Walk This Way... to the Petaluma Poetry Walk

Join Me at the Hotel Petaluma Where I'll Be Reading From my Book, 1912

I am so honored to be reading my work this year at the 27th annual Petaluma Poetry Walk. I’ll be there with my poetry book, 1912, at 11am Sunday, September 17 at the Hotel Petaluma on Kentucky Street.

I remember attending the Petaluma Poetry Walk in the late 90s, when Diane di Prima and Geri Digiorno (the founder of the event) read their beautiful work there on the Apple Box deck overlooking the river. At the time, the deck adjoined the railroad trestle where, on a regular basis, freight trains passed by inches from where we drank our lattes.

Those women, along with Terry Ehret — who served as Sonoma County Poet Laureate from 2004-2006, and who still participates in the event, were my poetry idols during my formative 20s, influencing the very idea of poetry for me and also what it meant to be a woman writer in a sea of male writers.

I also have a fond memory of Nancy Long (another of my unknowing woman writer mentors) buying me a mocha with whipped cream and chocolate shavings in one of those famous Apple Box cups with the painted purple plums during a reading one year.

It felt very meaningful and extravagant to me. And also, that someone I thought was so amazing did something so kind for me was uplifting.

Ultimately, these women all showed me how one could write about the very different things that women observe and experience, and so I did. I wrote my first poems during that time.

Thank you to them (and really, so many other wonderful poets from the Poetry Walk too) for stepping forward and inspiring me and countless others.