Henning, Gularte read in Sacramento
Janesville poet Dianna Henning and Ed Dorado Poet Laureate Lara Gularte take a road trip to Sacramento to read their works for the Sacramento Poetry Alliance.
Henning and Gularte will read at 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 8 at the Alliance, 1169 Perkins Way in Sacramento. The event also features an open mic and refreshments. The Sacramento Poetry Alliance hosts at least one reading every month. For more information, check out its Facebook page.
Dianna Henning
Janesville’s Dianna Henning has taught through California Poets in the Schools, received several California Arts Council grants and taught poetry workshops through the William James Association’s Prison Arts Program, including Folsom Prison and has run The Thompson Peak Writers’ Workshop in Lassen County for the last 28 years. Publications, in part: Worth More Standing, Poets and Activists Pay Homage to Trees; Voices; MacQueen’s Quinterly; Artemis Journal, 2021 and 2022; The Adirondack Review; Memoir Magazine; The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester; Pacific Poetry and New American Writing. 2021 Nomination by The Adirondack Review for a Pushcart Prize. She earn an MFA in Writing in 1989 from Vermont College, Montpelier, VT. Her fourth poetry book “Camaraderie of the Marvelous” was published by Kelsay Books in September 2021. She is a six-time Pushcart Nominee and has been awarded several fellowships.
Fox Who Hangs Out in My Neighborhood
I want to thread your slinky coat
with my early morning fingers,
grip the wild which is you,
follow you back into
the shadowy border world
of early evening
where obsolescent shapes
make me think I could disappear into you,
the pure animalness of you
Lara Gularte
Lara Gularte is El Dorado County Poet Laureate 2021-2023. Her book of poetry, “Fourth World Woman,” was recently published by Finishing Line Press. “Kissing the Bee,” her book about her California pioneer ancestors was published by The Bitter Oleander Press in 2018, and nominated for several Pushcart Prizes. Find her work in national and international journals and anthologies. Her poetry depicting her Azorean heritage is included in “The Gavel-Brown Book of Portuguese American Poetry.” She is affiliated with the Cigarros Colloquium: Azoreans Diaspora Writers, at the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute, California State University-Fresno. Gularte serves as a human rights commissioner for her county. She is a teaching artist of creative writing for the arts in corrections program at Mule Creek State Prison. Find some of her student’s work published in the Colossus Press, “Freedom issue,” and in “Journal X.”
Fourth World Woman
A fugitive of the modern world, she’s tired of deep lies,
and anthems, the marble limbs of statues on the ground.
When smoky skies erase mountains and eagles,
shroud angry riots in town,|she craves the peace of forest creatures.
Imagining a fourth world, the rustle of wild grass beguiles her.
The animal inside teaches her to have visions, to watch for signs.
Night moves through her, breathes and stretches,
a cold nose touching her.
She snatches the mouse from the cat’s mouth, sets it free.
Antlers shadow the sky, and she hurts a beautiful pain.
She molts her former selves for a furred face, nostrils slanting.
At the crest she stands doe-like, hooves in place,
awaits the deluge to cleanse the ailing earth.
