This month’s program features Sonoma County Poet Laureate Iris Jamahl Dunkle. In the first part of the program, host Katherine Hastings interviews Dunkle about her many-faceted poet laureate project and her connection to Jack London.

The second part of the program features a reading given by Dunkle from her latest collection, There’s a Ghost in This Machine of Air, at the WordTemple Poetry Series in January 2016.

Also: A short tribute to Francisco X. Alarcòn, who left us far too soon.

All this and more on WordTemple!

Host: Katherine Hastings

WordTemple host Katherine Hastings airs a live reading from the WordTemple Poetry Series featuring: Stephen Kessler reading from his translation Forbidden Pleasures — New & Selected Poems of Luis Cernuda, one of the great Spanish poets of the Generation of ’27; Devereaux Baker reading from her latest award-winning collection out of the bones of the earth; and Michelle Wing, author of Body on the Wall. This was a stunning evening of poetry, and now you can listen in right here on KRCB! For more information go to www.wordtemple.com

WordTemple host Katherine Hastings airs Part 2 of the kick-off reading for Digging Our Poetic Roots — Poems from Sonoma County, the anthology that is the culmination of her poet laureate project. Tune in to hear more local poets read from this beautiful book. Also, light the fire, put up your feet and enjoy Dylan Thomas reading his iconic short story, A Child’s Christmas in Wales. This and more on WordTemple!

Recorded live at the WordTemple Poetry Series, Katherine Hastings airs readings from the release event of her poet laureate project, the anthology Digging Our Poetic Roots — Poems from Sonoma County. During this hour, you’ll hear many of the poets read their work from that book. Part Two to be aired at a later date.

Michael Palmer. Paul Hoover with the poetry of Maria Baranda. WordTemple host Katherine Hastings airs an evening recorded at the WordTemple Poetry Series with Michael Palmer, Paul Hoover and the poetry of Maria Baranda. Michael Palmer is the author of many collections, including Madman With Broom (Selected poems with Chinese translations by Yunte Huang, Oxford University Press, 2011); Thread (New Directions, 2011); and Company of Moths (New Directions, 2005), which was shortlisted for the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize; Codes Appearing: Poems 1979 — 1988; The Promises of Glass; The Lion Bridge: Selected Poems 1972 — 1995 and his most recent collection, The Laughter of the Sphinx (New Directions, 2015). Palmer is also the author of a prose work, The Danish Notebook. He has translated work from French, Russian and Portuguese, and has taken part in collaborations with painters and dancers, including work with the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. He edited and contributed translations to Nothing The Sun Could Not Explain: Twenty Contemporary Brazilian Poets (Sun & Moon Press). Palmer's honors include two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writer's Award, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, the Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America, the Arts and Letters Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Wallace Stevens Award. His work has been translated into over thirty languages. Paul Hoover is the author of over a dozen collections of poetry, including Totem and Shadow: New & Selected Poems; Edge and Fold; and Sonnet 56. He translated the poems of Friedrich Holderlin with Maxine Chernoff and, with Nguyen Do, translated Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry and Beyond the Court Gate: Selected Poems of Nguyen Trai. Last year, he won the PEN/America Translation Fund award from a field of 120 applicants for his translation of Nightmare Running on a Meadow of Absolute Light by Marìa Baranda. Tonight we celebrate that work. PEN/America says "One of Mexico's leading poets of the generation born in the 1960s and a powerful presence in all of Latin American poetry, Baranda is best known for her sweeping and incisive long poems. Her cry is resoundingly of sea, sponge, ant, and prayer, as related in rapture. Hoover deftly captures the drama of her cadences in Spanish." Baranda was bon in Mexico City in 1962 and is the author of The Garden of Enchantment; Fiction of Heaven; and Arcadia, among others. She has won several literary awards and now, for the first time, we can enjoy some of her poems thanks to Hoover.

WordTemple host Katherine Hastings interviews several writers whose work appears in the anthology Cry of the Nightbird — Writers of Domestic Violence, including one of three editors, Michelle Wing. Hastings will also read the introduction written by Sonoma County Supervisor Shirley Zane. The anthology, which contains the work of 38 writers speaking out in prose and poetry, is an outgrowth of YWCA Sonoma County’s mission to end domestic violence in the county through awareness, education, and empowerment. Michelle Wing is an author, poet, and creator of the Changing Hurt to Hope Writers’ Series at the YWCA and edited the anthology along with Ann Hutchinson and Kate Farrell. “By reading and thoughtfully considering the contributions of the writers featured in these pages, you join the ranks of those who recognize the devastating effects of domestic violence. More importantly, you help to begin a much needed healing in our community where one in our families are affected.” — Madeleine Keegan O’Connell, Chief Executive Officer, YWCA Sonoma County.Michelle will also read from her collection of poems Body On the Wall published by Saddle Road Press in Hawaii. “These poems are like swallowed charcoal, purifying the toxins they’ve ingested. Brave, bracing, tender and true.” — Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander and Paint It Black.

Recorded live at the WordTemple Poetry Series, Katherine Hastings presents three poets. Malachi Black reads from Storm Toward Morning (Copper Canyon Press); Robert Thomas reads from his poetic novel Bridge (BOA Editions), and Sonoma County poet and wildlife biologist Maya Khosla, author of Keel Bone, reads new work.

This was an incredible evening at WordTemple not to be missed!

More information at wordtemple.com

Katherine Hastings takes a short break from poetry this month to present JOYCE CAROL OATES reading from her latest novel, The Sacrifice, a fictional account of the 1987 Tawana Brawley case. From the back cover of The Sacrifice: "When a fourteen-year-old girl is the alleged victim of a terrible act of racial violence, the incident shocks and galvanizes her community, exacerbating the racial tension that has been simmering in this New Jersey town for decades…A chilling exploration of complex social, political, and moral themes…The Sacrifice, is a major work of fiction from one of our most revered literary masters." Recorded live at Copperfield’s Books, Santa Rosa.

More information at wordtemple.com

April is National Poetry Month and WordTemple host Katherine Hastings will celebrate by airing a good number of poets reading or performing their work. Included in the line-up are Adrienne Rich, Tomas Transformer, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Michael McClure with Ray Manzarek. All this, and more, on WordTemple!

More information at wordtemple.com

This month's program features San Francisco poet and novelist Joan Gelfand reading from her most recent collection The Long Blue Room (Benicia Literary Arts, 2014.) “Gelfand floats you through the Russian River Watershed and onto streets of San Francisco with what feels like sleight of hand to the page.” — Doug Johnson.

Also featured is a recording with New Orleans born poet, Gordon Walmsley who was visiting Sonoma County from his home in Copenhagen. Walmsley reads from his novel Daisy: The Alchemical Adventures of a New Orleans Hermaphrodite and his three collections of poetry, including Echoes of a River — Poems of New Orleans and Beyond (Salmon Poetry, 2011).

More information at wordtemple.com