Poet Patti Trimble shares the bill on May 18th with musician and instrument builder Peter Whitehead in our twice-monthly series, hosted by Jerry Ferraz with an open mic to follow.

Patti recently put out a cd called “In The Middle of the Night of the Road of My Life I Found Myself in a Tangled Wood” with her spoken word and Peter Whitehead’s improvised music on cello, spike fiddle, and various handmade instruments. She has performed frequently for years with jazz guitarist Bill Horvitz, sharing the stage with Diane di Prima, Avotcja, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bob Holman, etc., and now performs with various improvising musicians (recently, Fall 2014, at international poetry festivals in Italy and Munich with European musicians).

Regarding the cd, poet Bob Holman, an important voice against the loss of languages as so many become extinct in our own time, has said,  “With a stand-up cello as the Circles and Patti Trimble’s voice our Dantean guide, we find that the road between Truth and Beauty is a narrow one indeed. But with her skilled blend of poesy and music, there’s no other journey so worth taking. [Her cd, “In the Middle of the Night of the Road of My Life I Found Myself in a Tangled Wood”] is a Classic Right Now.”

Splitting her time between California and Sicily, Patti is an advocate of poetry as spoken news in community, and in the 1990s helped create the Tuolumne Poetry Festival in Yosemite, bringing poets and listeners together in a wild place. She was professor for The Mediterranean Center for Arts and Science in Sicily for eight years, and currently teaches for the Sonoma State University and Dominican University OLLI Programs and for Point Reyes Field Institute. She also writes for The San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival.  She “practices poetry and visual art as conversation, question, and response; with lifelong interests in concepts of wilderness, visual symbols and archetypes, and contemporary social-environmental concerns.”

Peter Whitehead — instrument builder, performer, songwriter, composer and writer – performs his own solo work using self-made instruments based on folk instruments from around the world, featuring unusual or found materials in place of traditional ones, (e.g. a banjo made from a metal pan).  He is a member of Closer To Carbon, a trio featuring bass, cellos, spike fiddles, sampler, percussion, toys and an array of conventional, invented & found instruments.