No Subject Is Off Limits For The Writers’ Circle! Join the circle for a reading, 7:30 pm, Feb. 20th, at the Sacramento Poetry Center, 1719 25 Street (25th & R), Sacramento , CA, featuring: JoAnn Anglin, Jennifer O’Neill Pickering, Sarah Stricker, Melen Lunn, Diane Bader, and Patricia L. Nichol. The Writers’ Circle is a group of writers who meet weekly to workshop each other’s writing at the Sacramento Poetry Center. They will be reading selections from their new poetry, prose, and memoirs. They’ve published one chapbook, entitled, The Writers’ Circle Poetry and Prose v.1. Open reading to follow featured readers so we encourage you to bring a poem. Free. Hosted by Rebecca Moos.
BIOGRAPHIES:
Jennifer O’Neill Pickering is an award winning artist, a poet, and teacher living in Sacramento, CA. Her poem, I Am the Creek, is included in the Sacramento site-specific sculpture, Open Circle. Some of her publishing credits include: Moon Mist Valley, Cosumnes River Journal, Sacramento Anthology: 100 Poems, Earth’s Daughters, Yellow Silk, Heresies, WTF, Poetry Now, and Medusa’s Kitchen. She has been a featured guest on the radio show, Insight where she read her poetry.
JoAnn Anglin of Sacramento is a member of Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol (Writers of the New Sun) and the Writers’ Circle. Besides a chapbook, Words Like Knives, Like Feathers (Rattlesnake Press), her work is in The Sacramento Anthology: One Hundred Poems and in Voces del Nuevo Sol, as well as other regional publications.
Diane Lovegrove Bader has written articles for Crone Times, Mary’s Pence, Encore, The Sacramento AIDS Manuel, The National Pastoral Musicians’ Association, Catholic Womens’ Network, and Buffalo Womens’ Vision. She holds a BA from the University of Notre Dame de Namur, an MA from Stanford U. and a Masters in Pastoral Ministry from the U. of San Francisco.
Melen Lunn was part of a women’s healing group in 1977, where poems began emerging in her journal. Poetry remains her intrigue and solace. She has been published in Brevities, and has read her poetry in Eugene and Portland, Oregon, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Sacramento. Melen writes for the California Department of Education.
Patricia L. Nichol is a writer of poetry and prose and has been published in a number of anthologies, including Writing Our Way out of the Dark, journals, and on-line sites. She has an M.A. in English from Cal. State University, Sacramento, and recently earned a certificate in creative writing from the University of California, Davis.
Sarah Stricker has studied with Poets Laureate, Bob Stanley and Julia Connor. She began her studies of Shaman’s Journey under Michael Harner, an internationally known teacher shamanism. One of her ancestors was John Ross, chief of the Cherokee Indian Nation during and after Andrew Jackson’s presidency.
POEMS:
Spring Proverb
She carries home spring
honey bees sting
lips of redbud
pressed to cheeks of sky
mushrooms tip of crimson caps
golden bowls of sun
wild onion tears
miners lettuce
the toll of White Bells
mustard greens overflowing
platters of fields
careful not to bite off
more than she can chew
forage with intention
take only what she’ll use
because one still starves
with a full basket of dirt.
By Jennifer O’Neill Pickering
By Nature
Yesterday’s poem
stung my instep
as I walked barefoot
in clover. It left
a troubling itch.
Last week’s poem
fell from the tree
to land on my
shoulder. I, like
a fool, brushed it off.
Once, sweeping: a nest
of poems, some stuck
to each other. Some had
dried out, withered.
I let a poem take me
home three years
ago. I still feel its
hands on my body,
its warm, urgent
breath in my ear.
By JoAnn Anglin
When touched: A poem in two voices
I revel in my amber hues
said the sunflower.
I delight in shades of magenta and violet
said the iris.
I wave my petals to passersby
said the sunflower.
I whisper to them with my scent
said the iris.
I spew my seeds in fall
said the sunflower.
I disguise mine
said the iris.
I cherish being picked
said the sunflower.
I bruise when touched
said the iris.
By Melen Lunn
