KPFA RADIO + POETRY FLASH + MOE’S BOOKS present
HEARTS GATHERING:
Poetry, Laureates & Music for Valentine’s Day
* DIANE di PRIMA
* MICHAEL McCLURE
* CAROL MUSKE-DUKES, California Poet Laureate
* STEPHEN KENT, Didgeridoo master, performing with
* EDA MAXYM, vocalist
* AL YOUNG, California Poet Laureate (2005-2008)
(performing with bassist Dan Robbins)
* Hosted by Wes “Scoop” Nisker, author, performance artist & Buddhist teacher
Saturday, February 14, 8:00 pm
King Middle School Auditorium
1781 Rose Street (at Grant
Berkeley
(free parking + wheelchair access)
Benefit: KPFA Radio + Poetry Flash
Tickets: $15 on line: at supportive bookstores. $20 door
Information: 510.848.6767x612
To buy tickets: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/53361
Contact Ken Preston
2501 Harrison St
Oakland, CA 94612
510-967-4495
DIANE di PRIMA
writer, poet, teacher
www.dianediprima.com
Diane is the author of 43 books of poetry and prose, including Dinners and Nightmares, Loba, Memoirs of a Beatnik, Pieces of a Song: Selected Poems, Revolutionary Letters, Selected Poems, Pieces of a Song, and Recollections of My Life as a Woman. She has also contributed to and edited various anthologies of poetry, as well as translating medieval Latin into English. Her plays include: The Discontent of the Russian Prince, Discovery of America, Like, Murder Cake, and Whale Honey.
"Diane di Prima, revolutionary activist of the 1960s Beat literary renaissance, heroic in life and poetics: a learned humorous bohemian, classically educated and twentieth-century radical, her writing, informed by Buddhist equanimity, is exemplary in imagist, political and mystical modes. A great woman poet in second half of American century, she broke barriers of race-class identity, delivered a major body of verse brilliant in its particularity." —Allen Ginsberg
STEPHEN KENT, Didgeridoo, with ADA MAXYM, Vocals
www.stephenkent.net www.edamaxym.com
Widely regarded as one of the pioneering innovators in the modern world of the Didgeridoo, Stephen was a founder of the groups Trance Mission, Lights in a Fat City, Beasts of Paradise & Furious Pig. He has made five solo CD’s, including Oil & Water and Living Labyrinths. and worked with artists as diverse as Tuvan throat singers Chirgilchin, Korean Samulnori Drummers, frame drum wizard Glen Velez, Japanese Taiko luminary Leonard Eto, Markus James & the Wassonrai, flute legend Paul Horn, Airto Moreira, the Magnetic Poets at the Torino Olympics, and vocalist Eda Maxym’s new band Imagination Club.
"...merging spirituality and the modern world...[Kent is] a true future primitive...doing Worldbeat in the most expansive sense possible." —The New Review of Records
“Kent is, simply put, the best didgeridoo player on the planet.” – Santa Fe Sun
Eda Maxym is “a torch singer with tremendous range and versatility. Her emotional outbursts and warm style -- both casual and focused -- captivate listeners…the esoteric sounds are world fusion with ambient textures and timbres. —All Music Guide
Michael McClure poet, writer, playwright, novelist
www.michael-mcclure.com
Michael McClure at the age of 22 gave his first poetry reading at the legendary Six
Gallery event in San Francisco, where Allen Ginsberg first read Howl. Since then he has
produced nearly 30 books of poems and essays plus a good number of films. His work
with Doors’ keyboardist Ray Manzarek and saxophonist David Sanborn has furthered the dramatic fusion of poetry and music. His journalism has been featured in The Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, the L.A. Times and San Francisco Chronicle. Among McClure’s most
popular works are: Hymns to St. Geryon and Other Poems, Meat Science Essays, The Beard, Love Lion Book, The Mad Cub, Solstice Blossom, September Blackberries, Simple Eyes and Other Poems, Rain Mirror and Touching the Edge, for which he won the Northern California Book Award in Poetry.
‘Michael McClure’s poetry and prose is one of the more remarkable achievements in recent American literature.” – The London Times Literary Supplement
“One of our best and wisest bard/scholars. McClure’s thinking is brave, obdurate, passionate complex.” – Anne Waldman
“Michael McClure shares a place with the great William Blake, with the visionary Shelley, with the passionate D.H. Lawrence…” – Robert Creeley
CAROL MUSKE-DUKES
California Poet Laureate
poet, writer, novelist, reviewer, teacher
www.carolmuskedukes.com
Author, radio commentator, Buddhist meditation teacher & performing artist founding director of the PhD Program in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Southern California, where she currently teaches. Carol writes regularly for The New York Times Book Review and the LA Times Book Review. er work has appeared in the Paris Review, The New Yorker, The Nation and The American Poetry Review. Among her many awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. She was a National Book Award finalist, and columnist for the Los Angeles Times for a few years.
Early on, Carol founded and taught in a creative writing program called "Free Space" at the Women's House of Detention on Riker's Island in New York. She went on to become the
Her seven books include Sparrow, An Octave Above Thunder, Channeling Mark Twain, and two collections of essays, Women & Poetry and Married to the Icepick Killer: a Poet in Hollywood.
“Invokes comparisons with the very best poetry now being written in the English-speaking world (with its) vibrant intensity, authentic insight, and uncanny power of describing what is at the border between the visual and the visionary.” — Harold Bloom
“Carol Muske-Dukes…surveys human relations with an acid clairvoyance through which the reckless currents of personal and cultural history course, ripping away all but the essential tones of the human conversation." —Jorie Graham
AL YOUNG
Poet, novelist, essayist, scriptwriter, teacher, former California Poet Laureate
www.alyoung.org
Originally from Mississippi and long since a world traveler, Al now makes his base in Berkeley. His work has appeared in Paris Review, Ploughshares , Essence, the New York Times, Chicago Review, Seattle Review, Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature , Chelsea, Rolling Stone, Gathering of the Tribes, the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, and the Oxford Anthology of African American Literature.
His honors include Stegner, Guggenheim, Fulbright and NEA Fellowships, the PEN-Library of Congress Award for Short Fiction, the PEN-USA Award for Non-Fiction, two American Book Awards, two Pushcart Prizes, two New York Times Notable Book of the year citations, Radio Pacifica’s KPFA Peace Prize, and the Richard Wright Award for Excellence in Literature . Young’s many books include the novels Sitting Pretty, Who Is Angelina?,and Seduction By Light; Heaven: Collected Poems 1958-1990, The Sound of Dreams Remembered (Poems 1990-2000), Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons (Poems 2001-2006), Something About the Blues: An Unlikely Collection of Poetry, and Jazz Idiom: Blueprints, Stills and Frames (The Jazz Photography of Charles L. Robinson).
“Al Young is one of my favorites. He writes movingly about people and the mysteries of the human heart. He has a remarkable ear, a wise and musical ear to match his voice. And when I open up any of his books, I listen.” —Bill Cosby
WES “SCOOP” NISKER
Author, radio commentator, Buddhist meditation teacher & performing artist
www.wesnisker.com
Scoop has given the world four books: The Essential Crazy Wisdom; Buddha’s Nature;
The Big Bang, the Buddha, and the Baby Boom, and Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again!
“What the Tao of Physics did to connect East and West in the realm of physics, Buddha’s Nature does brilliantly in the realm of biology and the mind. This is the new Tao of Evolution.” —Jack Kornfield
“A milestone in contemporary Buddhism. I dare you to find a book on science that is so
personal, or a book on meditation that is so funny and forgiving.” — Joanna Macy
