Julien Poirier + Joanne Kyger

Julien Poirier is the author of several poetry collections, including El Golpe Chileño, Stained Glass Windows of California, and Way Too West and most recently, Out of Print. In 2005, he published an experimental newspaper novel, Living! Go and Dream. He is also the editor of an anthology of writing by Jack Micheline, One of a Kind, and a book of travel journals by Bill Berkson, Invisible Oligarchs. A founding member of Ugly Duckling Presse Collective, Poirier edited the newspaperNew York Nights from 2001 to 2006. He has taught poetry in New York City public schools and at San Quentin State Prison. He lives in Berkeley with his wife and two daughters.

One of the major poets of the SF Renaissance, Joanne Kyger was born in 1934 in Vallejo, CA. After studying at UC Santa Barbara, she moved to San Francisco in 1957, where she became a member of the circle of poets around Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan. In 1960, she joined Gary Snyder in Japan. They then traveled to India where, along with Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, they met the Dalai Lama. She returned to California in 1964 and published her first book, The Tapestry and the Web, in 1965. In 1969, she settled in Bolinas, where she continues to reside today. She has published over 30 books of poetry and prose, including Strange Big Moon, The Japan and India Journals: 1960-1964, As Ever: Selected Poems, and About Now: Collected Poems, which won the 2008 Josephine Miles Award from PEN Oakland. Her newest title is On Time: Poems 2005-2014. She occasionally teaches at Naropa University.