Sunday, May 6, 2pm

“enclosure”

a talk by
Dan Richman

The fencing of common grazing land in England in the 17th and 18th century accelerated the creation of a landless working class, and today we still mourn and suffer from the loss of the “commons.”

Dan Richman considers the history and its implications today.  A taker of long walks, a philosopher of sorts, an observer of natural life in the built landscape, and a writer of plays, novels, essays and poems, Dan has long been a contributor to the Bird & Beckett intellectual commons, with his occasional staging of short plays, participation in our poetry readings, and talks on a variety of topics.

Sunday, May 6, 4:30 to 6:30 pm

Macy Blackman & the Mighty Fines
rockin’ new orleans R&B

which way west? Sunday concert series
all ages welcome – donation requested

Still we roll on!  Macy’s been rolling out the good time boogie & blues of America’s liveliest music for decades, and his five-piece band let’s it rip every now and then on the Bird & Beckett stage.  Don’t miss the piano professor & his confreres –Nancy Wright on tenor sax, Bing Nathan on bass and Jack Dorsey on drums.

Read more on Macy & Co. here.

Monday, May 7 – 7:00 pm

Poets Bill Vartnaw and Patti Trimble
followed by an open mic

POETS! First & Third Monday of each month, hosted by Jerry Ferraz

Bill Vartnaw was named the seventh Sonoma Poet Laureate in late 2011, and is a long-time, highly regarded publisher of poets (Taurean Horn Press).  More than 40 years a poet, Bill’s most recent book, Suburbs of My Childhood, is available at the store as well as several of his Taurean Horn Press books, whose 14-book catalog includes work by Carol Lee Sanchez, Q. R. Hand, Gail Mitchell, Paula Gunn Allen and Lee Francis, as well as Bill’s own 1984 collection, In Concern: for Angels.   He’s presently at work on #15, Avotcja’s Every Step I Take, which will be out later this summer.  Born in Petaluma, where he now resides, he moved to San Francisco in 1973 and in 1974 was a founding member of the Bay Area Poets Coalition, an organization which continues to this day.  Taurean Horn Press was founded in the same year, 1974, with the publication of Honeydew: An Anthology.

"Sicilian Landscape" by Patti Trimble

Patti Trimble is a Marin native known for her art and music as well as her poetry, who often augments her readings with accompaniment on banjo, sjrudi box and other instruments.  May and June will find her reading in a half-dozen venues, including Gallery Route One in Point Reyes Station, which is presenting an exhibit (running May 18-June 24) of her oil paintings and writings focused on California’s endangered species, “a thoughtful, personal response to the changes over forty years in one woman’s landscape.”  She can also be heard at the Redwood Cafe Poetry Series in Cotati on May 6 and in Sausalito at the Sunset Poetry by the Bay series on June 13.

Our first and third Mondays poetry series has been running for a half-dozen years at Bird & Beckett, hosted always by peripatetic troubadour Jerry Ferraz, one of San Francisco’s pure poets.  Always an open mic following the featured readers.  Tonight, a special guest will ascend from down under to open the open– Alicia Bee, reading a micro-set of poems from her recent Book of the Dead and the Wounded. Dead rock stars, natural disasters, news stories, suicide and road-kill go into the prose poems that comprise the first part, while car accidents, broken bones, disease and hospitals inform the second! Bee is a music journalist from Melbourne extending a trip to cover the Coachella Music Festival to include a swing through Mexico and a San Francisco holiday among the poets in this city of poets!