Wednesday, September 18th 6:25 pm @ BookTree Kirkland
A very special night of poetry with a limited open mic. Three (maybe four) women poets with new books out. For sure Denise Calvetti Michaels, Joan McBride and Nancy Miller Gomez will be at BookTree (and maybe Sue Selmer) for the reading.
Nancy lives in Santa Cruz with her family and my connection with her is from a very long time ago when she was part of the legal department at Paramount Studios and I was working at Hard Copy and Entertainment Tonight. Our paths crossed then and then a few years ago I discovered she was quite the excellent poet! Her recently published book is a keeper!
Denise and I have a long history in local poetry circles and she's written several excellent poetry collections.
Joan and I have been acquainted since she was Mayor of Kirkland and was very encouraging when I opened BookTree eight years ago.
I hope you'll be a witness to this very special reading at BookTree. FREE too! If you want to read on the open mic... be here a little early to sign up on the list.
North Creek is a collection of poems by three poets Denise Calvetti Michaels, Joan McBride and Sue Selmer, (published in 2024). They participated in readings and workshops in Kirkland and Kenmore in 2009 and beyond. The place North Creek is a restored area between Cascadia College and University of Washington Bothell and home to many birds, wildlife and Herons! In North Creek, three women poets, write poems that tease out the vagaries of everyday existence through connection with place, passions, disappointments, family lineage and history, the natural environment and their connection to it, travel, childhood memories and other areas of lives' well-lived and narrated through poetry.
Inconsolable Objects, is part cautionary tale and part love letter to the broken objects and people of this world. Driven by the search for beauty in the forsaken, Nancy Miller Gomez shows us fetal mice floating in a snow globe, soldiers marching past a disembodied heart, birds that have learned to imitate the sound of an AK47. The poems are populated with carnies, pig farmers, sentient tornadoes and reincarnated catfish. The poems witness, interrogate, mourn, and praise. They are a call and response to all of us stumbling towards connection and offer a hopeful glimpse into the mysteries of our shared experience.
BIOS
Nancy Miller Gomez’s is the author of Inconsolable Objects (YesYes Books) and the chapbook, Punishment (Rattle chapbook series), a collection of poems and essays about her experience teaching in prisons and jails. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, Prairie Schooner, The Adroit Journal, TriQuarterly, New Ohio Review, Shenandoah, River Styx, Waxwing, Plume, The Rumpus, Rattle, Massachusetts Review, American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She received a special mention in the 2023 Pushcart Prize Anthology. She co-founded with Ellen Bass an organization that provides writing workshops to incarcerated women and men and has taught poetry in Salinas Valley State Prison, the Santa Cruz County Jails, and Juvenile Hall. She lives with her family in Santa Cruz, California.
Denise Calvetti Michaels was awarded the Crosscurrents Prize for Poetry by the Washington Community College Humanities Association for her prose poem Notes on New Orleans. Her work is in anthologies such as In Praise of Farmland (Whit Press), Mute Note Earthward (WPA), Between Sleeps (En Theos Press), and Beyond Forgetting (Kent State University Press). Polenta, a memoir, is included in The Milk of Almonds, Italian American Woman on Food and Culture (Feminist Press, 2002). Denise’s 2024 poems are found in Ovunque Siamo, Paterson Literary Review, and Clamor. North Creek, published by Cave Moon, includes published poetry alongside poems by Joan McBride and Sue Selmer. Denise teaches for Cascadia College and recently completed the MFA in Creative Writing & Poetics from University of Washington, Bothell.
Joan McBride's poems have appeared in Raven Chronicles, Clamor, Yours Truly and Nightshade. She studied created writing at the University of Washington, The Evergreen State College and Richard Hugo House including a weekly seminar with poet David Wagoner. She is currently pursuing an MFA at Spaulding University and working on her first book of poetry. Joan recently retired from the Washington State Legislature and formerly served as Mayor of Kirkland, Washington.
Sue Selmer is a lifelong western Washington resident, born in Kirkland and living in the Bothell area. She earned an MLS from the University of Washington and devoted her career to public library work. Now retired her favorite activities including writing, reading, gardening and hiking with a special interest in Northwest natural history and conservation.