Poetry Santa Cruz presents Josephine Dickinson & Douglas McClellan

Poetry Santa Cruz is dedicated to nurturing the poetry community and bringing poetry to the larger community in Santa Cruz County. They hold monthly meetings at Bookshop Santa Cruz on the second Tuesday of the month. The suggested donation is $3.

Prize-winning poet Josephine Dickinson’s fourth poetry collection is Night Journey (Flambard, 2008).  In her own words: “I grew up in South London but am rooted now in this place Alston, beloved of Auden, who ever kept its map on his wall.  I aspire to the qualities of the shepherdpoet, indeed it is my e-mail address.  My sense of vocation as a poet emerged after I became profoundly deaf overnight at the age of six and I started reading and imitating poetry.  I lost a physical sense but started seeing and hearing the miraculous.  I read Classics at Oxford, then became a music teacher and composer after study with Michael Finnissy and Richard Barrett.  Life events brought me to Alston.  One day Michael Mackmin wrote and asked me if I had enough poems to make a book.  I sent him 100 poems. He chose 60. And this is Scarberry Hill.  Not all my poems are about sheep.  Current interests include mythology and fairy tales, space travel and cosmology.” Read poems and more on Josephine Dickinson’s website. Read an excellent feature on her and her book Silence Fell from 2007 in the Sunday Times of London. Douglas McClellan received his MFA in Visual Arts in 1950.  He taught art for 37 years at art Institutes, colleges and UCSC.  His art has been widely exhibited including solo shows in northern and southern California, and group exhibitions on the east and west coasts, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.  He started writing poetry seriously at age 70 and has published six slender volumes. He currently alternates between digital collage and poetry. Read poems and see visual art by Douglas McClellan on his website.