Twenty-one years ago, Paul Corman-Roberts left Las Vegas for San Francisco, hoping to reconcile a troubled relationship and build a career in theater. But he landed at New College of California, where opportunity and close engagement with an inspired cast of professors led him to a deep connection with the Bay Area writing scene.

“I was loving it. It was such a great place, it was such a wide open forum. You could do anything, be anything,” Corman-Roberts said recently at the renovated south end of Lake Merritt.

“It’s like the ultimate story of faith,” he said, referring to the fact that his car broke down on the way to S.F. “You just go on, you just keep moving forward to where it is you’re headed. Whatever it takes. And yeah, you break down along the way, but you get your repairs and you keep on going. And you will get there and it will happen.”

Even if “it” is different than you imagined. Corman-Roberts remained at New College until just before it closed in 2007, having joined the administrative staff in 2001. He speaks of classes with Genny Lim, David Meltzer and Gloria Frym, and of Bob Randolph, who introduced him to Eldridge Cleaver – an early leader of the Black Panther Party. Being surrounded by so much activity has had a profound impact on Corman-Roberts.

“These legends become human, all too human. And that’s something that as an artist you have to process. Like, I am among these people now. It doesn’t make you a legend … it doesn’t make you superhuman, but it certainly opens your experience up to stories of humanity that you just can’t get out in, say, Fresno.”

He laughs, and with good reason. The author of three previous collections – “Coming World/Gone World,” “Neocom(Muter)” and “19th Street Station” – Corman-Roberts celebrates a new book just published by Youssef Alaoui‘s Paper Press, “Notes From an Orgy,” which contains work both new and as dated as his time here.

“Being a writer takes time,” says Corman-Roberts, the founder of Oakland’s annual Beast Crawl festival. “It isn’t just about having life experiences to write about – it’s having the time to build up the writing, build up the pieces. You get to be older, you find out you have a lot of pieces. My grandfather, a mechanic, basically worked on cars and worked on contraptions. He never got more than a fifth-grade education, but he had a big ol’ scrapyard, a big ol’ junkyard that he was always pulling parts out of to put on the latest contraption. He was always tearing apart and building and putting back together.

“Writing is kind of like that; I’ve got a scrapyard of writing. And I go through it every month or so, say, ‘All right, what do we got in here? What’s in the ol’ closet that can be put to use, that’s just waiting to be useful?’ Pieces will sit in there for years and years and I’ll think, ‘Why don’t I just get rid of it?’ But I tell you: Never get rid of it. Never get rid of it, because sooner or later you’re going to find something for it.”

IF YOU GO

Paul Corman-Roberts: 6 p.m. Saturday. Free. Naked Bulb, 2518 Grande Vista Ave., Oakland.

This article originally appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle.

Photo by Lisa Corman