POETS!  Three Readings of Note Bird & Beckett continues to offer one of the liveliest poetry scenes of any bookshop in town– in this City of Poets! Monday, August 29th, 7:00 pm Bill Berkson and Duncan McNaughton Bill and Duncan are contemporaries, friends and widely respected literary figures.  In addition to their writings (more than a dozen books of poetry by Duncan since 1961, and a like number of volumes of art writing, poetry and other material by Bill beginning in about the same year), both have been long engaged through critical work and correspondence in furthering the understanding of artistic endeavor.  Both have been important teachers in the Bay Area as well–  Duncan founded the innovative and highly influential Poetics Program at New College in 1965 and directed it until 1990; and Bill was a key faculty member at the renowned San Francisco Art Institute from 1984 to 2008.…

Sunday afternoon Poet’s salon Sunday, August 21st, 2:30 pm Megan Harlan Megan’s recent collection of poems, Mapmaking, won the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, and her poems have been heard on the PBS News Hour’s Poetry Series and published in numerous journals.  She has also had short stories, travel features and book reviews widely published in journals and in the New York Times, the SF Chronicle, Elle, Time Out New York , and more. Now a resident of Berkeley, where she lives with her husband and young son, Megan was born in Vermont and grew up in Saudi Arabia, Colombia, London, Houston, Alaska and the Bay Area. Speaking of her poetry and fiction, and of her journalistic work,  she says, “as I move from the structured world of ledes and deadlines to the wilder spaces of creative writing, it’s exhilarating (and sometimes terrifying). I leave character and story, narrative shapes…

Poet Paula Hackett with pianist Connie Crothers Monday, August 15th – 7:00 pm POETS!  1st & 3rd Monday of each month Featured readers followed by an open mic Jerry Ferraz hosts Paula Hackett writes from a long, ongoing love affair with literature and jazz both.  Her father was a noted novelist, and at a young age, growing up in Berkeley, Paula and her brother John became avid devotees of the American popular song, particularly as mediated through the work of the great jazz instrumentalists of the 50s and 60s.  Paula attended SFSU in the late 70s and 80s, coming under the sway of the African-American intellectual and activist  Angela Davis, jazz historian and writer Grover Sales and the poet John Beecher.  While there, Paula gave a poem to jazz saxophonist John Handy, who in return gave her some of his compositions and set her the task of writing lyrics to…

Sunday, August 7th Poets double header (split by jazz!) Two major poetry readings this Sunday, at 2:00 and at 7:00– At 2 pm, a 2-hour showcase of poets gathering under the banner of Philippine American Writers & Artists, Inc. Barbara Jane Reyes hosts Tina Bartolome, Bonne Marie Bautista, G. Justin Hulog, Cheena Marie Lo and Michael Medrano. TINA BARTOLOME is a San Francisco native and daughter of immigrants from the Philippines and Switzerland. Her solidarity with people’s struggles for self-determination has taken her to the Philippines, Cuba and GuÃ¥han (Guam) with a steady commitment to return to working class neighborhoods in San Francisco and Oakland and facilitate radical spaces for young people to develop leadership and artistic voice for making social change. BONNE MARIE BAUTISTA was born in Daly City, raised in Quezon City, Philippines and grew up in San Francisco. She earned a BA in English Literature from Mills…