Nomadic Coffee "publishes" poet Denise Low, with audio

Nomadic Coffee of Berkely pairs coffee beans with poets plus provides a call-in line for the poet's commentary plus a reading. Thank you Nomadic Coffee! This is my poem currently tucked into coffee bags and available for call-in. Kim Shuck, Poet Laureate of San Francisco, is the curator for this quarter, and thanks mucho, Kim! Thank you to Arthur Johnstone for the featured portrait. Thank you Nomadic Coffee. Denise Low

Memento

“We look at the world once in childhood.

The rest is memory.” Louise Gluck

 

In my first house of cut-up puzzles

Mother disappears behind jumbled

heights, walls, gravity windowpanes—

 

a domain of no lullabies

but instead, pauses.

In the upstairs room under elms

 

stars pelt the glass.

Hunger returns. Under my chin

white ruffles loop endlessly.

 

I remember to this day

the curved bassinet, dusty pink,

how I lived within its wicker.

 

Later she stored it on the back porch

where even now, generations later,

it calls me to return.

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 Nomadic Coffee broadside and Dial-a-Poet, 415-484-7919, ext. 730  

Mammoth Publishes Kim Shuck's WHOSE WATER: POEMS

Kim Shuck's new long poem Whose Water: Poems

Kim Shuck, Poet Laureate of San Francisco, writes a stunning long poem about her journey across the United States, what becomes a personal migration along its waterways. She names and transforms history, politics, nature’s beings, and her own ties to Cherokee Nation, of which she is an enrolled member. She notices “Selu” (corn in Cherokee), orchards, “dead gas stations,” and “ravens in parking lots.” In the flow of scenes, Shuck articulates an identity, “Americans are defined/by crossing water/Atlantic, Mississippi, Rio Grande, Pacific.” Place names of Latin, Spanish, and Algonkian origin wend together. An unanswered question haunts the verse as the poet moves in a terrain of observation and imagination. Readers join Shuck in creating possible responses.

Truck stop coffee

In through the passes

The satisfying watersheds whose punch lines we know

Here through the fog on the hillside

Through the sunwink and traffic of the floodplain

Here again among handprint bridges and watersong

Here at the straights

Whose water?

 ++++++++++++++++++++++++

Kim Shuck is a Tsalagi (Cherokee)/Euro-American poet, author, weaver, and beadwork artist born in San Francisco, California. She belongs to the Northern California Cherokee diaspora and is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. In 2017, Mayor Ed Lee named Shuck as the 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco.  Other awards include a PEN Oakland Censorship Award, National Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, KQED Local Hero Award, American Indian Heritage Month, Mentor of the Year Award from Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, Native Writers of the Americas First Book, Diane Decorah Award, and a Mary Tallmountain Award. Previous books of poetry are Deer Trails: San Francisco Poet Laureate Series No. 7, (City Lights Publishers), Murdered Missing (Foothills Publishing), Sidewalk Ndn, chapbook (FootHills Publishing), Clouds Running In, (Taurean Horn Press ), Smuggling Cherokee (Greenfield Review Press, Poetry Foundation bestseller list, SPD Books bestseller list. She earned a B.A. in Art (1994), and M.F.A. in Textiles (1998) from San Francisco State University. She has taught American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University and was an artist-in-residence at the de Young Museum in June 2010 with Michael Horse.

Kim Shuck is 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco!

Congratulations to Kim Shuck, author of Smuggling Cherokee: Poems, who is 7^th San Francisco Poet Laureate! https://sfpl.org/releases/ She writes Tsi-Tsu (Rabbit) narratives and does beadwork, basketry, Cherokee language, and more. From the Hanksville website: “As a poet Kim has read her work around the United States. In late summer and fall of 2005 she toured through Jordan with a group of poets from many countries in the interest of peace and communication. Shuck has read her work on her local radio. She is co-curator of the Spoken Word Series of the Native American Cultural Center. Kim sat for a time on the board of directors for California Poets in the Schools. As a visual artist Kim's work has been shown both in and out of the United States, including shows at the National Museum of Taiwan in Taipei and the Art, Women, California Show at the San Jose Art Museum. She has consulted with museums and galleries around California on the subject of Native artwork. Kim has taught in Elementary Schools, at San Francisco State University and has lectured widely on the subjects of math, art and Native American issues. She has been a teacher since, in 3rd grade, she taught fellow classmates a series of short lessons in crochet.”

is multi-talented, with word arts,

Her Wiki-biography: “Kim Shuck: Cherokee poet, author, and artist. Kim Shuck is a Native-American poet, author, and bead work artist who draws from Southeastern Native American culture and tradition as well as contemporary urban Indian life. She was born in San Francisco, California and is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She earned a B.A. in Art (1994), and M.F.A. in Textiles (1998) from San Francisco State University. She has taught American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University and was an artist in residence at the De Young Museum in June 2010 with Michael Horse.”  https://upclosed.com/people/kim-shuck/

Awards include:

ℴ2008 KQED Local Hero Award, American Indian Heritage Month

ℴ2007 Smuggling Cherokee, Poetry Foundation bestseller list (March)

ℴ2006 Smuggling Cherokee, SPD Books bestseller list (March)

ℴ2005 Mentor of the Year Award Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers

ℴ2005 Native Writers of the Americas First Book, Diane Decorah Award

ℴ2004 Mary Tallmountain Award

ℴ http://www.hanksville.org/storytellers/awards/poetry.html

Books, Author:

2014 Sidewalk Ndn, solo chapbook of poetry, FootHills Publishing

2014 Clouds Running In, solo book of poetry, Taurean Horn Press ISBN 978-0931552168

2013 Rabbit Stories, vignette fiction, Poetic Matrix Press ISBN 978-0985288389 https://www.amazon.com/Rabbit-Stories-Kim-Shuck/dp/0985288388/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

2005 Smuggling Cherokee, solo volume of poems, Greenfield Review Press ISBN 978-0878861460 https://www.amazon.com/Smuggling-Cherokee-Kim-Shuck/dp/0878861467

Books, Editor:

2010 “Rabbit and Rose”, online journal, editor, online publication (http://www.rabbitandrose.com/)

2007 Oakland Out Loud, (Ed.) anthology, co-editor, Jukebox Press ISBN 0932693172

2006 Words Upon the Waters, (Ed.) anthology, assistant editor, Jukebox Press 2006

Links: http://www.kimshuck.com  http://www.sfheart.com/sfpoets/kim-shuck.html   https://www.facebook.com/pg/kshuckartpage/about/?ref=page_internal

Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco presents Denise Low June 12

Denise Low presents trickster Jackalope’s gender-bending narratives in the GearsTurning Poetry series, hosted by Kim Shuck, June 12 Sunday, 4 to 6 pm at Modern Times Bookstore in the Mission, San Francisco with music by Ed Dang. 2919 24th Street San Francisco, CA 94110

About Denise Low’s Jackalope: "JACKALOPE is a perfect blend of stories, poetry, and strangeness. Denise Low has created a collection that is simultaneously myth and not-myth, a shining delight."—Kij Johnson, Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards winner

"Trickster takes center stage in Denise Low's JACKALOPE, a collection of prose and poetry recounting the adventures of its title character, Jackalope Kelley. This anthropomorphic animal is the cryptid on postcards you see at gas stations across the American Midwest—a rabbit with two iconic pronghorn antlers. Jackalope Kelley shifts between male and female identities: Jack when he's a man, Jaq when she's a woman. He drinks a gin and tonic in a Twitter bar. She passes through Seattle, Santa Fe, Minneapolis, Colorado, and Roswell, among other places. He vomits when he sees the head of one of his ancestors mounted above the door in a Wyoming bar. And she searches for a gynecologist—or does he need a urologist? All of these scenes give the book a playful feel, but there's also plenty of time for reflection. In quieter moments, Jackalope tries to explain his complicated heritage to others. ... This merging of shape-shifting identities with shape-shifting trickster narratives is no accident. The language of the book is steeped in the Native American mythologies and vocabularies that Low understands so well."—Ben Pfeiffer, Interviews Editor, The Rumpus Reviews and Other Links  Ben Pfeiffer @ KCUR Public Radio  Lisa McLendon @ The Wichita Eagle  Fred Whitehead @ Penniless Press

 Denise Low, Ks. Poet Laureate 2007-09, is award-winning author of 25 books, including Melange Block (Red Mountain Press, 2014), and Kansas Poems of William Stafford. Her fiction has earned two Pushcart Prize nominations. Low is past board president of Associated Writers and Writing Programs. She blogs, reviews, and co-publishes Mammoth Publications. Her professional workshops have national reach, and she teaches at Baker University. She has British Isles, German, Delaware, and Cherokee heritage. She has an MFA and PhD. 

About Kim Shuck: Kim Shuck is a poet, weaver, educator doer of piles of laundry, planter of seeds,

traveler and child wrangler. She was born in her mother's hometown of San Francisco, one hill away from where she now lives. Her ancestors were and are Tsalagi, Sauk and Fox and Polish, for the most part. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in weaving in 1998 from San Francisco State University. As a poet Kim has read her work around the US and elsewhere. In late 2005 she toured through Jordan with a group of poets from all over the globe in the interest of peace and communication. Shuck reads her work on local radio frequently. Kim's visual art has been included in shows both locally and abroad such as a textile show at the National Museum of Taiwan in Taipei and Art, Women, California at the San Jose Art Museum. She consults with museums and galleries around California on the subjects of Native artwork and community inclusion. Kim continues working in schools and has taught at all levels: at San Francisco State University as well as many elementary schools. Her work with the Exploratorium, a hands on museum in San Francisco, is included in that museum's "Across Cultures" series. She's been teaching since 3rd grade when she organized and taught a class on crochet. Her work generally touches on poetry, art, math, storytelling, humor, and whatever else seems useful at the time. 

About Rabbit Stories: "What Kim Shuck is writing is vital and vibrant. She is blending tradition with modernity, history with humor and her own Indigenous perspective witheverything else. She is kind enough to invite us all into her mind, her life and her tribe through her writing and to smile at us when we realize that we are glad we came, glad we read this evocative book and glad that we met this powerful and significant poet."—Dr. Dawn Karima Pettigrew, author of The Marriage of Saints: A Novel (University of Oklahoma Press, 2006) 

About Modern Times Bookstore: “Our politics also shape the organization of our business. Modern Times has operated as a collective since the very start. All important management decisions are discussed collectively, and staff members are eligible to become worker-owners. Modern Times is a member of NoBAWC, the Northern California Alliance of Worker Collectives. We’re happy to be a part of a larger network of independent businesses working together to create worker friendly, conscientious, alternative models of business. And it’s Modern Times’ collective management structure that allows people to give so much of themselves, and pour so much of their creativity into a store that truly reflects the personalities of everybody who works here. Modern Times is a member of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, Calle 24 Cultural District and Merchants Association and the United Booksellers of San Francisco.”- See more at: http://moderntimesbookstore.com/about/history/#sthash.e11dNOTu.dpuf