On the 12/18/24 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Professor Oliver Jones joins Dr.Andy in a discussion about Christmas, family, artistry, and the best movies of 2024. Jones reiterates the importance of December in film culture, as many great movies tend to be released during the holiday seasons and before large film festivals. He shares one of his favorite movies of the year “Dìdi (弟弟)” debuted at the Sundance Film Festival among other great films. Jones outlines some similar themes between what he felt were the best films of the past year, before detailing some of his work critiquing high-budget and low-budget films alike. The next guest on the show, poet Katy Brown, opens describing some of her favorite nature spots in Yolo County. She talks about her love for birds, photography, and exploration. She then shares a poem, “Ah, The Life” before sharing details of her upcoming “Capturing Wakamatsu” event at the Georgetown Library, which she recently got funding for.

Oliver Jones has a more than 25-year career working as a journalist for the top circulation magazines and highest readership websites, including a decade spent as a staff writer for People magazine. His expertise is in film, television, popular culture and the entertainment industry, as well as the history of Los Angeles’ underrepresented population and the city’s social justice movements. Since 2012, he has taught journalism and inclusion at Emerson College; he first taught for Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in the summer of 2022. Over the last five years, he has made the history and practice of film criticism a focus of his academic and professional work. He has written over 200 reviews for the New York Observer and is a member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

Katy Brown is a local poet and photographer. She has won awards in The Ina Coolbrith Circle, California Federation of Chaparral Poets, and The International Dance Poetry competition. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals such as but not limited to: Sutterville Review, Song of San Joaquin, Poetalk, Persimmon Tree, Harp Strings, And anthologies: Poeming Pigeons, Sacramento Voices, California Fire and Water, and The Ina Coolbrith Society’s Gathering anthologies. She is a three-time Pushcart nominee. Katy Brown also leads a quarterly “Capturing Wakamatsu” event featuring poetry and exploration of the historic American River Conservancy site with the help of Taylor Graham.

The Poetry Night Reading Series takes place on first and third Thursdays of the month at 7 PM, is generously supported by the people and poets of the Sacramento Valley, by John Natsoulas, and by Thea and the other members of the staff at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Your host will be Dr. Andy Jones, the poet laureate emeritus of the City of Davis. The next poetry night on January 2nd 2025 will feature France-based poet Nicollete Daskalakis

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.

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 12/11/24 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Cami DuMay phones in to discuss her move to Austin, Texas in pursuit of her MFA where she has written 41 poems this past semester. She describes her warm feelings for the Davis writing community and its instrumental effect on her undergraduate writing journey. DuMay outlines how the variety of workshop voices is helping shape her poetic practice, before sharing two poems, “Infancy” and “What Would You Give to Be So Hungry.” The next guest on the show is Tim Kahl, who has a reading this upcoming Sunday with poet Joshua McKinney. Kahl states the themes informing his most recent book, Drips, Spills, Bursts, Tangles, and Washes, which is composed mostly of prose poems and arose from a magazine prompt. He talks about the musical elements of his poetry, and how he tries to utilize traditional sounds, before sharing a poem about when he taught in Brazil “The Little Way of the Brazilian.”

Cami DuMay is a UC Davis aluma currently in her first year at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas. She writes about myriad aspects of life, but has a fascination with nature, madness, worship, and the human animal.

Tim Kahl is the author of six books of poems, most recently Omnishambles (Bald Trickster, 2019), California Sijo (Bald Trickster, 2022) and Drips, Spills, Bursts, Tangles, and Washes (Cold River Press, 2024). He is also an editor of the literary space Clade Song He builds flutes, plays them and plays guitars, ukuleles, charangos and cavaquinhos as well. He currently teaches at California State University, Sacramento, where he sings lieder while walking on campus between classes.

The Poetry Night Reading Series takes place on first and third Thursdays of the month at 7 PM, is generously supported by the people and poets of the Sacramento Valley, by John Natsoulas, and by Thea and the other members of the staff at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Your host will be Dr. Andy Jones, the poet laureate emeritus of the City of Davis.

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.

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 12/4/24 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Julia B. Levine phones in to describe her feelings upon receiving the Poet Laureate Fellowship from the American Academy of Poetry. She outlines tomorrow night's event at the John Natsoulas Gallery, where students from Davis Junior High will be reading their own original poetry that Levine helped workshop. Levine then shares one of her student's poems titled, “Be More Like a Cockroach” from 16 Rivers Press’s Seeds of Hope Collection, which contains poems from the middle schoolers. The next guest on the show is Professor Naomi Janowitz, who discusses restarting her public affairs show at KDVS, which focuses on UC Davis research. Janowitz also shares her feelings about how poetry should not be gatekept. She described how she starts many of her classes, prompting students to write an American haiku about a topic of their choice. The last guest on the show is Dyson Smith, who compares his calculated boxing approach to his poetics. He discusses some of his scholarly endeavors before sharing a poem, “California Sober.”

Naomi Janowitz is Professor of Religious Studies. Her areas of interest are Judaism in the Greco-Roman context, Hellenistic religions, methods in the study of religions, and the psychoanalytic study of religion. Publications include: Icons of Power: Ritual Practices in Late Antiquity (Penn State University Press, 2002) and Magic in the Roman World (Routledge, 2001). Her first book won the Outstanding Academic Book Award from Library/Choice Journal. She has also won an essay prize from the American Psychoanalytic Association and a teaching award from the UC Davis Academic Senate.

Davis Poet Laurete Julia B. Levine’s poetry has won many awards. Recently she has won the 2024 Hippocrates International Prize for Poetry and Medicine, the 2023 Oran Perry Burke Award from The Southern Review, the 2022 Steve Kowit Poetry Prize, the 2020 Bellevue Literary Review Poetry Award, as well as a 2022 American Academy of Poetry Poet Laureate Fellowship for her work in building resiliency in teenagers related to climate change through poetry, science and technology. She received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from University of California, Berkeley and an MFA in poetry from Pacific University.

Dyson Smith is a Chicago born poet studying Statistics at the University of California, Davis. Smith serves as the Co-Community-Coordinator and DJ at the KDVS, a Researcher at the UC Davis Innovations and Research Lab, and the producer of Dr.Andy’s poetry and technology hour. His work has been published in KDVATIONs, Open Ceilings, The Sacramento Poetry Center’s Poet News, GTFO Poetry’s 2024 Anthology of Sacramento Poets, and has two poems forthcoming in The Madison Review.

The Poetry Night Reading Series will feature Davis junior high poets and their new book, Seeds of Hope. We meet at 7 PM on Thursday, December 5th, 2024, on the first floor of the John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 1st Street in Davis.

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.

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.