THREE POETS READ

Friday, October 24th at 7:30 pm, Northtown Books hosts a poetry reading featuring three locally based poets: Therese Keslin, Vanessa Pike and Tim'm West.

Therese Keslin and Vanessa Pike are founders of the Humboldt poetry collective A Reason to Listen, which has hosted poetry slams at the Accident Gallery. They've also collaborated on a chapbook called Excavating the History of Love in addition to their own solo work.

Tim'm West is an educator, essayist, poet, and rapper educated at at Duke and Stanford Universities. He is the author of the poetic memoir Red Dirt Revival and recorded a CD to accompany it, Songs From Red Dirt. He's also recently released a new CD, Blakkboy Blue(s) and its literary complement Flirting.

November Reading Group Selection

We will be reading Alice Munro's latest collection of short stories, The View from Castle Rock on the 9th of November.

Learn more about the book and view a brief reader's guide here.

We meet the second sunday of every month at 5:30 here at the bookstore. Reading group books receive a ten percent discount.

Walking with Nobby

Friday, October 10th from 7 to 9 pm, author Dale Pendell signs his new book Walking with Nobby, an account of his conversations with the late philosopher Norman O. Brown on such various subjects as paganism, world religions, Dionysus, Marx, and Freud.

View a sample chapter here.

Pendell is perhaps best known for his Pharmako trilogy (PHARMAKO/GNOSIS, PHARMAKO/DYNAMIS, and PHARMAKO/POEIA) , an epic poetic study of botany, alchemy, spirituality, psychology, and history.

He's also written Inspired Madness, a nonfiction discussion of the Burning Man festival, and has been anthologized in the Wisdom Book of American Buddhist Poetry and Baby Beats.

For an L.A. Times interview with Pendell, go here.

On his previous books:

"Dale Pendell’s Inspired Madness confirms the gaiety and sprightly insight of our free human community, naked or clothed, muddy, dusty, clustered or soclitary, sharing and being. Is this old-time paganism or a hint of some future utopia? For sure it’s in the present moment and Dale brings it down to hearts and minds."
—Gary Snyder

“Pharmako/Poeia is an epic poem on plant humours, an abstruse alchemic treatise, an experiential narrative jigsaw puzzle, a hip and learned wild-nature reference text, a comic paean to cosmic consciousness, an ecological handbook, a dried-herb pastiche, a countercultural encyclopedia of ancient fact and lore that cuts through the present 'conservative' war-on-drugs psychobabble.”
— Allen Ginsberg

"Pendell's ongoing subjects are the botanical 'allies'; humans have always associated with, and the 'pharmakon', the drug that is both poison and cure. A poet, ethnobotanist, and amateur chemist, he's the best writer on drugs to come along since the late Terence McKenna."
— The Village Voice