Reading: Debra Elisa, Sati Mookherjee, Willa Schneberg
Annie Bloom's Books welcomes Northwest poets Debra Elisa, Sati Mookherjee, and Willa Schneberg for readings from their latest collections.
About You Can Call It Beautiful:
Debra Elisa's You Can Call It Beautiful (MoonPath Press), is described by Lana Hechtman Ayer as "a mosaic of joy and grief, offering glimpses into loss and trauma that shape a family and travel that can open us up to wonder. . . It is a collection of free verse with the occasional sonnet and ekphrastic poems that celebrate the art of others and reflect on what keeps the human spirit growing. These are poems of ecology. They call us to live more graciously and consciously with the earth and all beings."
Debra Elisa explores joy and sorrow, grief and ecstasy through poetry and fiction and leads workshops inviting others to write and discover. She loves to lose herself in her backyard garden, along the coast, and in lush forest. Her writing has appeared in Kosmos, Oyez Review, VoiceCatchers and other journals. She co-hosts The Humble Poets Open Mic in North Portland on Last Sundays. You Can Call It Beautifu is her debut collection of poetry.
About Ways of Being:
Sati Mookherjee's award-winning new collection, Ways of Being (MoonPath Press), offers poems set on the shores of the Salish Sea that explore how identity is altered by loss, and the limitations and possibilities of language to mediate these experiences. "The poems in this award-winning collection reveal a bold voice that brings us on a tour through emotional and literal landscapes as fluid as the tides.” writes Rena Priest, Washington State Poet Laureate and American Book Award Winner for Patriarchy Blues
Sati Mookherjee, a poet and lyricist, lives in Bellingham but stayed for three years in Portland and remains connected. Her work has appeared in many journals, and she has collaborated with contemporary classical composers to perform and record ensembles as well as worked with solo musicians. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is the recipient of an Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship Award. She is the author of two poetry collections: Eye and Ways of Being.
About The Naked Room:
A new collection from poet and mental health therapist Willa Schneberg combines these disciplines in a gripping depiction of the troubled history of psychiatric treatment. What keeps this from being a grim undertaking is the sheer beauty and precision of her language. The goal of healing that drives her therapeutic practice informs these poems as well, ending in the necessity of love.
Willa Schneberg is a poet, ceramic sculptor, interdisciplinary artist, photographer and curator. She is the author of six collections, and received the Oregon Book Award for In the Margins of the World. Storytelling in Cambodia was inspired by her time working for the U.N. in the early '90s. The Naked Room is her new collection.