Essentially Poetic: An Essential Voices Monthly Reading Series for Community Building
FlowerSong Press presents Essentially Poetic Reading Series to kick off on August 30th at 7:00 PM CST.
Essentially Poetic Reading Series is a curation of poets, artists, essayists, novelists, educators, and everyday individuals whose deemed their voice essential, their work necessary, and their compassion for community building contagious and inspiring. This space is free of judgement and hate, and is a space for writers, readers, and admirers to come together to listen and uplift one another in a creative, poetic, and intentional online space.
Essentially Poetic is dedicated to amplifying essential voices throughout our world. By creating an online environment, we can reach beyond geographical borders and barriers. The essential voice echoes loud and translates intuitively. Join us each month as we come together to celebrate featured readers and artists and listen to their poetic and essential voice.
Registration for our August 2023 reading can be found on Eventbrite. Click here to register!
We are excited to introduce our readers for our first installment of Essentially Poetic!
Barbara Jane Reyes
Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago Books, 2003), Poeta en San Francisco (TinFish Press, 2005), Diwata (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2010), To Love as Aswang (Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc., 2015), Invocation to Daughters (City Lights Publishing, 2017), Letters to a Young Brown Girl (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2020), and Wanna Peek Into My Notebook?: Notes on Pinay Liminality (Paloma Press, 2022).
She is also the author of three chapbooks, For the City That Nearly Broke Me (Aztlan Libre Press, 2012), Cherry (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2007), and Easter Sunday (Ypolita Press, 2007).
Poems and essays have appeared in Asian Pacific American Journal, Chain, Hambone, Maganda, Marías at Sampaguitas, Meridians, Ms. Magazine, New American Writing, New England Review, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, San Francisco Chronicle, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, South Dakota Review, Southern Humanities Review, The New York Times, World Literature Today, and elsewhere.
An Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow, a recipient of the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, the Global Filipino Literary Award, and a San Francisco Press Club Journalism Award, she received her BA in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, her MFA at San Francisco State University, and she teaches in the Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program at University of San Francisco.
[Photo Credit: Peter Dressel]
Michael Kleber-Diggs
Michael Kleber-Diggs (KLEE-burr digs) (he / him / his) is currently working on a memoir about his complicated relationship with lap swimming called My Weight in water. He is a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow in Literature, a poet, essayist, literary critic, and arts educator. Michaels' debut poetry collection, Worldly Things (Milkweed Editions 2021), won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, the 2022 Hefner Heitz Kansas Book Award in Poetry, the 2022 Balcones Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2022 Minnesota Book Award. His essay, “There Was a Tremendous Softness,” appears in A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars, edited by Erin Sharkey (Milkweed Editions, 2023). His poems and essays appear in numerous journals and anthologies. Michael is married to Karen Kleber-Diggs, a tropical horticulturist and orchid specialist. They are proud of their daughter who recently graduated from Purchase College, SUNY with a BFA in Dance Performance and a Concentration in Composition.
[Photo Credit: Ayanna Muata]
John Compton
John Compton is a gay poet who lives with his husband josh and their dogs and cats. He is the poet of over 10 chapbooks/books, with the latest book: the castration of a minor god (Ghost City Press; December 2022) and chapbook: how we liberated what secrets we modified (Etched Press; March 2023). His chapbook: i saw god cooking children / paint their bones from Blood Pudding Press is continuously available. His newest book is "blacked out borderland from an exponential crisis" (Ethel Zine & Micro Press; august 2023).
"blacked out borderland from an exponential crisis" comes into life as i was honing in on what caconrad speaks about with writing in the present. The first 12 poems are what i call my box poems which are written straight forward without punctuation. The second part is normal poems. these poems are about everything as my poems are in the order of how i wrote them. I do not rearrange my poems, as life cannot be rearranged.
Edward Vidaurre
Edward Vidaurre is an award-winning poet and author of eight collections of poetry. He is the 2018-2019 City of McAllen, Texas Poet Laureate, a finalist for Texas State Artist, 2022 inductee to the Texas Institute of Letters, and publisher of FlowerSong Press. His writings have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Texas Observer, Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as other journals and anthologies. He has edited over 50 books and anthologies. Vidaurre resides in McAllen, Texas with his wife Liliana, their daughter Luisa Isabella, and their furry rescue babies.
Registration required for access link to reading.
