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Fort Bragg poets Joe Smith and Larry Felson will read their poetry at The Willits Community Theatre Playhouse on Saturday, April 12 at 7 p.m.

Smith and Felson are well-known on the coast because they co-host a reading series at the Cobalt Gallery in Fort Bragg. Larry Felson hails from La Mesa in San Diego County and graduated from the famous School of Hard Knocks in Oakland, California. He participated in a long-
standing Bay Area poetry workshop that included Jack Gilbert, Linda Gregg, George Stanley, and Steven Rood, taught English at Oakland High School for several years, and creative writing and Greek Literature at the Hellenic International School of the Arts in Paros, Greece.

Eight years ago, he moved from Oakland to the Mendocino coast, where he now resides surrounded by birds, trees, ocean, cliffs, and open space. “Living here, Pegasus arrives almost every day and night and insists on taking me for a ride to places I’ve never been, where I
discover new flora and fauna, real and imagined, and explore dimensions of reality, feeling, and thought beyond the limits of the ‘possible’ in the ‘known’ world,” Felson said.

 

Joe Smith’s poems, stories, essays and translations have appeared in dozens of journals, including Manhattan Poetry Review, Mendonesian, Bluff City, Birmingham Poetry Review and The Prospect Review. Pygmy Forest Press published his first collection of pieces, Chopsticks, in 1992. His most recent books, Sappho’s Island (2022) and Hot Pink (2024), were published by Littoral Press.

 

Much of his life has been passed abroad, in Germany, Greece, and Japan. Smith has worked at a variety of jobs, including taking care of a defunct monastery on an Aegean island, moving mummies for a travelling exhibit of Egyptian art, picking tobacco, and teaching English at College of the Redwoods in Fort Bragg. Over the past thirty years he’s been steaming open letters posted by the plants, animals and minerals of the Mendocino coast to read the vital messages hidden inside.

 

This “Starlight Lounge” poetry reading is part of an on-going series hosted and supported by the Willits Community Theatre. In addition, the reading is supported by a grant from Poets and Writers, a nationally-known organization that supports literary artists. The reading will take place at the Willits Community Theatre Playhouse, located at 37 West Van Lane in downtow Willits.

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Admission is by donation and a $10 donation is suggested. No one will be turned away due to lack of funds. Proceeds from the reading will be shared with the featured poets. An open reading will follow Smith and Felson.