Roy Mash, Shawn Pittard and Christina Hutchins

July 31st, 4 to 6pm
Rebound Bookstore
1611 4th Street
San Rafael, CA

Established in June 2008, the Londonberry Salon reflects our desire to return poetry to the quiet, intimate setting of the home. Our reading series (ad)venture was inspired by a craft talk by Robert Hass at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, wherein Hass urged poets to forge their own local community of poetry.

The Londonberry Salon is our effort to establish and provide that community in the North Bay of San Francisco. Because it is an event held in our home four times a year, it is by invitation only. We continue to add to the guest list as we meet new people who write or appreciate poetry.

We regularly feature one poet per evening who reads for forty minutes with a brief Q & A session following the reading. Thus far our featured readers have included:

CB Follett
Susan Terris
Terry Ehret
David St. John
Katherine Hastings

In June of 2009, our desire to provide space for local or regional poets manifested itself in an inaugural volume of The Larkfield Review. The anthology featured four poets who read for our spring Poets We Know salon. The criteria was simple: to bring together friends and acquaintances laboring away at the craft of poetry who had not yet had the opportunity to publish a full-length manuscript of poems.

In the end, we brought together Shawn Pittard’s luminous imagery springing from everyday experiences in the Sacramento Valley and foothills with Mary Petrosky’s re-imagined histories and lives of figures in old Argentine photographs with Roy Mash’s playful and humorous take on objects we so often take for granted–fingers, playground antics–with Christina Hutchins’ shimmering lyricism weaving together love and the realm of nature, a weave that “blooms and revises the world.” 

Proceeds from the sale and distribution of The Larkfield Review offset the cost of publication. The review is available for $10 plus $1 shipping. Please contact us at Londonberrysalon@aol.com if you are interested in supporting this and future publications.

Toni L Wilkes and Gregory W Randall

© Toni L Wilkes and Gregory W Randall 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Toni L Wilkes and Gregory W Randall with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.