Announcing the
Squaw Valley Review 2008
Poetry Reading
at the
Sacramento Poetry Center
featuring:
Joseph Atkins
L. A. Jones
Lawrence Kaplun
Theresa McCourt
and
Wendy Trevino
Monday Dec. 14, 2009 at 7:30 PM
719 25th Street at HQ for the Arts
Host: Bob Stanley, Sacramento Poet Laureate
Scroll down for sample poems, more information about the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and the readers.
Buy The Squaw Valley Review here.
Come enjoy the diverse styles of five poets who contributed to the latest Squaw Valley Review (2008). There will be a brief period for questions and answers about the workshop experience and proceeds of all books purchased go to the scholarship fund for Squaw Valley Poetry Workshop participants seeking financial assistance with the cost of the workshop.
Poems
Poems by Theresa McCourt
Folding Laundry
Across the fence, white magnolias open.
I fold cloth, slowly, gently,
as if someone were leaving.
Across each sheet, I place my palm,
hold it there as if over a body breathing.
I smooth after every folding
to erase each crease.
Outside, the magnolia’s thick
white petals spread to their reach,
yielding so freely to summer heat.
Inside, I fold from whole, to half,
to quarter.
published at Peter Parasol
Rearview Mirror
The sun, neon orange,
stalls on the asphalt
where the road meets the sky.
Hard to look forward
with such intensity behind.
published at mamazine.com
Poems by Wendy Trevino
Slowly Across California
Passing honeyed mountains—two of them
rose, asking for it, but not one for climbing,
not one for callings, the worst isn’t over yet.
What one does on a train with these layered views
as a hawk falls back, bears its silent cross, sets
the rest in relief, slowly across California thought gathers.
One poorly planned is a suburb
surrounded by orchards or a calico barn.
I’ve been the latter. A small girl looking down,
I’ve been up. A wall of trees arches toward the glass
like a bubble I see myself in, reflected. The idea of you
breaks it, smiles there with a mouthful of pins, light scatters
across a watermelon field. What was I thinking?
Nothing grows forgetful but emerges so.
That sounds like nothing I hear you saying—
that forgetting in the limbs you translate.
In ignoring a thing, I discover it’s everywhere.
Off the concrete it rises, the power lines crazy with buzz, spark
only to rip away this particular blue
that, as it turns out, wasn’t mine to begin with.
Still, the water is lovely—how the waves hit & slip
from the loam-colored rocks, how the surface shimmers
with you sitting here peacefully. I don’t buy it, but I know you
will be happy here. I will be happy with you.
You haven’t known me long. I know.
But, I like the way you put your hands together.
Writing
you & I
paper dolls
before aspens
timing
our cigarettes’
encroaching ash
as I begin
to see different
the knotted
threads
pinned to a
child’s jeans
patience
made rings of
to connect
the late amber
afternoon’s
exfoliated cool
to this crumpled
feeling
wanting
not to let go
[sleep trees systems]
sleep trees systems
of brittle settings
pearls blossoms only
vibrating a spell
Three poems by Joe Atkins can be found here.
Two poems by Lawrence Kaplun can be found here.
Click below on "older posts" for poems by L. A. Jones.
About the Squaw Valley Community of Writers
The Squaw Valley Community of Writers Poetry Program is a one week workshop "founded on the belief that when poets gather in a community to write new poems, each poet may well break through old habits and write something stronger and truer than before. To help this happen poets work together to create an atmosphere in which everyone might feel free to try anything." Although the experience is non-competitive and prioritizes encouragement over critique, admission is competitive (only about 10% of new applicants were accepted in 2008) and determined by the staff poets who facilitate the workshops that year (the Director of the Poetry Program, Robert Hass, and the faculty; 2008--Lucille Clifton, Sharon Olds, Dean Young and C.D. Wright).
Bios:
Joe Atkins, an alumni of CSUS & UCD, lives in Sacramento. Currently he is a freelance writer and homeowner. He enjoys facebook, twitter, blogs, hulu, netflix, movies, bookstores, MP3s, concerts, drinking, poker, his spouse, his cat, and google/excel spreadsheets.
Lisa Jones (L. A. Jones) co-edited The Squaw Valley Review 2008 and is the Interview Editor for Poetry Now. Her work has won local prizes, is forthcoming in Tule Review, and published in Tea Party, Convergence (on-line), Poetry Now, and Qarrtsiluni's Journaling the Apocaplypse (on-line and print anthology). She has a Ph.D. in sociology, but is most proud of her studies with Camille Norton, Kim Addonizio, Susan Kelly-Dewitt, and the great staff at Squaw Valley and the Napa Valley Writer's Conference.
Lawrence Kaplun co-edited the Squaw Valley Review 2008. He was raised in Los Angeles and currently lives in San Francisco, where he works for the California Academy of Sciences. His poems have appeared online in Limp Wrist Magazine.
Theresa McCourt won an Albert and Elaine Borchard Fellowship in poetry in October 2008, and in November 2008, graduated from the Artist Residency Institute through the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission. Her credits include a 1st place in the 2007 Maggi H. Meyer Memorial Contest, and publications include Peter Parasol, mamazine.com, Poetry Now, Rattlesnake Review, and Toyon.
Wendy Trevino lives and writes in San Francisco. Her work has previously appeared in Makeout Creek and Faultline and is forthcoming in the super-fun journal West Wind Review.
