Mendocino County Poet Laureate Honored with Prize & More
for Immediate Release
from the Mendocino County Poet Laureate Program
media contact: Kirk Lumpkin, kirk@twinberry.net, (707) 621-3215
Mendocino County Poet Laureate Honored with Prize
Mendocino County Poet Laureate Devreaux Baker was recently awarded the 2024 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry prize from the Nuclear Age Foundation, an annual celebration of poetic excellence that invites poets from around the world to submit their poems. First prize for the winning poem was $1,000 and publication. The Nuclear Age Foundation’s work also includes the Waging Peace essay project; the Nuclear Zero lawsuits which in 2014 forced the U.S. Federal District Court and the International Court of Justice to confront the injustices inflicted by the U.S. nuclear program on the Marshall Islands; the Nuclear Files, a pioneering web-based open-access history and archive of nuclear history; and participation in the negotiations surrounding the Treaty for the Prevention of Nuclear weapons, ratified in 2021. The Nuclear Age Foundation has sponsored poetry, art, and wide-ranging philosophical debate and over the years has collaborated with Desmond Tutu, Jacques Cousteau, Queen Noor of Jordan, the XIVth Dalai Lama, Yehudi Menuhin, Carl Sagan, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Jonathan Schell, Elaine Scarry and many others. (See the bottom of this email for Devreaux Baker’s award winning poem which you are encouraged to reprint.)
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Poetry at the Mendocino Fungus Festival
The first annual Fungus Festival & Cultural Convergence sponsored by the Mendocino Coast Mushroom Club at the Caspar Community Center in Caspar, CA will include the MycoLicious MycoLuscious MycoLogical Poetry Show on Saturday, November 16th, 5:00-6:45pm featuring Mendocino County Poet Laureate Devreaux Baker; festival presenter and visiting poet Art Goodtimes, former Poet Laureate of the Western Slope (of the Colorado Rockies) and one of the originators of the Telluride Mushroom Festival; Mendocino County Youth Poet Laureate Frej Barty; and accomplished Mendocino County poets: Joe Smith, Blake More (Poet Laureate of Point Arena), Larry Felson, and Kirk Lumpkin.
For complete information on tickets and the full schedule of the Fungus Festival & Cultural Convergence on Saturday, November 16-Sunday, November 17, 2024 go to www.mendocinocoastmushroomclub.org.
Mendocino County Poet Laureate in Ukiah
For a significantly longer reading than at the Fungus Festival, Mendocino County Poet Laureate Devreaux Baker will be featured in the Writers Read series on Thursday, November 21, 2024 at 7PM at the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah. Admission is by donation.
Devreaux Baker has published five books of poetry and received the PEN Oakland Award for her book of poetry, Red Willow People. Her poetry has been published in numerous magazines and journals including The Crab Orchard Review, ZYZZYVA, Persimmon Tree, and Poetry in Flight/Poesia En Velo. She was recently awarded the 2024 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry prize which she also won in 2019. Her other poetry awards include: the 2022 Fischer International Poetry Prize, the 2017 Joe Gouveia Outermost International Poetry Prize, the 2016 U.S. Poets in Mexico Award, the 2012 Hawaii Council on Humanities International Poetry Prize, and the 2010 Women’s Global Leadership Poetry Award. She has received the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Poetry Fellowship in Taos, New Mexico; the Hawthornden Castle Poetry Fellowship in Edinburgh, Scotland; and the MacDowell Poetry Fellowship in Peterborough, New Hampshire. She has taught in this county with the California Poets in the Schools program and produced The Voyager’s Radio Program of Original Student Writing for KZYX with a California Arts Council Grant.
An open mic session will follow the featured reading. Maximum time for each reader is six minutes. Event will end at 9 PM.
PSAs
30 sec.: The Mendocino Coast Mushroom Club’s first annual Fungus Festival & Cultural Convergence at the Caspar Community Center in Caspar will include the MycoLicious MycoLuscious MycoLogical Poetry Show on Saturday, November 16th, 5:00-6:45pm. For more information go to mendocinocoastmushroomclub.org, again that’s mendocinocoastmushroomclub.org.
45 sec.: The Mendocino Coast Mushroom Club’s first annual Fungus Festival & Cultural Convergence at the Caspar Community Center in Caspar will include the MycoLicious MycoLuscious MycoLogical Poetry Show on Saturday, November 16th, 5:00-6:45pm with Mendocino County Poet Laureate Devreaux Baker, Art Goodtimes former Poet Laureate of the Western Slope (of the Colorado Rockies) and one of the founders of the Telluride Mushroom Festival, and more on Saturday, November 16th, 5:00-6:45pm. For more information go to mendocinocoastmushroomclub.org, again that’s mendocinocoastmushroomclub.org.
60 sec.: The Mendocino Coast Mushroom Club’s first annual Fungus Festival & Cultural Convergence at the Caspar Community Center in Caspar will include the MycoLicious MycoLuscious MycoLogical Poetry Show featuring Mendocino County Poet Laureate Devreaux Baker; Art Goodtimes former Poet Laureate of the Western Slope (of the Colorado Rockies) and one of the founders of the Telluride Mushroom Festival; Mendocino County Youth Poet Laureate Frej Barty; and accomplished Mendocino County poets: Joe Smith, Blake More, Larry Felson, and Kirk Lumpkin on Saturday, November 16th, 5:00-6:45pm. For information on tickets and the full Saturday and Sunday schedules of the Fungus Festival & Cultural Convergence go to mendocinocoastmushroomclub.org, again that’s mendocinocoastmushroomclub.org.
Escape Into The Unknown
by Devreaux Baker
In the war tunnel you sit with your back pressing out
a landscape of fear into brick and mortar.
a landscape of fear into brick and mortar.
Just outside light is wavering on the horizon
unsure if it is safe to flood this terrain.
Two dogs slowly cross the idea of what once was
a street and walk across a field of broken buildings
headed someplace else They have joined the tribe
of those escaping to the unknown where
there are no longer beds or chairs, refrigerators
or running water. You hold onto a kitchen in your mind;
smooth stone floors, cabinets your grandfather
built with bare hands, leveling the wood, smoothing
and shaving, humming a song that embedded notes
into the shape of drawers and doors, countertops
and hinges. You carry his song tucked into the
cabinet in the corner of the kitchen you have saved
inside your mind. In the evening, blue light drifts
through this room and you whisper the word
twilight, that comes and goes now as a moment
held inside you along with the small sounds
of women preparing an evening meal. You hear
their laughter that rises and falls in this place
you are holding onto. There is the smell of rosemary
and sumac, ginger and bay laurel. You sit in the war tunnel
escaping the broken dream of your life by conjuring
the kitchen of your grandmother’s house, mouthing words
of hope, creating a landscape of the known world
to carry with you on your escape into the unknown.