Dr. Andy's Poetry and Technology Hour Dr. Andy Jones

On the 3/22/23 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:
Former Poet Laureate of Sacramento Bob Stanley tells us about local poetry happenings, Random Lane Press, and Bob’s Poetry Seminars, and then shares two poems that get by with a little help from the Beatles. Poet and radio host Charles Perrone shares thoughts on French existentialism, being surprised by his poetry, having an online presence, his radio and translation work, and more.
Bob Stanley has written poetry and organized poetry events in Northern California since the 1970s. He served as Poet Laureate of Sacramento from 2009 to 2012. He and his wife Joyce live in the Arden area of Sacramento County where Bob runs Random Lane Press. 
Charles A. Perrone works with music, radio, translation, university-press commissions, and poetry. His oddball lyric lives at moriapoetry.com (chapbooks) and at https://caperrone4.wixsite.com/ca-perrone-wix. He recently published the volume Designs: Blueprints of Floorplans of a Provisional Residence (cyberwit, 2022).
Maya Khosla and Lisa Dominguez Abraham will read at the Poetry Night Reading Series on April 6th.
Find out more about Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, visit his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com and follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andyojones.

On the 3/15/23 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:
Former California poet laureate Dana Gioia joins the show for a meaningful discussion of poetry – the media in which it thrives, the reasons why young audiences are more engaged than ever, and all the nuances of word choice (with none of the pretension). He shares a bit about his book Meet Me at the Lighthouse, as well as one of its poems, a psalm that provides a metaphorical map of Los Angeles with an astrological twist. Later, Vice President of the Friends of the Davis Public Library Jeff Lee tells us about local used bookstore Logos Books, their monthly book sales, and their support of the Davis Public Library.
Dana Gioia is the former Poet Laureate of California. An internationally recognized poet and critic, he is the author of six collections of verse, including Interrogations at Noon (2001), which won the American Book Award, and 99 Poems: New & Selected (2016), which won the Poets’ Prize for the best new poetry volume of the year. His latest book, Meet Me at the Lighthouse, has just been published by Graywolf Press.
Gioia’s critical collections include Can Poetry Matter? (1992), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award, and Studying with Miss Bishop: Memoirs from a Young Writer’s Life (2022).
He has also written four opera libretti and edited twenty literary anthologies. Gioia served as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 to 2009 where he created major national programs such as The Big Read and Poetry Out Loud.
Gioia was born in Los Angeles in a working-class family of Italian and Mexican heritage. He was the first person in his family to attend college. He earned a BA and MBA from Stanford and an MA from Harvard. For fifteen years he worked in business in New York, becoming a vice-president of Kraft-General Foods. He wrote at nights and on weekends. In 1992 he quit to become a full-time writer.
He has been awarded eleven honorary doctorates and many honors, including the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame, the Presidential Civilian Medal, the Poet’s Prize, the Walt Whitman Champion of Literary Award, and the Aiken-Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry. He served as the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California before retiring in 2020 to return to full-time writing.
Dana Gioia will read at the Poetry Night Reading Series on Thursday, March 16th, with a Q&A following his reading.



Find out more about Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, visit his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com and follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andyojones.

On the 3/8/23 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:
Teacher, writer, and Davis resident Dawn Yackzan, along with novelist and lecturer in the UC Davis University Writing Program David Masiel, join Dr. Andy in the studio to talk about their books, getting listeners excited to hear them excerpted and read by actors at Stories on Stage Davis. Later, Peter Shahrokh tells us stories about his college years, his decision to become a Davisite, his dad’s friend’s Frankenstein-esque experiments and his free newsletter.
Dawn Yackzan, a first-generation American-Lebanese, is a writer, mother, teacher, and activist. Her background includes teaching in public elementary schools, primarily low socio-economic, under-served communities, for thirty years. This work led her to found the Sexual Assault Awareness Campaign in 2013, a grassroots program which gained support from local schools, law enforcement, University of California leaders and state politicians. Having moved once a year in her first two decades of life, she discovered different regions and cultures of the United States. These nomadic and diverse cultural experiences, including living as an expat in North Africa at seventeen, have influenced her writings and become prominent subjects in her nonfiction and fiction writing. Since retiring, her projects include her memoir Precious Crazy and a young adult novel called Leap Frog. An early draft of Precious Crazy won a spot at the Community of Writers (in the High Sierra) and was selected as a 2022 finalist in an international book contest in Paris. Dawn and her husband live in Davis, California, and have two adult children.
David Masiel lives, writes, and teaches in Davis. A graduate of the UC Davis creative writing program, Masiel has taught in the English Department and University Writing Program over the past two decades, teaching courses in fiction, creative nonfiction, journalism, and professional editing. Between 2011-2019, he served as editor of Writing on the Edge, a UC Davis journal on writing and teaching writing, co-editing the journal’s collected interviews with writing scholars, Teachers on the Edge: The WOE Interviews (Routledge). His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Outside Magazine, and The Washington Post. He has published two novels: 2182 Kilohertz (Random House 2002), a New York Times Notable Book that year, and The Western Limit of the World (Random House 2005).
Peter Shahrokh was born in Berkeley and earned a BA in English from UC Berkeley. He has a PhD in American Literature from UC Davis, and much later received a working-professionals MBA from the same institution. He worked as an analyst for the University of California Davis Office of Architects and Engineers and retired in 2016. Shahrokh has studied in Vienna, and taught English and American Literature at the Università di Pisa. In 2005 he learned to paint with watercolors, and, from his website, he now delivers eclectic biweekly online-newsletters to 150 subscribers to accompany digital images of his latest paintings. His website is petershahrokh.com.
Dawn Yackzan and David Masiel will be featured authors at Stories on Stage Davis on Saturday, March 11th, 2023.
Former California poet laureate Dana Gioia will read at the Poetry Night Reading Series on Thursday, March 16th, 2023.
Find out more about Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, visit his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com and follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andyojones.

On the 3/1/23 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:
Dr. Andy and his first guest, alien hunter and exhibit designer Hugh Mackenzie, take a conversational romp through all things paranormal, including the extensive paranormal entertainment offerings of the Encounters UFO Xperience pop-up museum in Davis. Later in the hour, we hear from UC Davis Associate Dean of Health Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Kupiri Ackerman-Barger about her work mitigating medical disparities, the practice of cultural humility, and building a bridge to readers when writing her book on health equity.
Piri Ackerman-Barger is associate dean for Health Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and a clinical professor at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis. As associate dean for Health Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, Ackerman-Barger leads the school’s efforts to create a diverse and welcoming setting in which to learn, work and collaborate. She also designs initiatives to make the school’s learning environments, workforce, programs, services and partnerships more diverse and inclusive.
Ackerman-Barger’s academic interests relate to health equity and social justice. She is a national consultant and speaker on strategies on mitigating health disparities and advancing health equity. She is currently writing a book about how nurses can advance health equity by using cultural humility as a framework for practice. It is from this work that she will be reading at Poetry Night.
See “The Greatest Show Beyond Earth” at Encounters UFO Xperience, The Official UFO Museum and Club, at 871 Russell Blvd, Davis CA (next to Trader Joe's). Experience the world of aliens, UFOs and the paranormal right here in Davis! Explore an alien museum with a spaceship, movie props from E.T., The Predator, and Terminator, ancient aliens, accounts of extraterrestrial sightings, and the Abductee Outreach Room for your own alien encounter story! Meet those who have seen the spaceships and the orbs! Mingle with ufologists, cryptozoologists, believers and debunkers! Find out more about Encounters UFO Xperience at http://www.ufoxperience.com.
Dr. Andy Jones will read with Piri Ackerman-Barger at the Poetry Night Reading Series on Thursday, March 2nd.
Find out more about Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, visit his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com and follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andyojones.

On the 2/15/23 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:
Dr. Andy and poet Robert Thomas discuss Thomas’s new book, Sonnets with Two Torches and One Cliff, including his approach to sonnetry, themes of unconventional jealousy, and the diminished attention span of modern writers and their readers. He shares a poem using the familiar and human to convey an alien longing. Next up is writer Beverly Burch, who tells us about her new book Leave Me a Little Want, its themes of hunger, and how it emerged from our zeitgeist of impending catastrophe. She shares a poem musing about a muse. Livermore poet laureate emerita Connie Post rejoins the program to talk with Dr. Andy about her new book Between Twilight, and its bold exploration of liminal spaces, before sharing two rich and captivating poems. Finally, Dr. Andy reads an essay from his weekly blog, a story about foreshadowing, or simply the payoffs of a kindhearted mentorship.
Robert Thomas’s latest book, Sonnets with Two Torches and a Cliff, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press. His first book, Door to Door, was selected by Yusef Komunyakaa for the Poets Out Loud Prize and published by Fordham University, and his collection Dragging the Lake was also published by Carnegie Mellon. His novella Bridge, a sort of novel in prose poems, was published by BOA and received the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Fiction. He has received an NEA fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. Thomas lives with his wife and their three cats in Oakland.
Beverly Burch is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Leave Me a Little Want (Terrapin Books), and two nonfiction books. Her work has won the John Ciardi Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, and a Gival Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Audre Lorde Award. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in New England Review, Gulf Coast, Southern Review, Denver Quarterly, and Los Angeles Review. She is just completing her first novel. Find out more at www.beverlyburch.com.
Connie Post is a San Francisco Bay Area Poet who has been writing and publishing for over twenty five years. Her work has received praise from Al Young, Ursula LeGuin, Ellen Bass, Maxine Chernoff, Dean Rader, and former US Poet Laureate Juan Herrera.
Post’s first full length collection Floodwater was the winner of the 2014 Lyrebird Award from Glass Lyre Press. Her second full length collection Prime Meridian was just released in January of 2020. (Glass Lyre Press) Prime Meridian was a finalist in the 2020 Best Book Awards, 2021 International Book Awards and the 2020 American Fiction Awards. (American Book Fest). Prime Meridian was selected as a distinguished favorite in the 2022 Independent Press Awards. Her third full-length collection Between Twilight was published this February by New York Quarterly Books.
She has two chapbooks from Finishing Line Press And When The Sun Drops and Trip Wires. Her other books include Waking State (Small Poetry Press) and 2 other self-published books about parenting a son with autism.
Robert Thomas and Beverly Burch will read at the Poetry Night Reading Series today, Thursday, February 16th, at the John Natsoulas Gallery.


Find out more about Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, visit his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com and follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andyojones.

On the 2/8/23 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:
Poet and editor of the Wisconsin Poetry Series Jesse Lee Kercheval joins the show to discuss grief, love, and family in her new poetry collection I Want to Tell You, talk about her journey as a poetry translator, and share a migratory and moving poem. Next, Sacramento poet laureate emeritus Indigo Moor talks to Dr. Andy about observing the duties of a poet laureate emeritus (there are none), writing about his past, and bearing witness to a changing country. The latter topic is the subject of a poem he then shares with listeners. Finally, storyteller Kate Farrell lets us in on the joys of the Sacramento Writers Conference (at which she will be a co-presenter) and her book Story Power.
Jesse Lee Kercheval is a poet, writer, and translator, specializing in Uruguayan poetry. She is the author of America that island off the coast of France and Dog Angel and the translator of Love Poems by Idea Vilariño and The Invisible Bridge: Selected Poems of Circe Maia. A bilingual Spanish-English edition of her selected poems, La crisis es el cuerpo, translated by Ezequiel Zaidenwerg, was published in Argentina and is forthcoming in Mexico. She is also the author of the Alex Award–winning memoir Space and the short story collection Underground Women.
Kercheval has been a professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin in Madison since 1987. Since 2010, Kercheval has regularly spent time in Uruguay learning Rioplatense Spanish. Her new book is titled I Want to Tell You.
Indigo Moor is a multi-genre award-winning writer and teacher. His second book of poetry, Through the Stonecutter’s Window, won the Northwestern University Press’s Cave Canem prize. His first book, Tap-Root, was published as part of Main Street Rag’s Editor’s Select Poetry Series. In 2021, he published Everybody's Jonesin' for Something. His stageplay Live! at the Excelsior was a finalist for the Images Theatre Playwright Award. 
Also trained as an engineer, Moor is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA Program, where he studied poetry, fiction, and scriptwriting; and a graduate member of the Artist's Residency Institute for Teaching Artists. A musician and photographer, Indigo's collaborations include the Artists Embassy International Dancing Poetry Festival, the Livermore Ekphrastic Project, and the Davis Jazz Arts Festival.
A graduate of the School of Library and Information Studies, UC Berkeley, Kate Farrell has been a language arts classroom teacher (pre-school and grades kindergarten through 12th), author, librarian, university lecturer, and storyteller in Northern California since 1966. She founded the Word Weaving Storytelling Project in collaboration with the California State Department of Education to train educators at all levels, and published numerous educational materials. Her recent book, Story Power: Secrets to Creating, Crafting, and Telling Memorable Stories was a Gold winner in the 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Award.
Robert Thomas and Beverly Burch will read at the Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis on February 16th. Find details at http://www.poetryindavis.com. 



Find out more about Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, visit his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com and follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andyojones.