DIVA Hosts poets Julie Rogers and David Meltzer

DIVA’s “A New Poetry Series”, hosted by Tim Shaner, features authors Julie Rogers and David Meltzer in a presentation of their work at 7:30 PM on Sunday, September 16th. This session will be held at Tsunami Books 2582 Willamette Street. Donation welcome.

Julie Rogers:

Julie Rogers began writing at age 12 and reading her poetry in San Francisco cafes in the late 1970’s. She has published five chapbooks, her work has been seen in various journals and anthologies, on public television and radio, and she has read at many venues in Oregon and California.

A self-taught writer, she nevertheless engaged in literary endeavors along the way, was active in southern Oregon's Rogue Valley poetry scene for two decades, and spent four years facilitating a writer’s workshop in Ashland during the twenty-five years she lived there and in the adjacent northern California mountains.

Vimala published her Buddhist hospice manual, Instructions for the Transitional State, in 2007. House of the Unexpected   spans thirty years of poetry and is her first book-length collection.

Julie Rogers now resides in Oakland, California with her husband, poet David Meltzer.  

David Meltzer

A poet at age 11, David Meltzer began his literary career during the Beat heyday in San Francisco. He is the author of many volumes of poetry including The Process, Arrows: Selected Poetry 1957 – 1992, No Eyes: Lester Young, Beat Thing, and   David’s Copy.  He has also published fiction and essays including Two-Way Mirror: A Poetry Notebook and has edited numerous anthologies and collections of interviews such as The Secret Garden: An Anthology in the Kabbalah, Reading Jazz, Writing Jazz, andSan Francisco Beat: Talking with the Poets. His most recent book, When I Was A Poet, # 60 in the Pocket Poet’s Series published by City Lights, came out in 2011.

David Meltzer taught in the Humanities and Poetics programs at the New College of California in San Francisco for 30 years. He was given the Bay Area Guardian's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011 and this year he was nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. He is now performing with his wife, poet Julie Rogers, in the Bay Area and elsewhere.