Poetry Flash: Sarah Kobrinsky, D.L. Lang, Juanita J. Martin, Kim Shuck, Kimi Sugioka

Join us for a Poetry Flash virtual reading by past and current Poet Laureate contributors to COLOSSUS: HOME, An Anthology of Lives In & Out of Place, edited by Sara Biel and Karla Brundage, on Sunday, April 11, at 3pm PDT! To register, please click here. After you register, you will receive an email with a link and information on how to join the reading. Thank you for continuing to support Poetry Flash (Poetryflash.org) and our reading series during these unprecedented times.

To purchase this exciting anthology, go to: www.colossuspress.org/buy. All proceeds will go to Moms4Housing, to address the Bay Area’s devastating housing crisis.

Sarah Kobrinsky’s recent book is Nighttime on the Other Side of Everything. Jill McDonough says, “In Nighttime on the Other Side of Everything, Sarah Kobrinsky opens with a brief meditation on the imposter syndrome that also speaks to where all poems come from, anyway. Elsewhere we read ‘I make. I tinker. I create. An instinct born/of my blueprints, deep within my DNA.’ But these poems also come from us, from knowing what people say about kids looking like the milkman, pranks like TP-ing houses and tying shoelaces together, a recognizable rhythm of punchlines.” Born in Canada, raised in North Dakota, seasoned in England, and tempered in California, she was the Poet Laureate of Emeryville, California, 2013-2015.

D.L. Lang is the former Poet Laureate of Vallejo, California, 2017-2019. She is the author of twelve poetry books, most recently Paradise Collectors: A Book of Jewish Poetry and Armor Against the Dawn: Poetry of Protest, and one spoken word album. She can be found behind a mic throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and at poetryebook.com.

Juanita J. Martin is Fairfield, California’s first Poet Laureate, 2010-2012. Her poetry book isThe Lighthouse Beckons. Her poems have appeared in Blue Collar Review, SoMa Literary Review, Rattlesnake Review, and others; her nonfiction writing has appeared in Sonoma Discoveries Magazine. She was a longtime member of Redwood Writers, and is a current member of Napa Valley Writers, Benicia Writers Salon, Ina Coolbrith Circle, and Benicia First Tuesday Poets. When she isn’t writing or volunteering, she reads on Vallejo Ozcat radio’s ARTbeat. For more, see www.jmartinpoetwriter.com.

Kim Shuck is San Francisco’s seventh Poet Laureate, 2017-2020. Deer Trailspublished by City Lights Books, is her most recent book. She is an Ani Yun Wiya (Cherokee)/Polish-American poet, author, weaver, and beadwork artist who draws from Southeastern Native American culture and tradition as well as contemporary urban Indian life. She is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and earned an M.F.A. in Textiles from San Francisco State University. She is the winner of the Diane Decorah First Book Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas and the Mary Tallmountain Award for Freedom Voices. She also received the Academy of American Poets National Laureate Fellowship and the Northern California Book Reviewers Groundbreaker Award.

Kimi Sugioka’s newest poetry book is Wile & Wing. She is the current Poet Laureate of Alameda, California, 2020-2023. Anne Waldman said, “Kimi Sugioka is a poet with a lot of guises: maternal, witchy, passionate, detached observer…She moves through the female cycle confidently, poised, strong in her observance and power.” Born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and raised in Berkeley, Kimi Sugioka is a poet, songwriter, and educator who performs her work frequently throughout the Bay Area. She has worked in public education for decades. She earned her BA from San Francisco State University and MFA from the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.