Random Lane Press

Poetry at Albion Hall
2024-11-17 16:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Albion Hall, 143 Albion St, San Francisco, CA, United States
Poetry at Albion Hall
Sunday, November 17, 2024, 4:00 pm
A Sunday afternoon reading featuring eight poets:
Genny Lim, current San Francisco Poet Laureate,
Giovanna Lomanto
Kim Shuck, 7th San Francisco Poet Laureate
David Gorin, Winner of the 2023 Emily Dickinson Award
Deborah Bachels Schmidt NSAA (Lawrence Dinkins, Jr) Rebecca Lee Whiting
Bob Stanley, Sacramento Poet Laureate, 2009-2012
With musical accompaniment by Mike Shea on bass

Join us for this special poetry event!
Sunday, November 17 from 4:00 to 6:00 pm
Doors open at 3:30
Albion Hall is located at 143 Albion St, San Francisco
Seating is limited
Please make your reservation at albionpoetry@gmail.com
Suggested donation $20 per person
All donations will benefit two Bay Area literary organizations:
Colossus Press and The Ina Coolbrith Circle
Note: Donations may be made directly to these organizations, or you may donate at the door.
To support the work of Colossus Press, please donate at https://colossuspress.org/support-colossus-press
To support Ina Coolbrith Circle, please send a check to Gayle Eleanor, Treasurer
1245 Pine Creek Way, #J Concord, CA 94520
(please indicate “Albion Poetry” on check)
Note: Parking is very difficult, we recommend ridesharing or public transit. 16th Street/Mission is the nearest BART station.
FEATURED POETS
Genny Lim was born in San Francisco, and she earned a BA and an MA from San Francisco State University. Lim earned a certificate in broadcast journalism from Columbia University and later worked as a reporter, producer, and commentator for CBS News. Lim is the author of the poetry collections Winter Place (1989), Child of War (2003), and Paper Gods and Rebels (2013). Her work appears in the Oxford Book of Women’s Writing in the United States (1995), and Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island (1980). Lim is the winner of the 1981 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. In 1982, she founded a theater company, Paper Angels Productions, now known as Theatre XX, a company that performs experimental theater. Lim has taught at the New College of California, and her papers are held at UC Santa Barbara. She was named Poet Laureate of San Francisco’s in August 2024.
David Gorin is the author of To a Distant Country, selected by Jennifer Chang for the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship and forthcoming in 2024. His writing received the 2023 Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a BA, MA, and MPhil in English Literature from Yale University. He has taught creative writing and literature at Deep Springs College, Stanford Continuing Studies, the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution (via the Yale Prison Education Initiative), Eastern Correctional Facility (via the Bard Prison Initiative), and Yale.
Kim Shuck is a poet, visual artist, and educator. She is solo author of eleven books, part of editing another eleven. Shuck served as the 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco.
Deborah Bachels Schmidt has published five chapbooks, including Stumbling into Grace, published by Orchard Street Press. She is co-author of Love’s Meditation from Random Lane Press). Her work has appeared in journals including Blue Unicorn, California Quarterly, The Exacting Clam, and The MacGuffin, as well as in numerous anthologies. She has earned awards from the Coolbrith Circle, the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, and Orchard Street Press. This year her poems won grand prizes in the Poets’ Dinner and the Dancing Poetry Festival.
NSAA (Lawrence Dinkins, Jr.) was born in Detroit and moved to California in the 1990s. He studied writing at Sacramento City College and has been writing and performing his poetry for over twenty years. Lawrence served on the board of the Sacramento Poetry Center, and he has hosted dozens of Sacramento poetry events at both Mahogany Urban Poetry and Luna’s Café. Lawrence published Open Mic Sketchbook and And It Is Beautiful with little m press, and his selected poems, Warrior Poet, was published by Random Lane Press in 2019.
Giovanna Lomanto is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and dog costume contest judge (ask her about it), who has published 3 poetry collections, 2 chapbooks, and an art book with various small presses. A recent MFA graduate from NYU, she currently serves as the co-publisher of the indie press Game Over Books and the lead curator of LitQuake’s QTBIPOC event series. Her work can be found in the SFMOMA, KQED, and the bookshelves of her friend’s homes.
Rebecca Lee Whiting has published her poetry in many independent literary magazines and presses including Prometheus Dreaming, Colossus: Freedom, and Colossus:Body.. She has served as an editor for Colossus Press, an Oakland-based literary nonprofit press that funds good works with good art. Rebecca studied creative writing at Bennington College and has a BA from Yale, an MA from the Courtauld, and a JD from UC Berkeley. A Los Angeles native, these days she splits her time between Sea Ranch and San Francisco with her partner and their goldendoodle, Justice.
Bob Stanley has published two books from CW Press, Miracle Shine (2012), and Language Barrier (2024). He has organized poetry events in Northern California for over 40 years, and he served as Sacramento’s fifth Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2012. With his wife Joyce Hsiao, Bob leads online poetry classes and manages Random Lane Press, a small publisher, from their home in Sacramento.
Mike Shea, bass, has played in numerous jazz groups over the years, including a duo with vocalist Michelle Abby, and both a trio and a quintet featuring vocalist Mike Biber. Mr. Shea has performed with poets Lawrence Dinkins and Bob Stanley at the Sacramento Poetry Center, and he played bass in the group that provided accompaniment for a 12-hour performance of Homer’s Iliad at Grace Cathedral in 2023.
The Ina Coolbrith Circle was founded in 1919 by Ina Coolbrith, California’s first Poet Laureate. Today, over 200 ICC members continue to nurture the poetry and history of the Golden State. www.coolpoetry.org
Colossus Press publishes anthologies and organizes events to help fund nonprofits that work for social justice. Colossus’s goal is to create a space to gather in the spirit of resistance to “call out cruelty and support concrete change.” colossuspress.org
Albion Hall is an historic Mission District building known as Equality Hall when it served as a headquarters for the Socialist Party in 1908. From 1912 to 1966 the hall was headquarters for the International Longshoreman’s Association and the Workmen’s Educational Association. This is the first poetry event held at this venerable San Francisco home.
Poetry at Albion is hosted by Leslie Lai and Rebecca Lee Whiting.

Kathryn Hohlwein reads from The Little Chapel in Donegal
2021-06-22 18:00 - 20:00 | CA
Live at Random Lane
6:00 pm on Tuesday, June 22nd
Kathryn will read from her brand new collected poems, The Little Chapel in Donegal.
RSVP if you plan to come – proof of Covid vaccination required at the door!
randomlanepress@gmail.com

Community of Writers - 50th Anniversary
2021-06-11 18:00 - 19:30 | Zoom
Join Random Lane Press and the Community of Writers for an anniversary reading on Zoom – Friday June 11 at 6:00pm Pacific. Hosted by Bob Stanley. Details to follow!

The Random Lane summer poetry series opens with four women poets: Breanna Hardy, Christine Neuman, Jill Stockinger, and Mo Fowler
2021-05-21 18:00 | Zoom
Friday May 21 at 6pm Pacific time on Zoom
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86522706280?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode: [REDACTED]
Breanna Hardy is a poet and arts educator from Solano County with a B.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State University. She is the founder and executive director of Solano Writers Society, an organization dedicated to creating opportunities for writers and inspiring passion for the literary arts within the county. Her poetry is feminine and sensual, grounding readers in their bodies as she blurs the line between fantasy and reality.
Aloe
An expanse of days,
three weeks, a month,
colored lapis, carolina,
and cornflower
with moments that glimmer
and sound like the patter of
rain on the back of my skull.
Cleansing, fasting
to forget instants
that made years
that never existed for us.
I break a leaf from shower
aloe plant, rub bitter, gossamer gel
across tongue – heal burns
of desperate words.
The smell of clean earth
coming and going
to replace the scent
of you
in my memory.
But two words from me to you
and from you to me,
two words, and I’m back.
– Breanna Hardy
Christine Neuman is a graduate student in the creative writing program at Sacramento State University. She has had poems published in various online journals, including Cough Syrup issue #4 and İPalante! issue #2. She likes to read poets that dip their toes into surrealism, like James Tate. She is studying to become a poetry teacher and wants to publish books of her own.
The Goat
I thought I knew loneliness,
but when you’re at the local farmers market
at Carmichael park, Sunday morning
you buy a goat’s foreskin,
sew it onto your back,
and walk through the town proud.
The goat says hello in the eyes
of everyone who stares,
because they cannot see the goat
they hold within.
They have no idea
I am the goat.
I am the wind.
My limbs began to wither.
I do not love marriage.
Her dull smell, her thin string-like hair
wrapped in a ball within my stomach.
The babbling of your partner of ten years.
The unbearable silence returning,
sounding sweeter than any bar talk.
I do not love marital sex.
I do not love polyandry.
Because I keep the worst company
in the company of myself.
– Christine Neuman

Jill Stockinger obtained her MLS from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She worked as a librarian for 42 years, including at the Sacramento Public Library, where she ran an open writing group for sixteen years. Jill retired in 2019, but continues to be an active member of many writing groups. Her poems have been published in several literary magazines. She and her artist husband Max have traveled throughout the US in their 45 years of marriage; they enjoy writing, taking online classes, playing chess, and socializing with their son, his wife and 2 young grandchildren.
Here Is The Moon And Winter
by Jill Stockinger
Winter hangs a moon
above the barn and calls
a hoot owl to celebrate.
The mouse scurries for safety
far below jagged icicles
glistening from the eaves
of the snowbound house
where a man chafes his rough
hands together and feeds
another fat log to the fire.
Smoke rises out the chimney,
the fire barely heating the house.
The smoke lifts shapeshifting forms
in the heavy cold which tries to
hold them but they quiver and
dance to the drawn-out moan of
a passing freight train and then
dissipate under the searchlight
of the silent round moon.
The man scratches at his wiry beard
wondering if he will get any sleep
before day breaks but it keeps
getting harder, harder to deal with
the pain in his back, harder to sleep,
harder to pee and harder to face
the losing that just keeps piling on.
He gets into bed under the quilt
she sewed and hugs the pillow
in the case she embroidered but
with all the aches and pains he
just gives up and sits in his chair
by the fire and visits with the dead
-Jill Stockinger

Mo Fowler is an artist and writer raised here in Sacramento who will begin work as an MFA candidate at UC Irvine this fall. Her forthcoming poetry chapbook, Sit Wild, will be available for preorders July 12. Connect with Mo at mocfowler@gmail.com or @original_mo_fo
WHEN I WAKE UP I AM NOTHING AT ALL
that you would recognize. I am dredging
on locked thumbs toward the miracle
corner of the kitchen’s gone-gray linoleum
where my four dollar coffee pot sits
in a continent of stains I never
clean up. I see characters
in the loose shapes
of the mess, shake my head
to clear them, in the motion spill
again, hot flow over the lips
of my daisy yellow mug
coffee drops steaming dark
onto the bleeding seams of my knuckles
cracked open in the dry January air
in a quiet moment between the cars
that drive past this shaking
room where I kneel
on bare bruised skin in front of the piddling
cracked pot. I take a sip
through my nose
as much as my mouth
the morning is vast
in every direction
still, there is no way to get
what I want in this life
but every sunrise
is beasting and battles and I would rather
be bloody than nothing
at all
– Mo Fowler
