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.

On the 11/20/24 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Gerald Fleming joins the show and describes 16 Rivers Press, which publishes poetry collections annually. He then explains the craft behind his recent collection, The Bastard and the Bishop, a collection of prose poems. He then shares a poem, “Refugee” before the next Florencio Milito joins the show. Milito shares how her experiences in Argentina and Venezuela have affected her modern-day poetics, and then shares a poem titled “Lullaby.” She then speaks on her bilingual collection Exiles and Reveries, which details her family life and imagination as a form of resistance. Francisco Aragón, the last guest on the show, discusses the importance of virtual poetry readings during the pandemic. Aragón then outlines how he balances his writing life with his professional practice, before sharing his translation of an untitled Francisco X Alacón sonnet.

Gerald Fleming is known for the high quality of his verse, and for his support of other poets. Fleming’s most recent book is The Bastard and the Bishop, (prose poems, Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn). Other titles include One, an experiment in monosyllabic prose poems (also Hanging Loose), The Choreographer (Sixteen Rivers, San Francisco), Night of Pure Breathing (HL), Swimmer Climbing onto Shore (Sixteen Rivers), and others. Fleming recently edited The Collected Poetry and Prose of Lawrence Fixel (Sixteen Rivers), has edited various literary magazines (traditional, epistolary, vitreous).

Florencia Milito is a bilingual poet whose work has appeared in ZYZZYVA, Indiana Review, Catamaran, Diálogo, 92nd Street Y, among others. In 2022, Militod Community of Writers alumna and San Francisco Writers Grotto and CantoMundo fellow, her writing has been influenced by her early experience fleeing the U.S.-supported 1976 coup in Argentina, subsequent childhood in Venezuela, and immigration to the United States at the age of nine. Her bilingual collection Ituzaingó: Exiles and Reveries / exilios y ensueños was originally published in 2021 by Nomadic Press. Her chapbook Sor Juana, published by Gunpowder Press in 2023, won the Alta California Chapbook Prize and

Francisco Aragón is the author of three books of poetry, including After Rubén (2020), Glow of Our Sweat (2010), and Puerta de Sol (2005). His more than twenty anthology publications include Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology (2024); Queer Nature: An Ecoqueer Poetry Anthology (2022) and Why To These Rocks: 50 Years of Poems from the Community of Writers (2021). A native of San Francisco, CA, he is the son of Nicaraguan immigrants. He is on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, where he teaches courses in Latinx poetry and creative writing, and directs Letras Latinas, their literary initiative.

The Poetry Night Reading Series will feature the poets Francisco Aragón, Gerald Fleming, and Florencia Milito at 7 PM on Thursday, November 21st, 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 by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. Read Dr Andy's 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 11/13/24 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

The GTFO poetry collective composed of Kay Miller, Anthony Robles, and Anthony Xavier Jackson join the show to discuss the release of their inaugural GTFO Journal, An Anthology of Sacramento Poets. Anthony Robles discusses GTFO’s goals of bringing the community together by giving local authors publication opportunities. Kay Miller shares some of their favorite Sacramento metro area open mics. Anthony Xavier Robles gives insight into the publication process and an event at Self Designs Art Gallery this Wednesday. Kay Miller then shares a poem, “It’s 9:30 P.M. On a Tuesday and I’m Trying to Remember a Password.”
The next guest on the show is Nancy Miller Gomez, who delineates her consistent effort to further her poetic craft. She elaborates on her academic journey obtaining her MFA at Pacific University, citing studying under many great poets as supporting her writing growth. Miller Gomez also discusses the release of her new book, Inconsolable Objects. She then shares two poems, “How are we doing?” and “Tilt-a-Whirl,” which appeared in the 2021 anthology Best American Poetry.

Anthony Xavier Jackson has been writing poems and songs since his teens, drawing inspiration from sci-fi, myths, all genres of music, and all manner of spiritual pursuits. He works in an ongoing manner on publishing his poetry and continuing to produce music to accompany his poems and songs. Anthony is also a recent winner of Sacramento Poetry Week’s Annual Poetry contest.

Anthony Robles is a minimalist poet who aims to exploit the haiku and cinqauin forms. He is also a contributor to the Sacramento Poetry Day Curriculum.

Kay Miller, a narrative poet from Sacramento, and has been captivating audiences with their poetry for decades. Their work offers a raw glimpse into the America in Sacramento, seen through liquor store windows and dirty car mirrors. Kay’s art serves as a powerful reminder of the resilience of the human spirit and the importance of LGBTQA+ perspectives in poetry.

Nancy Miller Gomez is the author of Inconsolable Objects (YesYes Books) and Punishment (Rattle chapbook series). Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, Prairie Schooner, Lit Hub, The Adroit Journal, New Ohio Review, The Rumpus, Rattle, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She received a special mention in the 2023 Pushcart Prize Anthology. She co-founded an organization that provides writing workshops to incarcerated women and men and has taught poetry in Prisons, Jails, and the Juvenile Hall. She lives in Santa Cruz, California. More at www.nancymillergomez.com.

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. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s projects 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 11/6/24 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Julia B. Levine joins Dr. Andy in conversation after her 2024 Pushcart Prize win, stating the gratitude and shock she felt upon winning. She then shares high praise for her peer Murray Silverstein, who will be reading with her at the Poetry Night Reading Series on November 7th, 2024. Levine then shares a poem centered around joy titled “The Dove.” She also recommends John Murillo’s collection Kontemperary Amerikan Poetry. The next guest on the show, Natalie Shapero, phones in to discuss her upcoming reading at Shields Library, and her excitement to see the trees of Davis, California. Shapero describes her poetic life and career from Washington D.C, to Boston, and now to California. She thereafter shares the thematic throughlines of her most recent collection, Popular Longing, a collection that outlines the power dynamics at play within the financial structures of art institutions. Shapero then shares two poems, “My Hair is My Thing” and “Magpie.” Shapero also discusses the natural time it takes her to assemble a collection of poetry,

Julia B. Levine is the poet laureate emerita of Davis, California. 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 the 2024 Pushcart Prize, 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 resilience in teenagers related to climate change through poetry, science and technology. Her work has appeared in many literary journals, including Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, The Nation and Prairie Schooner. She earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from University of California, Berkeley and an MFA in poetry from Pacific University.

Natalie Shapero was born in Chester, Pennsylvania and earned a BA in Writing Seminars from the Johns Hopkins University, an MFA in Poetry from the Ohio State University, and a JD from the University of Chicago. For the 2011-2012 year, Shapero served as the Steven Gey Fellow with Americans United for Separation of Church and State. She is the author of the poetry collections No Object (Saturnalia, 2013), Hard Child (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), and Popular Longing (Copper Canyon Press, 2021). Her writing has appeared in The Believer, The New Republic, Poetry, The Progressive, and elsewhere, and she is an editor at the Kenyon Review. In 2012-2014, she was a Kenyon Review fellow. Shapero teaches at Tufts University. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches writing at UC Irvine.

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 10/30/24 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Vincent Kobelt calls in to share about his upcoming reading at the Kings and Queens of Poetry event in Sacramento. Kobelt discusses his undergraduate experience at UC Davis and how he came about poetry in academia. He cites discussing work among his classmates in a Sandra McPherson poem as a main mechanism that helped him grow as a young writer. He then reads a poem “Allentown,” a recently authored piece. Kobelt also describes the poetry album he released last year, A Pinch of Salt. Sarah Pape is the next guest on the show, and she phones in with exciting news of her debut poetry collection, Forgive the Animal. Pape states that the publication of her book feels like closing the circle, as some of the poems and ideas in the book are over a decade old. She also discusses her hardy revision process with her manuscript, saying she is grateful for all of the poets in her life who helped along the way. Pape then shares the collection’s first poem “Kin,” which was spawned from a prompt she gave her students. She also delineates her constant attempt to be present in our “dailiness” to improve her vocabulary before sharing another poem, “A Gardener’s Guide to the End.”

Vincent Kobelt’s early work explored the murals of the Mission where he grew up, the music of jazz, a cry for justice, the birth of my daughters, the milkweed in the cracks of concrete, the music of speaking between people, and bird shit on the sidewalks of the city. For some time now Kobelt has been experimenting with poetry that lends itself to musical accompaniment. This can be seen in his work with Fo’shang at Sacramento’s Earth Day, Catchakoala at the MET, and with KME Band at the Oak Park Farmers Market in Sacramento. Recently Kobelt started an Open Mic in Sacramento at the Classy Hippy on the Third Thursday of the Month.

Sarah Pape teaches English creative writing and coordinates the Literary Editing and Publishing program at Chico State. Her poetry and prose have recently been published in: The New York Times, New England Review, Passages North, Ecotone, and others. Her debut poetry collection, Forgive the Animal, was published last month by Cornerstone Press. She curates community literary programming at the 1078 Gallery in Chico and is a member of the Community of Writers.

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 10/23/24 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

William O’Daly calls in to discuss his love of reading poetry to live Jazz. Specifically, he talks about his upcoming reading, at which he will be sharing poems from his latest release, The New Gods. O’Daly shares a poem about his daughter’s graduation, “Handout” before sharing the exciting news that he is transitioning away from his occupation to focus on living a life even more committed to writing. Dr. V.S. Chochezi is the next guest on the show. She describes the background of her mother-daughter poetry performance duo Straight Out Scribes, which started one night in Oakland, California. Dr. Chochezi also delineates how she aims to incorporate social justice into her poetry readings and writing processes. The last guest on the show is Patrick Grizzell, who joins Dr.Andy to remember the late Sacramento poet B.L. Kennedy. Grizzell recalls the impact Kennedy had on Sacramento, its poetry scene, and poetry publications.

William O’Daly has translated nine books of Chilean Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda’s poetry, most recently Neruda’s first volume, Book of Twilight. He has published four chapbooks of poems and, in 2022, his first full-length volume, The New Gods, with Beltway Editions. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, he has received national and regional awards and honors for his poetry and translations, literary editing, and instructional design. In September 2021, he received the American Literary Award from the bilingual Korean American journal Miju Poetry and Poetics. O’Daly is the Lead Writer for the California Water Plan.

Dr. V.S. Chochezi is a writer, poet, artist, photojournalist, and college professor. She is the daughter member of Straight Out Scribes (Staajabu is the mother member), a renowned mother/daughter spoken word duo who have self-published eight books of poetry, one sci-fi anthology and two CD compilations. They have produced and coordinated a number of writing, poetry and art related programs and workshops in Sacramento since 1991.

Patrick Grizzell is a songwriter, poet, journalist, and visual artist. His books include Dark Music, 13 Poems, It's Like That, and The Goat of Esmerelda. He was a founding member & current director of the Sacramento Poetry Center and serves as an editor for its publications. He has performed music and poetry with, among others, Leon Redbone, Jim Ringer, Ed Sanders, Allen Ginsberg, and Anne Waldman. Grizzell is the primary songwriter for Proxy Moon, a popular Sacramento group that is about to begin recording its 2nd collection of songs.

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.