Karla Andersdatter

     "I became acquainted with Karla Andersdatter and her poetry at a writer’s workshop with Denise Levertov in the late 1970’s. We formed a friendship and a sister-poet relationship that has lasted until today. Over the years we have shared and critiqued each other’s work, enjoyed each other’s readings and performances.
     " In the early 1980’s, Karla organized an event to raise money for anti-nuclear organizations. Women poets read their work at the Unitarian Church in San Francisco; Karla Andersdatter, Denise Levertov, Ellen Bass, Susan Griffin. Karla named the event, “Feminine Energy for Alternative Power”. It was one of the first events of that nature, in protest of nuclear proliferation, in the San Francisco Bay Area.
     " I was the M.C. of the event, and when I introduced Karla, I called her “a rainmaker”, wherever she goes, things happen. She read at other anti nuclear readings given during those years, with many well known poets, including Robert Bly, Robert Creeley, Carolyn Kizer.
     " Her work has reached many people, having been published in literary journals, newspapers, and collected into anthologies and volumes of poetry and prose. Her work is most noted for its powerful but controlled and eloquent emotional content. She does not shy away from the most difficult topics. It speaks to a lost connection with the Earth and a lost connection to ourselves.
     " It is an integrative and original vision in an attempt to reconcile gender differences and deepen male/female understanding. She has explored these themes in her work for 30 years. She is a prolific writer, and one who is old enough to have something to say. An educated public deserves to read her work"

Mary Donahoe, Ph.D.
University of Oregon

     "It is the artist in me, in whatever form she takes, who wants me to live, who brings joy to others and cleanses my emotions, who gives meaning to my life and allows me to listen to my heart, to believe the best, and find compassion for the worst in myself and in others.
     " I believe that this creative force needs to be nurtured and used to its fullest extent during my lifetime, lest it become crippled and tortured, or turn in on itself to grow cruel, conniving, or destructive. It is always the Muse who rids one of darkness."

Karla Andersdatter

Sharon Dubiago

BODY AND SOUL by Sharon Dubiago, is a new collection of poems by one of the West Coast's finest writers. It has been said that BODY AND SOUL is the best writing yet from a woman whose previous book HARD TIMES was well received in California. BODY AND SOUL was published in September, 2000, by Cedar Hill Publications, 3722 Highway 8 West, Mena, Arkansas 71953. It is distributed by Endeavor Book 7307 6WN Rd., Caspar, WY 82604.

     "I was amazed (by her reading). This whole soul came out and in detail and quite complete. she's quite conscious. . . she sounds like Kerouac or someone, like really good. The energy, but it's more the details, precise details. Dubiago sees things, she notices things in the middle of these crisis moments. . ."

Allen Ginsberg, Naropa

     "After generations of women writers who helped women and men by saying what was wrong, Sharon Dubiago helps us even more by saying what could be right. She is sexual without submission, loving without loss of self, and free without rebellion. With a poet's power and a novelist's scope, she describes new feelings, new possibilities, and a new closeness to the natural world."

Gloria Steinhem

     "A sensibility wholly unique: an energized, 'heart-on-sleeve' authenticity, coupled with an immesnsely powerful reach and grasp for the synthesis of seemingly disparate things into dramatically nourishing 'emotional' truth. . . in startling, durable, and ever-fresh language. . . and anguished humanity, to boot."

Steve Goldman

CB (Lynn) Follett
  

"I cannot imagine
how the circle of my life will round on itself,
         this morning is so clarified.
Out my window,
ravens fluff into something larger
         and the hemlocks dip at their increase.
Below in the shaggy meadow,
a gardening shed tilts on an axis
         doomed to fall
and a yellow dog
clips along his non-path, searching
         for earth holes.
In the spaces of the day I find
no limit to what the eye can see
          if it sees with the heart,
no image
so concrete it cannot be stirred
         with the long handle of attention.
Today
in the open throat of my life, I cannot wait
         to get started."

C B Follett

Visit CB (Lynn) Follett's web page at:

Arctos Press
Poetry Publications
http://members.aol.com/runes

Brenda McManus

FORGIVENESS

that he couldn't help her
bloom into womanhood,
that he did not hold her
heart in his hand nor
cradle her in his arms,

that he did not cherish
her beauty or youth
her intelligence or her hurt places,

that he did not wait or listen
or sew the seeds of partnership:
(growing yearning fighting winning)
in both their blazing hearts, to
create intelligence that between them
was more than they had apart,

that he couldn't see feel cry
enough to stretch out of
his smothered heart's confines,
that he couldn't bless her and keep her
and surrender to her woman's wisdom

from TAMBOURINE

email: nrpeattie@earthlink.net

Sharon Savage
     "My grandmother kept a diary, writing something every day. When I was ten, she gave me a diary and I have been writing ever since."

Doreen Stock
   Doreen Stock is author of The Politics of Splendor, (Alcatraz Editions, 1985). She has published other writers, organized poetry readings, kept poetry alive for others, and continues to publish poems of depth and unique content. Always she brings us back to ourselves, by showing us a ‘language of the exquisite’. Here is what she says about herself and her work:

    “I am a poet, literary translator, and prose writer. My favorite poem continues to be'The Song of Songs'. A verse of this poem from the Old Testament was sung at the artifact of my wedding. Thirty-seven years later, I am amazed at the truths I continue to unearth in this beautiful text, which reveals a profound separation between the lover and the realized woman."

(“Architecture and Ecstacy: A Reading of the Song of Songs”, published Spring, 2000, in Kerem).

    "Reading old and writing new, this is the core of my aesthetic, along with attention to my dreams and the daily news. Also, I am fortunate to have travelled widely in Europe and the Middle East during the past seven years. Wings of Another Era was composed on my return to Mill Valley, California, where I am currently living, writing, and studying."

Sandy White
     "I had known, from an early childhood filled with no friends to talk with but the breezes and the critters, that I could distill language into poetry , and visions into paint, and sound into music."

P.O. Box 849
Woodacre, CA 94973-0849