Jan Steckel's Blog: Horizontal Poet Sings Bidyke Blues - Posts Tagged "lesbian"

I'm Reading March 12, 2011

Dear Friends,

Save the date, if you live in the SF Bay Area! I'll be among several featured readers at Works in Progress, an open mic for women. Good food, live music. NB: there's an admission fee. If you want to read, best to call Linda, the organizer (below), WELL before the reading, as the open mic list often fills up even before the show. Hope to see some of you women there! Though this is a lesbian-run reading, all women are welcome.

Warmly,
Jan


WORKS IN PROGRESS, An Open Mic for Women

Fireside Room, Plymouth United Church of Christ, 424 Monte Vista, Oakland

Saturday, March 12, 6:30-10:30 pm


Kimberly J. Miller is an accomplished vocalist who has performed across the United States, in England and on Russian Radio. She has opened for Chaka Khan, Chris Williamson, members of The Association and Three Dog Night. Her soulful, powerful performances have won her critical acclaim for a number of stage roles and well as for her concert “Salute to the Women of the Blues I & II” which were commissioned by and performed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.
Kimberly will be accompanied by the illustrious Karen Mullally and Shari Kline!

Other incredible lesbian performers who will knock you out include:

Celeste McCarty, Karen Thompson, Tyler Stanley, Patty Overland, Bev Jo and Jan Steckel..

$7-$10 Admission includes a raffle ticket for a chance to win one of six $25 certificates for fine dining at a local restaurant!

6:30 – 7:30 Pot Luck - BRING YOUR FAVORITE FOOD TO SHARE!!
7:30 - 10:30 Performance, Fireside Room

Hosted by Feminist Author & Poet Linda Zeiser, Produced by Linda Zeiser & Carolyn Stull. For information, contact Linda at (510) 701-1022, ZeiserpoetMC@aol.com.

Works In Progress is a creative space for women's art: Poets, Musicians, Comediennes, and Performance Artists. All are encouraged to share their works, completed or evolving. WIP is scent free and wheelchair accessible.
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Journal Round-Up and Reading

Last week received my contributor's copy of Askew, a Southern California (Ventura)-based literary journal in a newspaper format. I enjoyed the poems a lot, and I liked the way the editors presented my poem about my mentor ("Julia Vinograd Turns Canned Food into Poetry") and its final line "She does not deign to eat the peach" right under another poem that ended with the word "peach."

Askew is edited by Phil Taggart and Marsha de la O with the help of Friday Lubina. Phil and Friday also host readings in the Ventura area. I was scheduled to read on July 31 at Phil Taggart's reading at the Artists Union Gallery there. Unfortunately the gallery just lost its lease and the reading its venue, so I'll have to wait for another opportunity to hear the editors of Askew read.

I also received my contributor's copies of Assaracus: Lady Business, with five of my filthiest queer poems bringing up the rear, so to speak, at the end of the volume. Assaracus is a gay male literary journal edited by Bryan Borland. This was their issue of poetry by lesbian and bisexual women, and I absolutely loved it. My favorite poetry in the volume was by Maureen Seaton. Couldn't find her on Facebook -- hope to run into her work again soon.

Editor Michael W. Jones of the online journal The Eloquent Atheist was kind enough to print my poem "Downsizing the Solar System" at http://www.eloquentatheist.com/2012/0....

As I've mentioned here before, I'm not an atheist, actually. I just know that I don't know what the cosmic story is, but I acknowledge that you might, so I'm not really even a proper agnostic. (That is, I understand agnosticism to be the belief that one cannot know whether God exists.) The thing is, I have a physician's attitude that if the answer to a question doesn't change the plan of action, then I don't need the answer. Since I'd behave the same way toward other people whether I knew that God existed or not, I figure it's best just to get on with the good works and try to be as decent a person as I can. I respect the faiths of others, and also the agnosticism or atheism of others.

Lastly, I wanted to remind San Francisco Bay Area readers that I'll be featured at Caffe Greco in North Beach in SF with Julia Vinograd on Monday, July 9th. Sign-up for the open mic is at 6:30 PM. 423 Columbus Ave., between Vallejo and Green. Hope to see some of you there! Bring a little work of your own to read at the open mic if you'd like to.

Julia Vinograd is my poetry mentor. You can find a lot of her books here on Goodreads. Here's her short bio:

Julia Vinograd is a Berkeley street poet. She has published 56 books of poetry, and won the American Book Award of The Before Columbus Foundation. She has three poetry CD collections: Bubbles and Bones, Eye of the Hand, and The Book of Jerusalem. She received a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. She has a Poetry Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Berkeley. She won a Pushcart Prize for her poem “The Young Men Who Died of AIDS.” She was one of the four editors of the anthology New American Underground Poetry Vol. 1: The Babarians of San Francisco— Poets from Hell.
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Horizontal Poet Sings Bidyke Blues

Jan Steckel
Bidyke writer and disabled former pediatrician Jan Steckel writes about poetry, fiction, sexuality, doctoring, poverty, and what it feels like to remember what kind of socks everyone at her readings w ...more
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