Celebration of Elizabeth Herron, our new Sonoma County Poet Laureate and book launch for her recently published “In the Cities of Sleep”
OCA is thrilled to host an afternoon with Elizabeth, in celebration of her new tenure as Sonoma County’s Poet Laureate (Aug 2022-2024). She continues to be a ‘force of nature,’ as an outspoken advocate for nature through her poetry and essays. She has initiated The Being Brave Poetry Project offering workshops and readings throughout the county and will share with us its development. She’ll also read from her freshly published poetry collection, In the Cities of Sleep. (Fernwood Press)
Elizabeth’s just published In the Cities of Sleep is a collection of poems centered on the ramifications of a warming world, a world where not only the climate is changing but the social contract as regions and nations vie for resources and civil unrest gives way to wars. Her poems ask that we look hard enough to see beyond what is happening to what we might do to change our current trajectory.
Admission is free, all donations gratefully invited. After Elizabeth’s talk and readings, we will hold a vigorous Q&A, followed by book sales & signing. Refreshments, wine/beer/coffee/tea will be available.
After earning an M.A. at SF State University, Elizabeth studied biopoetics, focusing on empathy and the origins of aesthetic behavior. She received a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Integrative Learning. Shetaught at Sonoma State University where she is Professor Emerita. While teaching she continued to write and publish poetry. After the Dunsmuir Spill she shifted her attention to environmental issues, focusing especially on watershed and fisheries health. Since 2003 when the Society for Conservation Biology announced global warming as the greatest threat to all species, she has been focused on climate. Elizabeth is the author of four poetry chapbooks and two previous collections, Desire Being Full of Distance, and Insistent Grace (virtually launched at OCA in 2021), as well as a collection of short fiction. An additional chapbook, Her Body, will be published by Main Street Rag later this spring. Elizabeth’s poems and articles have appeared in Parabola, Orion, Center for Humans and Nature, Reflections, and Free State Review. Grants and awards sustaining her work have come from the Foundation for Deep Ecology, The Mesa Refuge for Writers, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Known for her collaborative performances with musicians and movement artists, her book-length poem, The Poet’s House, was written to accompany Bruce Johnson’s sculpture, Poetry House. Elizabeth writes articles centered on art and ecology, imagination and empathy, and the importance of nature in our physical and spiritual well-being. She is a Fellow of the International League of Conservation Writers (ILCW), a long-standing member of PEN, Poets & Writers, and the Academy of American Poets. In the Cities of Sleep is her primary contribution to EXTRACTION: Art on the Edge of the Abyss, a global project of the arts to transform public awareness and shift from exploitive to respectful compassionate ways of living.
Check out Elizabeth’s Poetry Website.
Elizabeth on her Being Brave Poetry Project:
‘The Being Brave Poetry Workshops are happening and going well. Exciting. Experiential. We write and discover together and then talk a bit. A growing edge for all of us. Each workshop seems to emerge at least in part from the group itself, so each is unique. I am eager to do them in areas as yet unvisited: West (of Sebastopol); The River & west; Sonoma. At my website, www.elizabeth-herron.com, readers will find a description of the Being Brave poetry project.’
‘Also on that website, Poetry As It Happens provides descriptions of the process of making a poem with several examples. I encourage folks to visit that page, for fun as much as for possible fascination.’