On the 4/23/25 Edition of Dr Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Barbra Ruth Sanders joins the show to speak on the publication of her debut collection. Hearing Voices. Ruth Sanders states that the collection took years of work and contains poems that touch on family, places from the past, and hearing voices. She shares two poems, one that closes the book, “Wayfinding at Pere Lachaise,” and another, “Ode to Wicklow Mountains,” before delving into a discussion surrounding her vivid imagery. The next guest of the program is Veronica Jarboe, who discusses her recently published chapbook Dragon Girl. Jarboe shares the title poem from her Chapbook and also describes how her creative projects often lead into each other. She discusses workshops with Joshua McKinney and the process of boiling down poems into a body of work. The last guest of the hour is Indigo Moor, who reveals he has a book coming out next March titled Reconstructing Eden. He discusses how jazz influences his work and explains his creation of the invented form “The Bastard Villanelle.” Moor ends his segment by sharing a poem, “Transubstantiation.”

Barbara Ruth Saunders writes poetry, memoir, and criticism and performs at poetry readings and solo performance venues in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her debut poetry collection, Hearing Voices, was released in 2024, and her work has recently appeared at Highland Park Poetry and in the anthology, Silence is Consent.

Veronica Jarboe is the author of the MicroChap collection i tell the finches with Rinky Dink Press, which earned her a Pushcart nomination. She is also the author of Sweethearts and Sorrows, and Dragon Girl with Bottlecap Press. Some of her other published works can be seen in Re-Side Magazine, Yours Poetically, Moss Puppy Magazine, The Broken Spine, Ethel, and Folio Magazine, among others. Veronica is currently an undergraduate English Major at California State University, Sacramento. Additionally, she is a prose and poetry reader for Moss Puppy Magazine. Veronica can be found on Instagram @veronicajarboe and Twitter @VJarboe.

Poet Laureate Emeritus of Sacramento, Indigo Moor’s fourth book of poetry, Everybody’s Jonesin’ for Something, took second place in the University of Nebraska Press’ Backwater Prize. Jonesin’—a multi-genre work consisting of poetry, short fiction, memoir pieces, and stage plays—was published in the spring of 2021. Through the Stonecutter’s Window, won Northwestern University Press’s Cave Canem prize. His first and third books, Tap-Root and In the Room of Thirsts & Hungers, were both parts of Main Street Rag’s Editor’s Select Poetry Series. Indigo is part of the visiting faculty for Dominican’s MFA program, teaching poetry and short fiction. His stageplay, Live! At the Excelsior, I was a finalist for the Images Theatre Playwright Award. The subsequent screenplay was optioned as a full-length film.

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, subscribe to his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com.

On the 4/9/25 edition of Dr.Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Eric Paul Shaffer joins the show to discuss his upcoming and recent book publications, Free Speech and Green Leaves. Shaffer recounts his time at the University of California, Davis and discusses his most recent collection, written in two long sequences. Shaffer then praises Coyote Arts Press and reads a poem, “Watch for falling rocks” and two verses that can be sung along to The United States National Anthem. Julia B. Levine is the next guest on the hour, and details her upcoming reading on April 17th at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Levine discusses her various writing projects and her feelings upon being awarded a Pushcart and the 2024 Terrain Poetry Prize. She explains how she writes about death, love, sex, and aging, trying to articulate the unique vulnerabilities each of these domains contain. Levine then shares a poem titled “This American Spring.”

Eric Paul Shaffer is author of nine volumes of poetry, most recently Free Speech and Green Leaves, Selected & New Poems, Even Further West, A Million-Dollar Bill; Lāhaina Noon, and Portable Planet. More than 650 individual poems appear in reviews in the USA, Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Nicaragua, India, Iran, Scotland, Singapore, and Wales. Shaffer received Hawai‘i’s 2002 Elliot Cades Award for Literature; Ka Palapala Po‘okela Book Awards for Lāhaina Noon (2006) and Even Further West (2019); and 2009 James M. Vaughan Award for Poetry. Shaffer is a retired professor of English and lives on Oʻahu.

Julia B. Levine’s poetry has won many awards, including a 2021 Nautilus Award for her fifth poetry collection, Ordinary Psalms, (LSU press, 2021), as well as the 2015 Northern California Book Award in Poetry for her fourth collection, Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight, (LSU, 2014). Recently she has won a 2024 Pushcart Prize in Poetry, the 2024 Terrain Poetry Prize, 2023 Oran Perry Burke Award in Poetry from The Southern Review, as well as a 2022 American Academy of Poetry Poet Laureate Fellowship for her work in building resilience in teenagers related to climate change through poetry, science, and technology. Her work has appeared in many literary journals, including, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review and Prairie Schooner. She received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from University of California, Berkeley and an MFA in poetry from Pacific University. Her chapbook, Lullaby for the Sixth Extinction, won the Wolfson Poetry Prize and will be published in early fall, 2025.

The Poetry Night Reading Series takes place on the first and third Thursdays of the month at 7 PM in the John Natsoulas Gallery. The event 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, subscribe to his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com.

On the 4/2/25 Edition of Dr Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Clarence Major joins the show to discuss his storied career as a writer and his upcoming release, Four Days in Algeria. He shares a poem from the collection titled “Closed on Sunday” before the next guest, Professor Anne Schilling joins the show. Professor Schilling details the upcoming play which is coming to the UC Davis Campus, “Diving Into Math with Emmy Noether,” which will play at the Wyatt Theater, April 9th at 6 P.M. The next guest of the hour is Seo Nguyen, who outlines some exciting upcoming events hosted by UC Davis’s Fashion and Design Society (FADs). Nguyen describes FADs new print magazine and their upcoming Fashion Show on Picnic Day, “Through the Looking Glass.” The last guest on the show is April Ossman, who details the thematics of her recent release, We. Her collection takes an unapologetically spiritual stance in bridging politicized divides, exploring conscious and unconscious prejudices with lyricism, warmth, and self-implicating humor. Ossman shares two poems, “Knee Deep” and “Deer Atilla.”

Clarence Major won a National Book Award Bronze Medal for Configurations: New and Selected Poems. He is the author of seventeen collections of poems. His forthcoming collection is Four Days in Algeria (2025). He has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Harvard Review and many other periodicals. Major is distinguished professor emeritus in English at the University of California Davis.

Professor Anne Schilling studies quantum algebras and representation theory using combinatorial methods. In particular she is interested in affine crystal graphs [2], which first arose in the exactly solvable lattice models in statistical mechanics. She is also involved in the study of affine Schubert calculus [1], which is a vast generalization of classical Schubert calculus. Many parts of her research involve computational experimentation. She is an active developer for Sage, http://www.sagemath.org/.

Seo Nguyen is a third year double major in Design & Psychology. As the Co-editor in chief for FADS, Seo manages a team of graphic designers and is designing the first physical issue of the FADS magazine that will be printed in May! She derives a lot of inspiration from Japanese and editorial fashion magazines from the early 2000's and is creating something unique and physical to keep and remember FADS by.

April Ossmann is the author of We (Red Hen Press, 2025), Event Boundaries and Anxious Music, recipient of a VAC Creation Grant, and former director of Alice James Books, and an independent editor at: www.aprilossmann.com

The Poetry Night Reading Series takes place on the first and third Thursdays of the month at 7 PM in the John Natsoulas Gallery. The event 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 readers on 4/3/25 will be Clarence Major and April Ossmann.

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, subscribe to his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com.