Dear Literary Folk,
As you know, I’m going to be taking a break from producing the Literary Update in June and July. It’s a labor of love, but always well worth it, if just for the pleasure of staying in touch will all of you. Of course, such efforts help nourish the literary community, keeping you all in touch with each other, too.
I want to acknowledge someone who’s been at this far longer than I, someone who is in many ways an inspiration to me and my work, and who is the engine behind so much of what goes on the literary world in the Bay Area and beyond.
Joyce Jenkins, founding editor and publisher of Poetry Flash and its online incarnation (www.poetryflash.org), has been creating the literary calendar and providing us with the news of readings, events, workshops, new publications and much more for decades! Along with her business partner Richard Silberg, Poetry Flash has run an important poetry and literature reading series, originally at Cody’s, and now at Moe’s Books and Diesel, A Bookstore in Berkeley. They have sponsored and organized the annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival and the Northern California Book Reviewers Awards.
Poetry Flash has been an essential part of my own writing career starting in the early 1980s when I was a grad student at San Francisco State. I looked to Joyce’s notes in every issue and followed her recommendations on where to send my work; I relied on the calendar to find open mic venues and reading series where I could try out new poems and join in the live literary scene; and I followed closely the ongoing, passionate debates on both sides of the Language Poetry/Neo-Formalists gang skirmishes.
When I moved to Petaluma in 1990, Poetry Flash helped me discover my new community here in Sonoma County, and even to advertise my creative writing workshops when I was ready to launch those. Joyce and Richard have been welcome faces at local literary events, such as the Sonoma County Book Festival, the Petaluma Poetry Walk, WordTemple Poetry Series where we’ve all been able to sample their publications and to read or listen to their own poetry.
When Sixteen Rivers Press began its fledgling experimental poetry publishing venture, Joyce and Richard were always supportive, and always made room in their popular reading series for our newly published authors. And just this past April, Joyce sent me the letter announcing that Lucky Break, my newest publication, had been nominated by the Northern California Book Reviewers. The photograph above was taken at the Awards Ceremony on April 19.
Lucky me. Lucky us.
But to survive these tough times, Poetry Flash needs our help and support. I encourage you to consider making a donation, however small, to Poetry Flash. You can do so by sending a check to:
Poetry Flash,
1450 Fourth Street, #4
Berkeley, California 94710
Or, if it is easier, just visit www.PoetryFlash.org and click on Donate. [tax-deductible donation, 501(c)3, federal tax #94-3096270]
Thank you all, and may the muses in all their forms be with you.
Terry Ehret
