October Smack Dab is here, queer and excited to feature Brent Calderwood!
Bring your stories, your songs, your poetry, your comedy, your..puppets anyone? ...and sundry other talents to share... or... just come to enjoy our community, our sometimes goofy co-hosts Dana Hopkinsand Larry-bob Roberts and the brilliant words of Brent Calderwood.
Brent Calderwood’s poems have appeared in American Poetry Journal, Bloom, Crab Creek Review, Knockout, The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, The Squaw Vall...
October Smack Dab is here, queer and excited to feature Brent Calderwood!
Bring your stories, your songs, your poetry, your comedy, your..puppets anyone? ...and sundry other talents to share... or... just come to enjoy our community, our sometimes goofy co-hosts Dana Hopkinsand Larry-bob Roberts and the brilliant words of Brent Calderwood.
Brent Calderwood’s poems have appeared in American Poetry Journal, Bloom, Crab Creek Review, Knockout, The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, The Squaw Valley Review, and The Southern Poetry Anthology. His poem “The Golden Hour” was selected by Mark Doty as winner of the Atlanta Queer Literary Festival Broadside Contest in 2011; he has also received awards and fellowships from the Lambda Literary Foundation, the San Francisco Public Library, the Napa Valley Writers Conference, and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, his essays and reviews have appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, the San Francisco Examiner, OUT Magazine, and Gathered Light: The Poetry of Joni Mitchell’s Songs. He is Literary Editor for A&U Magazine. He lives in San Francisco.
Brent just released a new book of poetry called The God of Longing.
In The God of Longing, Brent Calderwood weaves classical allusion and pop culture together as the speaker moves across the continent from New York to San Francisco, and through states of desire, loss, and nostalgia—longing in all its forms—to come to a sort of wry wisdom about relationships. By turns witty and earnest, erotic and heartbreaking, The God of Longing uses a clear narrative tone that is both plainspoken and sonically rich to ponder love affairs and childhood homophobia, and uses tight traditional forms to take on nontraditional topics—a sonnet about Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, for example, or villanelles about online dating and Margaret Cho. Taken together, they announce the arrival of a gifted new voice in American poetry.
If you want to share your talent with us come prepared and please keep it to 5 minutes. We are the friendliest Open Mic around, but we do watch the time. We want to make sure we give everyone that wants to perform the opportunity to share.
Sign-ups 7:30, show at 8:00
