Please help us to welcome Richard Modiano, L.A. poetry luminary, labor activist & poet, Director Emeritus of Beyond Baroque, and author of The Forbidden Lunchbox from Punk Hostage Press to our humble city for an afternoon of fierceness, politics, and love. Modiano will be joined by local poetry colleagues Julie Rogers, K.R. Morrison, Taneesh Kaur, and Richard Loranger. The event will be hosted by Paul Corman-Roberts. 

BIOS 

Richard Modiano . While a resident of New York City Richard Modiano became active in the literary community connected to the Poetry Project where he came to know Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, William S. Burroughs and Ted Berrigan. Modiano served on the board of directors of Valley Contemporary Poets from 1995 until 2001.  In 2001 he was a programmer at Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center, joined the Board of Trustees in 2006, and from 2010 to 2019, he served as Executive Director. In that time he produced and curated hundreds of literary events, and with Henry Morro, Suzanne Lummis and Liz Camfiord co-founded and named Beyond Baroque Books’ sub-imprint The Pacific Coast Poetry Series. In 2019 he was elected Vice President of the California State Poetry Society. In 2023 Modiano joined the board of directors of the Los Angles Poetry Society. The Huffington Post named him as one of 200 people doing the most to promote poetry in the United States. In 2022 the Los Angeles-Long Beach Harbor Labor Coalition awarded Modiano the Joe Hill Prize for labor poetry, and is a Push Cart Prize nominee. His collection The Forbidden Lunch Box is published by Punk Hostage Press. Richard is a rank and file member of the Industrial Workers of the World and a member of the National Writers Union. 

 Julie Rogers began writing at age twelve and reading her poetry in San Francisco cafes in the late 1970’s. She has published five chapbooks,and in 2007 Vimala published her Buddhist hospice manual, Instructions for the Transitional State. Her poems have been published in various anthologies such as Poets Against the War and Beatitude — Golden Anniversary 1959 –2009. Other collections include House of the Unexpected, Street Warp, Trading Fours and Sharing Breath (with Beat poet David Meltzer,) and Life on Earth. Visit her website at www.julrogers.com.  

 K.R. Morrison. Since the pandemic, K.R. Morrison has been searching for mermaids in a sea town in Southern California, often returning to the Bay Area for her poetry nests and to play drums for two all-female fronted rock bands – Harriot and Unicröne.  Morrison is a Pushcart Nominee for her poem, “Her Altar” and still enjoys readings and podcasts for Cauldrons, her first poetry collection published by Paper Press. Alongside years spent as a writer, activist, and musician, K.R. spent 17 years as a sea captain for the teens – using creative writing and books, she worked with countless students at Galileo High School in San Francisco, earning the name “Mama Mo” with many who left her classroom armed with writing and tools for healing. Morrison continues her work in education through the juvenile hall system and online teaching. These days, Morrison drowns in an abyss of new poems that will hopefully, take the form of three separate manuscripts. She has featured throughout curations on the west and east coasts, and her poetry can be found in a number of anthologies published in 2023.  

 Taneesh Kaur (“Core”) is a Punjabi American teaching artist based in San Francisco, a social justice advocate who uses nature to understand and dismantle systems of mental and physical oppression. Her visual art has been shown in galleries in the Bay and SoCal, and has received praise from the international Luxembourg Art Prize 2022. Their poetry appears in journals and anthologies, most recently in Colossus: Body from Colossus Press. Their poetry full-length collection Thawing is forthcoming in 2023. Their essays appear on Dictionary.com, with research also in the peer-reviewed journal Discourse Studies. Taneesh has a Master's in linguistics from San Francisco State University, with training abroad in Mexico and Chile. More of her work can be found in English and Spanish at www.TaneeshCantos.com. 

 Richard Loranger is a multi-genre writer, performer, musician, and visual artist who has been working around the United States for over forty years. He has lived in many parts of the country, including New York, Austin, Boulder, Ann Arbor, Chicago, and San Francisco, and currently lives and works in Oakland, CA. They are the author of Mammal, Unit of Agency, Be A Bough Tit, Sudden Windows, Poems for Teeth, The Orange Book, and ten chapbooks, and have writing in over 100 magazines and journals. He has flash memoir pieces about forgotten San Francisco cultures of the 80s recently published in Fourteen Hills #23 and The San Franciscan #8. You can find more about their work and scandals at www.richardloranger.com.