Date: Thursday, November 17, 2016
Time: 5:00–6:00 p.m.

Location: Centro Cultural Ignacio Ramírez “El Nigromante”
Hernández Macías 75
Sala Literaria, 1st Floor

Admission: A donation of $50 pesos is suggested

Global Citizens Roberts, Cervantes, Kalu Jacobson to Headline Poetry Café

By Maia Williams

Poetry Café Bellas Artes will feature three poets from around the globe with ties to San Miguel de Allende on Thursday, November 17th: Carolyn (Cazz) Roberts, James Cervantes, and Uchechi Kalu Jacobson.

Carolyn RobertsCarolyn Roberts was born in Sydney, Australia. She writes fiction and non-fiction and poetry. She is currently writing a novel about an Australian family. She also writes children’s stories about Australian animals and her Mexican dogs. She was Chief Assistant Editor to Eva Hunter at SOL: ENGLISH WRITING IN MEXICO online literary magazine 2011 to 2015 and in her spare time she tends a small organic greenhouse at the back of the family farm.

James CervantesJames Cervantes’s latest book is From Mr. Bondo’s Unshared Life, a series of closely related persona poems. Sleepwalker’s Songs: New & Selected Poems, published in 2012, is comprised of 32 new poems and poems selected from six previous collections. Other books include Temporary Meaning, The Headlong Future, The Year Is Approaching Snow, and Changing The Subject, a dialogue in poems with Halvard Johnson. He was editor of The Salt River Review for thirteen years and is currently Foreign Correspondent for Hinchas de Poesia. He is the editor of In Like Company: The Porch & Salt River Review Anthology, published by Mad Hat Press. Cervantes has been publishing poetry in print since 1969 and almost exclusively online since 1997.

Once upon a time, he could truthfully claim to be a professional musician, a cellist, as a matter of fact, and performed with the United States Air Force Orchestra’s Strolling Strings at the White House for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. There were many other less exciting gigs.

Cervantes’s varied past also includes work as a psychiatric aide at a private mental institution, a stint as a late night, jazz dj, a near-death experience in 1970, and teaching English and writing at several colleges and universities. He studied at the University of Washington with David Waggoner, Mark Strand, and Richard Hugo, and earned his MFA at the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop, where he studied with Donald Justice, Marvin Bell, and Norman Dubie.

Uchechi Kalu JacobsonUchechi Kalu Jacobson is a published poet, UX web designer and technology entrepreneur. Uchechi attended University of California, Berkeley, where she was mentored by the late poet June Jordan. In 2006, she published Flowers Blooming Against A Bruised Gray Sky, her first full-length book published by Whit Press. The collection was hailed as “strong as an African orchid” by poet Ruth Forman, and nominated for a Northern California Book Award. Her second collection, Resembling the Sea, is awaiting publication. Poet Sam Hamill praises the collection of poems: “In these poems of love and family, the simplest language becomes increasingly luminous as the word, the syllable, the vowel, rises into intense lyricism, revealing Uchechi Kalu’s passionate spirit and large-hearted enthusiasm for living and dreaming. Modest in their ambition and bold in their telling, these are ultimately praises and prayers to the present, a gift for which I am grateful.”

Nigerian-born, Uchechi currently alternates residences in New Orleans and San Miguel de Allende, and is the CEO of Linking Arts, a full service web design and development agency she co-owns with her husband.

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Poetry Café Bellas Artes meets monthly, September through April, to feature local and visiting poets (established and emerging) sharing original work in a casual setting.

Please arrive a few minutes early. Seating is first come, first seated. Depending on the season, a cold or hot beverage will be served.

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