Watershed, environmental poetry festival, 2023

Watershed, environmental poetry festival, 2023 me and others reading CPITS kid poems.

Stomach bug flattened me so I scanned photos instead

Advil. Check. Headache gone. Check. Tea. Breakfast. Check. I can do this. Check. What a difference a "down" week makes. Even if I was sick the entire week, I still got some good scanning time in.

Some Facebook collections of my newly scanned photos include:
Chris Caswell
Utah Phillips and Doc Watson, Rosalee Sorrells
Jack Mueller, national poetry week
Boschka Layton, SSU reading
Paul Mariah
Glenn Ingersoll
Lucille Clifton, Elizabeth Herron
Michael Daley
Poetry Flash event QR Hand, Sharon Doubiago
CPITS retreat Noyo River 1985
Edwin Drummond
Peter Capp
Cal Davis
Brownie Mary, Tony Serra
My family, Feather River 
Kitty Ward funeral 
Wake
My 30th birthday
My grandmother

Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival 2018

23rd annual Poetry Flash

Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival

Stand up for the Earth

Saturday, October 13th

from 10 AM to 4:30 PM

at Civic Center Park,

Martin Luther King, Jr. Way 

in Berkeley, California.

watershed@poetryflash.org

Free to the public, bring low chairs, blankets, picnic on the grass.

Strawberry Creek walk hosted by Chris Olander begins at 10AM 

Meet at the corner of Oxford and Center streets. 

Featured readers: Iris Dunkle, Maya Khosla, Joan Gelfand,
plus eco-dance by Sharon Coleman with Barry Ebner on guitar at the grove.

Plus book signings and poetry writing and art events at River Village.

Readings:

We are Nature reading (open mike sign up at noon).

1:15 PM: River of Words youth reading an awards with Robert Hass, 

1:30 PM California Poets in the Schools student reading 

with Maureen Hurley, Brennan DeFrisco, and other CPITS teachers.

2 PM: welcome
Big reading: Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Leanne Sullivan, Maya Khosla, Joan Gelfand, CS Giscombe, Tonga Eisen-Martin, Forrest Gander, Ellery Ackers, Robert Coats, Iris Dunkle, Chris Olander, Gwynn O'Gara, and more.

4:30PM closing ceremonies, grand finale.

Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival is a collaboration with Robert Hass, US Poet Laureate, 1995-1997, Poetry Flash, and the Ecology Center/Berkeley Farmers' Market, Pegasus Books, Moe's Books, East Bay Express, Poets & Writers, Berkeley Civic Arts  Commission, Zellerbach Family Foundation.

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Gerald Stern reading at the Albany Library

Wow, what a rare evening, so many old and new friends in the audience. Poets everywhere. Thank you Joyce Jenkins, Richard Silberg, Catherine Taylor, and the Albany Library.      

In a rare West Coast appearance, Gerald Stern read from his new collection, Divine Nothingness, and from his previous book, In Beauty Bright—as well as from his latest manuscript of 60 pages and growing by the minute. Prolific and energetic,  Gerald Stern taught us with much laughter and wit, that 90 is the new 60. 

Gerald Stern is the recipient of a National Book Award, the Library of Congress 2005 Wallace Stevens Award, and the 2012 Rebekah Johynson Bobbitt National Prize. As this year’s Robert Frost Gold Medalist for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry From the Poetry Society of America, Stern is one of the country’s most honored poets. He has been writing for over seventy years, with seventeen books of verse and a memoir, Stealing History. 

Robert Hass, former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winner, introduced Gerald Stern. We had a book signing with cake at Saint Alban's Episcopal Church, hosted by Poetry at the Albany Library and co-sponsored by Poetry Flash.I also ran into Jane Hirshfield at the reading, and she gave me a big hug. We haven’t physically seen each other in decades. Al Young took a photo of us together, but it was blurred. Story of my life.

RIP Jack Gilbert

Joy Harjo, Bob Hass & Linda Gregg

I met Linda Gregg backstage at the Watershed Poetry Festival in Berkeley in September—Bob Hass said, Maureen, do you know Linda Gregg?

And my jaw hit the floor.

I told her about an after-school softball game I watched at Lagunitas School—the Gregg twins were on 2nd & 3rd base, Billy Joe Bianchi hit a home run and when they ran, they were so freckled and golden, I was in awe.

Someone was up at bat. Maybe it was Liz Haas. Or one of the Farley boys. I remembered them from catechism class.  I think it was Lagunitas vs. Nicasio. It was a foul ball that rolled right down the third base line and turned out at the last minute, so everyone had to retrace their steps.

I was about 6 or 7, so baseball was a mystery to me—but Billy Joe was my neighbor (family friends). So, I watched the game and cheered  as he brought them all home.

Linda was a little blown away by the baseball story—expecting something more modern, perhaps—her role as a major poet and me as sycophant—instead it was about a childhood softball game.

As it turned out, her sister was in the audience, too. So I got to meet the Gregg twins together again. I always want to call her Alma, but that's the name of Linda's seminal poetry book—if women can have a seminal books, that is. But perhaps her sister was Linda's Alma. Louise lives in Tomales. The weather has taken its toll on her. She favors the same plaid shirts as did her father. Tough no-nonsense women, the Gregg twins. 

Linda & Louise Gregg

Linda had just come from seeing Jack Gilbert. She said that he wasn't doing well. His mind may have taken flight. But he always knew her. A bond that deep.

I'm racking the brain as to how the story is possible as they are 10 years older than me but Lagunitas was such a small place in those days and I started school early—perhaps they also started school late, to make the timeline work.

Or, they were already in high school. I remember someone saying they were 8th graders—and that seemed like such an impossible distance in time, I couldn't fathom it. Maybe Carol Manning remembers it better.

17th Annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival

17th Annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival
Saturday, September 29, 10:00 a.m.

Strawberry Creek Walk • Meet at Oxford & Center Streets in Berkeley.

Creek Walk poets: Chris Olander, Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Maya Khosla, Rebecca Moos, Maureen Hurley, Rebecca Moos, Kim Shuck

 
A walk from Strawberry Creek on the UC Berkeley campus to the Watershed festival led by poet/eco-educator Chris Olander with poetry readings by poets and commentary by creek restoration experts, featuring Chris Olander, Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Maya Khosla, Maureen Hurley, Rebecca Moos, Kim Shuck, Tim Pine (UC Berkeley), Kirstin Miller (Ecocity Builders).

Festival Main Stage • Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park
Robert Hass • Joy Harjo • Michael McClure • Brenda Hillman • Francisco X. Alarcón • Rebecca Foust • Richard Silberg

— with Michael McClure, Brenda Hillman, Maya Khosla, Francisco X. Alarcon, Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Eileen Hale, Richard Silberg, Tim Pine, Poetry Flash, Chris Olander, Rebecca Foust, Joy Harjo, Rebecca Moos, Joyce Jenkins, Robert Hass and Kirstin Miller.

Poetry Flash: Napa Poetry Conference (front page photo of Carolyn Forché & Gerald Stern)