Essentially Poetic Reading Series for Community Building

Edward Vidaurre

Join FlowerSong Press at our next installment of Essentially Poetic Reading Series on Wednesday, December 6February 2, 2024 at 7:00 PM CST.

Essentially Poetic Reading Series is a curation of poets, artists, essayists, novelists, educators, and everyday individuals whose deemed their voice essential, their work necessary, and their compassion for community building contagious and inspiring. This space is free of judgement and hate, and is a space for writers, readers, and admirers to come together to listen and uplift one another in a creative, poetic, and intentional online space. Essentially Poetic is dedicated to amplifying essential voices throughout our world. By creating an online environment, we can reach beyond geographical borders and barriers. The essential voice echoes loud and translates intuitively. Join us each month as we come together to celebrate featured readers and artists and listen to their poetic and essential voice. Featuring: Peter J. Harris, Ernesto M. Garay, Donna Spruijt-Metz, and Denise Tolan Peter J. Harris, Altadena Poet Laureate Editor in Chief (2022-2024) and Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow (2023-2024), is the author of Safe Arms: 20 Love &amp; Erotic Poems (w/an Ooh Baby Baby moan), with Spanish translations by Francisco Letelier (FlowerSong Press), and SongAgain (Beyond Baroque Books). In 2015, his book of poetry, Bless the Ashes (Tia Chucha Press), won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and his book of personal essays, The Black Man of Happiness: In Pursuit of My 'Unalienable Right,' won the American Book Award. Harris is founding director of <a href="https://blackmanofhappiness.com/" title="https://blackmanofhappiness.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">The Black Man of Happiness Project</a>, a creative, intellectual, and artistic exploration of Black men and joy. He writes the blog WREAKING HAPPINESS: A Joyful Living Journal: <a href="http://www.inspirationcrib.com" title="http://www.inspirationcrib.com" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">www.inspirationcrib.com</a> Ernesto M. Garay is the author of a poetry collection, Reverberating Voices. His writings have also appeared in the DI-VȇrRSέ-City Anthology 2020, Redwood Writers 2016 Poetry Anthology, Pterodáctilo, and Ethnic Studies Journal. Garay is LA Revista Bilingüe: La Voz's Person of the Month in Sonoma County for March 2020, a 2019-2020 Sonoma County, California, Discovered Award Recipient in Literary Arts. Today, Garay works as an Ethnic Faculty at Sierra College and is the proud father of Pakal. He lives with him in Davis, California. Donna Spruijt-Metz’s debut poetry collection is ‘General Release from the Beginning of the World’ (2023, Free Verse Editions, Palette Press). She is an emeritus psychology professor, MacDowell fellow, rabbinical school drop-out, and former classical flutist. She was featured as one of ‘5 over 50 debut authors’ in Poets &amp; Writers Magazine (11/23). Her chapbooks include ‘Slippery Surfaces’, ‘And Haunt the World’ (with Flower Conroy). and ‘Dear Ghost’ (winner, 2023 Harbor Review Editor’s prize). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets, Tahoma Literary Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She is currently a reader for Psaltery &amp; Lyre magazine and co-stewards the national Poetry Grind.Denise Tolan is a writer who believes what Virginia Woolf says is true: "On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points."​ She is a pointer. Denise Tolan’s work has been included in places such as The Penn Review, Atlas and Alice, Hobart, Lunch Ticket, and The Best Small Fictions 2018. Denise was a finalist for Best of the Net 2022 and both the 2019 and 2018 International Literary Awards: Penelope Niven Prize in Nonfiction. Denise lives and writes in San Antonio, Texas.​Denise Tolan’s memoir-in-essays traces the legacy of violence in an Italian American family, showing how abuse reverberates both in the body and mind and how everything is connected through literal and metaphorical blood. This raw, heartbreaking collection lays out how the origins of violence can infect the roots of a family tree, and reveals what eventually grows from those roots. Tolan asserts—in no uncertain terms—the importance of speaking out to break the lineage of family violence. Her essays offer a connection to anyone who suffered childhood shame, violence, or fear, and provide reassurance that they are not alone.Her book Italian Blood was released in 2023 from Cavankerry Press

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Essentially Poetic Reading Series for Community Building

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