinguished Service to Poets & Poetry Award, and the Berkeley Poetry Festival lifetime achievement award. Poetry Flash received the 2012 Barbary Coast Award from Litquake.

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Cynthia Parker-Ohene’s new book is Daughters of Harriet, a finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prizes. Tongo Eisen Martin says, “With a messianic gift for image and history, Cynthia Parker-Ohene is a once-in-three-generations mind on the page. Virtuosic images and living histories bearing down on your pulse, expanding the potentials of your consciousness.” Her poems have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Kweli, Green Mountains Review, West Branch, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Her work is also included in the anthology Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature, among others. Ohene is a three-time Pushcart nominee and winner of the San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Poetry Prize.

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Richard Silberg is Associate Editor of Poetry Flash. He is author of six collections of poetry, most recently The Horses: New and Selected Poems and Deconstruction of the Blues, recipient of the PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Award 2006. His books include Reading the Sphere: A Geography of Contemporary American Poetry, reviews that were originally published in Poetry Flash. He co-translated, with Clare You, The Three Way Tavern, by Ko Un, with a foreword by Gary Snyder, which received the 2007 Northern California Book Award in Translation. Also with Clare You, he co-translated Flowers Long For Stars, poems by Oh Sae-Young, This Side of Time, by Ko Un, and I Must Be the Wind, by Moon Chung-Hee. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Volt, Parthenon West Review, ZYZZYVA, Eleven Eleven, and New American Writing, among many other journals. “Dynamic, kaleidoscopic, shot through with a thousand faces and voices too real to be characters, Richard Silberg’s work is a Chaucerian pilgrimage to strange and uncannily familiar places. The Horses is a journey that dazzles wherever it goes as Silberg, ‘an ecstatic balding older man / in a striped tee shirt,’ slips into words and finds a way to make them accelerate, plummet, and soar. The goal is a new self, a way to ride out the old isms towards a possible future. The Horses is a deeply serious, wild, and powerful contribution to American letters.” —D. Nurkse

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Jason Bayani’s most recent book is Locus, a finalist for the Northern California Book Awards 2020. Truong Tran says, “In the profundity of Locus, Jason Bayani weaves the personal and the historical into a perfect storm of words, breath, poetry, consciousness and a literature of this time.” Bayani’s previous book is Amulet. His poetry has appeared in World Literature Today, BOAAT Journal, Muzzle Magazine, Lantern Review, and elsewhere. He’s a Kundiman fellow and artistic director of the Kearny Street Workshop. Bayani performs regularly around the country and debuted his solo theater show “Locus of Control” in 2016 with theatrical runs in San Francisco, New York, and Austin. 

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​Caroline Goodwin served from 2014-2016 the first Poet Laureate of San Mateo County. An Alaska native, her recent poetry book is Old Snow, White Sun. Aileen Cassinetto said “It traverses various terrains with grace and a commitment to astonishment.” Her other recent collections include Madrigals (Big Yes Press) and Matanuska (Aquifer Press, Wales, UK). 
Her previous books include Trapline, Peregrine, The Paper Tree, and Custody of the Eyes. Among many other Bay Area readings, she has twice been a featured reader at the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival in Berkeley. 

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Leg 1 (4pm -5pm) Venue: Annapurna Restaurant and Bar

Annapurna is known for its Nepalese comfort food, especially, their momos in three flavors (chicken, lamb, vegetarian). Ultimate mixture of spices in our cup. Come take a sip of some authentic chai, and enjoy the vibes.

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