Big Honor For Russian River Girl: Mordred’s Dream Live at Poetry Flash

Growing up on the Russian River meant…

 …hide and seek in the redwood trees, crouching in the dank amber of crushed rotting bark inside of a stump…

..the sound of canoe paddles in the hands of clumsy tourists all summer long, crescendo of misguided directions issued by paddlers facing one another, canoe spiraling, shrieks of laughter and blame prefacing the inevitable capsizing…handcuffed sixpacks of beer, bikini tops, and sunscreen swirling past…

 …mentors like Scott Kersnar (of Hot Curtain Revue) giving you a column in the Russian River News to co-write with your best friend and keeping after you both to write it…

 …teachers (thriving despite our tiny row of portables that made up Monte Rio School back then) like Marcia Napier, Jill of all trades, counseling and feeding the minds and souls of her wayward tribe of river kids…

Former Monte Rio School Mural

 …winning the Nelson 5000, slogging along Moscow Road with a string of hot, hungry kids and being handed a trophy for winning the girls’ division by a man who would become your grandfather-in-law 20 years later…

 

 …and last but not least, the gift and grace of a musician/wordsmith father, keeper of the dream of the All Night Polish Bakery, piano tuner by day, who gave me my first subscription, when I was a teen, to Poetry Flash.

 It means so much to me today to have Mordred’s Dream featured on Poetry Flash’s website. The poem is forthcoming in November Butterfly (November 2014, Saddle Road Press).

The image featured here is from the poetry micro-movie Robyn Beattie and I made of Mordred’s Dream with gratitude for Michael Greenberg (recording studio), Lori O’Hara on flute (that’s Telemann’s Sonata in F Major she’s playing for us) and the voice of Ben Greenberg.

 

Photo by Robyn Beattie

I was recovering from a cold the day we went to record; though I managed barely to get through Guinevere’s Corridor, when Michael’s son Ben Greenberg happened to pass through the house that day, we grabbed him and asked him if he’d just give a read through. I’m indebted—he did a beautiful job as Mordred.

Additional notes:

Poetry Flash rescheduled our cancelled June 2014 reading (power outage on the block) for November 11, 2014 at Moe's Bookstore at 7:30 p.m. I will announce it again closer to then, and also see my Events page for updates...sure to be an exciting time, as the book comes out November 1, and once again I will be honored to be reading alongside Ruth Thompson and Michelle Wing.

Photo by Lisa Rizzo

Other heartening news: Thumbelina, which recently appeared on the Lithomobilus platform used by Zoetic Press, has been nominated by NonBinary Review for the Sundance Press Publications Best of the Net anthology. Here is a link to the open letter from the editors, in which they give excerpts from nominees from the Fairytale Issue and discuss why they chose the work: NonBinary Review. And here is a link to the poetry micro-movie we made for Thumbelina and a link to the free app at Zoetic Press where  you can get NonBinary Review's Fairytale issue (iOS 7, compatible with ipad).

With love and gratitude for all the river kids I grew up with, and all the teachers and parents keeping an eye out on us all the best they could (even as we did our best to dodge them most of the time). What do you remember about growing up on the river?