Dear Poets and Poetry Lovers,
Please join us Friday, March 6 (7-9PM) for the next Del Ray Poetry Reading at St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub, 2300 Mt. Vernon Ave. Our featured poets are Del Ray residents and long-time poetry-reading attendees Devin Reese and Peter Heimberg. Our theme this month is Science. We look forward to seeing you!
Your cohosts,
Wendi Kaplan and Neal Learner,
About Devin Reese
Devin Reese is a science writer and currently the Executive Editor of Natural History magazine. She holds a B.A. in Ethology from Harvard and a Ph.D. in Ecology from Cal Berkeley. Much of her science writing can be found in her writing portfolio. Inspired by motherhood and her Master Naturalist training, Reese’s poetry focuses on understanding humans through the lens of animal behavior and nature. Because Devin is also a sweep rower and a strength coach at the YMCA, she touches on athletic themes in her work. Devin’s poetry has appeared in Poet’s Choice, Wingless Dreamer, Broad River Review, The Joan Ramseyer Memorial Poetry Contest, and Poetry Festival.
About Peter Calvin Heimberg
I’m new to poetry. At least new to writing poetry. Ten years tops. I have been, however, a heavy consumer of poetry from childhood and I carry many poems through life with me like a set of roadmaps for the universe. I understand, personally, how important and valuable poetry can be in our daily lives.
I am a practicing physicist. I love the simplicity and reductionist approach embodied in fundamental physical principles. Like physical laws, good poems are simple, clean, and dense with information and meaning. Tools for building.
Words matter. We are seeing the power of words serving both good and evil objectives every day across the world and here at home. Poetry should seek to find truth and, in its best form, should bring the reader along for the ride to discover the truth. Preparing the reader to see, not force feeding them. The more we understand, the more accepting of each other we become, and the more we use our words to build up and enrich, rather than to tear down and deceive.
I write about what I know and what I am about to know: I coach high school tennis, I coach adult rowing, I do physics, I like people. I sometimes joke that my subject matter ranges all the way from the mundane to the ordinary. But the ordinary can reveal itself as beautiful and rich if we look closely enough to see the world in a grain of sand, after all.