October 13, 2008

Nine Serrano and Neeli Chercovski



The Odd Mondays Series at The Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez Street,
Monday, October 13, 7 PM
Free Admission

Poets Nina Serrano and Neeli Chercovski will read.

Poet, writer, storyteller, and independent media producer, Nina Serrano is the author of Heartsongs: The Collected Poems of Nina Serrano (1980) and Pass it on!: How to start your own senior storytelling program in the schools (Stagebridge). Her poems are widely anthologized, appearing most recently in the literary anthology, Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Writers from California (Heyday Books), and three anthologies of peace poems from Estuary Press.
Serrano has won international film awards, including the XXXIII Mostra internazionale D'Arte Cinematografica award for Que Hacer: What is to Be Done?; and the Krakow, Poland International Short Film Festival award for After the Earthquake: Despues del terremoto.
Serrano served as an Alameda County Arts Commissioner, and is a former director of San Francisco's Poetry in the Schools program. She was a co-founder of the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco's Mission District, where she is still actively involved. In addition, she is a long-time producer of radio programs on Pacifica Radio station KPFA (94.1 FM) in Berkeley, California, currently hosting La Raza Chronicles on Tuesdays at 7:00 pm..

Neeli Cherkovski (born 1945 in Santa Monica, California) is a San Francisco poet and man of letters. He has written biographies of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Charles Bukowski, with whom he co-edited the Los Angeles zine Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns. Cherkovski grew up in San Bernardino, California. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was sometime political consultant for candidates in the Riverside area. He came to San Francisco in 1975 to work on the staff of then-State Senator George Moscone. He produced the first San Francisco Poetry Festival and in the mid-1990s founded Café Arts Month, a yearly event celebrating San Francisco’s cafe culture.[2]
The critic Gerald Nicosia said of Cherkovski, "...in the end, what stamps Cherkovski’s poetry as unique is its unbounded lyricism, a lyrical gift easily greater than that of any other poet of his generation."
Cherkovski is the author of Whitman's Wild Children, a collection of essays about twelve poets he has known: Michael McClure, Charles Bukowski, John Wieners, James Broughton, Philip Lamantia, Bob Kaufman, Allen Ginsberg, William Everson, Gregory Corso, Harold Norse, Jack Micheline, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. This book combines biography, personal stories, and poetry analyses. As a writer-in-residence at the New College of California in San Francisco., Cherkovski taught literature and philosophy there until the school closed in 2008. Cherkovski's body of poetry includes Animal, Elegy for Bob Kaufman and Leaning Against Time, for which he was awarded the 15th Annual PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award



October 27th 2008, 7 PM

The Odd Mondays Series presents
“Several Circles - Poems About Paintings” by Katharine Harer and Emmanuel Williams
FREE ADMISSION



The Odd Mondays Series presents a return engage of one of our most popular evenings:
Poets Katharine Harer and Emmanuel Williams and company
Two published poets and experienced performers read their poems about paintings and photographs. The readings will be accompanied by projections, music – both live and recorded – and dance. Painters include Picasso, Matisse, Monet, Manet, Kandinsky, Klee, Magritte and Georgia O’Keeffe. This promises to be an absorbing, multi-layered presentation.
Katharine Harer teaches English and Creative writing at Skyline College. In 1995 she won the Slipstream Annual Poetry award, which led to the publication of a collection of her poetry, Hubba Bubba, now in its third printing. Her poems have been published in literary magazines, in a number of anthologies, and in three small press collections: Spring Cycle (Encanto Press San Francisco), In These Bodies (Moving Parts Press, Santa Cruz) and A Radical Kind of Trust (Si Press, San Francisco). She has read her poetry in hundreds of colleges, bookstores and cafes. She’s currently working on a memoir/literary homage to Pablo Neruda, following her recent trip to Chile. Harer lives in San Francisco and is a co-ordinator of the Poetry and Pizza reading series in the financial district.


Emmanuel Williams, an Englishman, works for California Poets In The Schools. He has taught all over the world, from 2nd grade through college. His work has been featured on BBC, NPR, and published in numerous literary and New Age magazines. He first worked on blending poetry and music in 1959 as a college student, and has been associated with musicians, dancers and artists in numerous multi-media presentations ever since. He’s currently working on a collection of poems about the sea, a collection of riddles, a study of the spiritual aspects of sex, a collection of creation poems by children, and a collection for teachers of ideas for poetry writing in the classroom.