Featured Poets
Saturday, December 8
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Hosted by: Jeanne Lupton
Featured poets: Clive Matson and Claire Castell
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Hosted by: Jeanne Lupton
Featured poets: Clive Matson and Claire Castell
Clive Matson
Clive Matson arrived on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1960, a fresh-faced adolescent with a blank notebook under his arm. He quickly fell in with the Beat Generation – his first event was a reading at the Tenth Street Coffeehouse, where he met Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Diane di Prima (who published Matson’s first poems, Mainline to the Heart.)
Space Age (1969) displays his psychedelic years, Heroin (1972) outlines his struggle with addiction, On the Inside (1981) continues the political sight of his communist grandparents, and Equal in Desire (1982) shows feminism instructing his own sexuality. In 1978, he got involved in workshops and found he could make a living teaching creative writing. He returned to school in the 1980s and earned his MFA in poetry at Columbia University. He has taught more than 3,000 workshops nationwide, and his how-to text Let the Crazy Child Write! (New World Library, 1998), honoring the creative unconscious, is being used by a number of groups around the world. Matson co-edited, with the late Allen Cohen, the anthology An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind – Poets on 9/11 (Regent Press, Oakland, 2002), which won the 2003 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles National Literary Award. Earlier that year his seventh book, Squish Boots (2002), was placed, amazingly, in John Wieners’ coffin.
That Matson ultimately emerged drug-free and healthy gave him full appreciation for 1960s passion and honesty. These qualities are crucially important, he thinks, for the current era. “Coming to terms with my youthful, energetic voice has been a challenge,” he admits. “It helps that I hear, in these poems, both an urgent need to connect and full cognizance of the difficulties.” Mostly Matson writes from the itch in his body, and says he always has. He likes playing basketball, table tennis, and collecting minerals in the field. He lives in Oakland, California, where he helps parent his son Ezra. Read more about Clive and his work at MatsonPoet.com.
Clive Matson arrived on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1960, a fresh-faced adolescent with a blank notebook under his arm. He quickly fell in with the Beat Generation – his first event was a reading at the Tenth Street Coffeehouse, where he met Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Diane di Prima (who published Matson’s first poems, Mainline to the Heart.)
Space Age (1969) displays his psychedelic years, Heroin (1972) outlines his struggle with addiction, On the Inside (1981) continues the political sight of his communist grandparents, and Equal in Desire (1982) shows feminism instructing his own sexuality. In 1978, he got involved in workshops and found he could make a living teaching creative writing. He returned to school in the 1980s and earned his MFA in poetry at Columbia University. He has taught more than 3,000 workshops nationwide, and his how-to text Let the Crazy Child Write! (New World Library, 1998), honoring the creative unconscious, is being used by a number of groups around the world. Matson co-edited, with the late Allen Cohen, the anthology An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind – Poets on 9/11 (Regent Press, Oakland, 2002), which won the 2003 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles National Literary Award. Earlier that year his seventh book, Squish Boots (2002), was placed, amazingly, in John Wieners’ coffin.
That Matson ultimately emerged drug-free and healthy gave him full appreciation for 1960s passion and honesty. These qualities are crucially important, he thinks, for the current era. “Coming to terms with my youthful, energetic voice has been a challenge,” he admits. “It helps that I hear, in these poems, both an urgent need to connect and full cognizance of the difficulties.” Mostly Matson writes from the itch in his body, and says he always has. He likes playing basketball, table tennis, and collecting minerals in the field. He lives in Oakland, California, where he helps parent his son Ezra. Read more about Clive and his work at MatsonPoet.com.
Claire Castell
Claire Castell is a new teller, as she started studying Story telling in 2017, just after retiring. She found Stagebridge provides skilled teaching staff and performance opportunities.
She has since performed her stories at the Oakland Story Slam, the Orinda Tale Spinners, Silk Road and the Marsh Theater. Her material is mostly true stories but she recently became an expert on the folktales from Acadia about the “Lou Garou”, a wolf man. Those stories, as they migrated from Canada to Cajun country in Louisiana, transformed the creature’s name to the “Rougarou”. These stories can be scary and sometimes funny, and they reflect reinforcement of societal and religious norms as far back as the 17th century.
Her work career was in Technology at Fortune 500 companies. Her long time love of music and dancing balanced her cerebral day job, “keeping me from being a total geek”.
Claire Castell is a new teller, as she started studying Story telling in 2017, just after retiring. She found Stagebridge provides skilled teaching staff and performance opportunities.
She has since performed her stories at the Oakland Story Slam, the Orinda Tale Spinners, Silk Road and the Marsh Theater. Her material is mostly true stories but she recently became an expert on the folktales from Acadia about the “Lou Garou”, a wolf man. Those stories, as they migrated from Canada to Cajun country in Louisiana, transformed the creature’s name to the “Rougarou”. These stories can be scary and sometimes funny, and they reflect reinforcement of societal and religious norms as far back as the 17th century.
Her work career was in Technology at Fortune 500 companies. Her long time love of music and dancing balanced her cerebral day job, “keeping me from being a total geek”.