Art and Poetry Night

Join Sacramento Fine Arts  Center for a night of poetry based on art from its Magnum Opus exhibit.

Featured Poets:
Bob Stanley has written poetry and organized poetry events in California for over 50 years. His chapbook Walt Whitman Orders a Cheeseburger came out in 2009, and his book Miracle Shine was published in 2012. Bob served on the Sacramento Poetry Center board for 24 years, and he now occasionally hosts the Random Friday poetry series on Zoom. Bob was poet laureate for Sacramento from 2009 to 2012; he and his wife Joyce live in the Arden area.

Laura Martin has energized poetry audiences in the Capital Region for many years, both solo and with her Moetry band, The Soft Offs, a spoken word/ jazz/ blues/ beer band that takes the written word from page to stage. Martin’s work has appeared in many publications including Late Peaches, Medusa’s Kitchen, Susurrus, and Soul of the Narrator. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her poem “My Father, the Sawmill” won grand prize in the Pat Schneider Poetry Contest.

Sacramento Poet Laureate Andru Defeye, also known as The Guerrilla Poet, uses words to heal himself and others. Besides his work as a poet, Andru is a musician and emcee who has thousands of followers – his organization Zero Forbidden Goals (ZFG) is a multifaceted collective working to make the arts accessible in the greater Sacramento area. He was named Sacramento Poet Laureate for a three year term from 2020 to 2022, and Sacramento Magazine recently honored him as one of the region’s 100 notable business leaders.

Anna Marie is a spoken word poet, author, and visual artist. Her topics range from the political to the domestic, uplifting and empowering women with words of understanding and wisdom. She has featured at many venues including Mahogany Poetry Series, Luna’s Cafe, The Guild Theatre, The Crocker Art Museum and many more. You can find her books, Tablespoons of Tears and A Poet’s Handbag available online. Anna Marie resides in Sacramento with her fiance and three children.

Mary Zeppa’s poems have appeared in a variety of print and on-line journals, including Perihelion, Switched-on Gutenberg, Zone 3, The New York Quarterly and Permafrost, and in several anthologies. Mary is the author of two chapbooks, Little Ship of Blessing and The Battered Bride Overture and the full-length collection, My Body Tells Its Own Story. For twenty years Zeppa, also a singer and lyricist, was one fifth of the a cappella quintet Cherry Fizz.

William (Bill) O’Daly studied poetry at UCSB and went on to work with his friend Sam Hamill to found Copper Canyon Press, one of America’s finest poetry publishers.  Mr. O’Daly is known worldwide for his translations of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Bill also has numerous collections of his own poems, including The Whale in the Web, Water Ways (a collaboration with J.S. Graustein), Yarrow and Smoke, and The Road to Isla Negra. Bill resides in the Sierra foothills.

Dr. V.S. Chochezi and Staajabu are a unique mother and daughter poetry team known as Straight Out Scribes. They are widely published, have received many honors and awards, and have self-published seven books of poetry and two CDs. In addition to their writing and performance accomplishments, this mother/daughter poetic duo has produced and coordinated many consciousness-raising events and fund-raisers. True activist poets, Straight Out Scribes has spent over 30 years working on the campaign to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and aid many other political prisoners.