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Linda Noel & Jabez Churchill, Poetry At The Cobalt
December 8, 2024 @ 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Winter is icumen in,
Lhude sing Godamm,
Rainethdrop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Godamm…
–Ezra Pound
THIS IS AN INVITATION TO ALL POETS, WRITERS, READERS, AND LOVERS OF LITERATURE, YOUNG, OLD, IN BETWEEN, KNOWN, UNKNOWN, SUBMERGED, EMERGED AND EMERGING: Rhyming, free verse, expensive or expansive verse, reverses, metered, learned, unlearned, experimental—all varieties, styles and non-styles are welcome.
The reading series, Poetry At The Cobalt, is located in downtown Fort Bragg at the beautiful Cobalt Gallery, thanks to Button Quinn, artist and gallery owner who has graciously made the space available to us. The readings are the 2nd Sunday of the month, 4–6 pm. The next reading at the Cobalt Gallery will be Sunday, December 8, featuring former poets laureate Linda Noel* and Jabez Churchill** followed by open mic readings. There is a signup sheet and each poet reads for 5 minutes. Please get this around far and wide, as we’d like to reach all over Mendocino County and beyond. Any suggestions or ideas you have, including other people to invite, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, and looking forward to seeing you Sunday, December 8 at the Cobalt Gallery.
PEGASUS SOARS NO MATTER WHAT,
Larry Felson & Joe Smith
510-684-8270
*Linda Noel
Linda Noel is a Native Californian of the Koyungkowi Tribe who grew up in Willits. The former Poet Laureate of Ukiah has presented her work at various venues across the western United States and has been both a featured reader and workshop presenter at the Redwood Coast Writers Conference, the Watershed Project, The Conference of American Indians; Humboldt State University, and Santa Rosa Junior College to name a few. Her work has been published in a variety of magazines, journals and anthologies including The Dirt is Red Here, by Heyday Books. She was included in the “Sing Me Your Story, Dance Me Home: Art and Poetry from Native California” exhibit based on the Heyday book and coordinated by the California Exhibition Resources Alliance. The exhibit toured more than twelve museums and libraries across California, including the Grace Hudson Museum. (https://www.manifestdifferently.org/whom/linda-noel)
Lesson in Fire
My father built a good fire
He taught me to tend the fire
How to make it stand
So it could breathe
And how the flames create
Coals that turn into faces
Or eyes
Of fish swimming
Out of flames
Into gray
Rivers of ash
And how the eyes
And faces look out
At us
Burn up for us
To heat the air
That we breathe
And so into us
We swallow
All the shapes
Created in a well-tended fire
**Jabez Churchill
Former Poet Laureate of Ukiah, Jabez W., Bill, Churchill first started submitting poetry for publication in 1979, became a member of the Ina Coolbrith Poertry Circle in Berkekey, maintaining this affiliation to date. He has been a poet teacher with California Poets in the Schools since 1998, and teaches poetry at Mendocino Co, Juvenile Hall.
As a bilingual poet, he writes in English and Spanish, and he has toured Spain and Cuba with a contingency of Bay Area poets. He has also been widely featured around Mendocino County, Berkeley, San Francisco, L.A. and Vancouver B.C.
He is a single dad, but his sons now have wives and children of their own, so now he is the grandfather of five! He is an avid water person and he sails San Francisco Bay and swims with pinnapeds wherever and whenever they pop up to say hi. He wants listeners to know that he has a deep connection to the south coast of Mendocino as his great-great grandparents, John and Carrie Johnson arrived in Pt. Arena on a Norwegian lumber schooner from Oslo in the 1850’s. (https://bmoreyou.net/jabez-churchill-on-cartwheels-on-the-sky/)
The Final Measure
I have not seen
nor can I guess how it unfurls,
burnt offerings,
all that remain of last year’s leaves,
white flags
splayed across a bright and empty sky.
Perhaps in rests,
the widening interval between notes,
between breaths,
tick and tock of a dying clock
until it stops.
Perhaps in troughs
lengthening between crests
until they flatly mirror the reddened sun.
I cannot
upon these wax and feathered wings,
inheritance of my fathers,
fly unto the morrow,
what is yet
or not to come:
fire and ice,
perhaps another bloom.
Nor can my eyes,
however vigilant,
shortsighted,
see beyond the shadows
to what undoubtedly awaits,
the final measure
of yet another fleeting race
in geologic time.
I can only mark the end,
beginning of each day.
Rejoice!
marveling by night
at what is bravely written in the stars.