Five public programs (performances, readings, lectures) are scheduled to take place on Saturday afternoons, from February into April, in the CHS galleries in conjunction with the exhibit Poetry and its Arts: Bay Area interactions 1954-2004 (see links below for details on the exhibit).

NORMA COLE in performance with CAROLINE BERGVALL
Saturday February 19, 2:00 pm
San Francisco poet-translator Norma Cole is currently artist in residence at California Historical Society, at work on her project COLLECTIVE MEMORY, which will involve interaction with gallery visitors and result in a fine-print poetry and graphic art edition from Granary Books.  She'll be joined by internationally renowned poet-performer Caroline Bergvall, who makes her home in London and is at present teaching performance writing at Temple University.

CARLOS VILLA and friends
Saturday March 5, 2:00 pm
Multi-media artist Carlos Villa grew up in San Francisco's Manillatown community and has been a prolific painter, sculptor, and teacher (at SF Art Institute and USF) for four decades.  In the 1960s Villa was a member of the Rat Bastard Protective Society--whose purpose was "to prevent cruelty to artists in a society indifferent to their work"--along with fellow San Francisco artists Bruce Conner, Joan Brown, Wally Hedrick, Jay DeFeo, and Manuel Neri.  Villa's recent work involves the examination of artists of the worldwide Filipino diaspora.  He'll be joined on stage by poet friends.

POETRY and its ARTS Group Reading, participants tba
Saturday March 19, 2:00 pm
Join us for an afternoon reading celebrating the poets and artists whose works are on display in the exhibit Poetry and its Arts.  A number of Bay Area poets will read from their own work, as well as from the work of others involved in the exhibit who cannot be with us in person.

A public conversation with DAVID LEVI STRAUSS
Saturday April 2, 2:00 pm
David Levi Strauss is a writer and critic based in New York since 1993, when he left San Francisco after more than a decade.  "Everything I write is influenced by my studies with Robert Duncan and the other poets who formed the Poetics Program at New College in San Francisco from 1980-83, and who conceived of poetics in the root sense, as the study of how things are made."  Author of many articles and essays, his books include Between the Eyes: essays on photography and politics (Aperture), introduction by John Berger, and Between Dog & Wolf: essays on art and politics (Autonomedia). 

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ROBERT GRENIER (hand-drawn poems)
and STAN BRAKHAGE (hand-painted films)
Thursday April 21, 7:30 pm
@ Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Screening Room
Mission & 3rd Sts., in collaboration with San Francisco Cinematheque