Library READINGS for women’s History Month: Journey into self & writIng
Saturday Feb 15, 2 PM, Belmont Library
Saturday, March 1, 2 PM, Millbrae Library
Tuesday, March 4, 6 PM, San Carlos Library
Foster City - Saturday March 8, 2 PM
Half Moon Bay - Monday, March 10, 6 PM
Atherton - Saturday, March 15, 11:30 AM
Portola Valley - Thursday, March 27, 5 PM
About Me:
I teach ESL, volunteer in a jail, hikes, garden, cook, and read Pursuing various geographies—cultural, physical, and spiritual—delight. My poetry appears in SLANT, Minerva Rising, The Haight Ashbury Journal, Black Fox Literary, MiGoZine, Monterey Poetry Review, The Broadkill Review, California Quarterly, New Contexts 2, 3, and 4, and Ginosko Literary, among others. I earned an MFA late in life from a low residence program from Seattle Pacific University. An independent press, Kelsay Books, released Songs Sharp and Tender, touching on travel and the choppy waves of family life while adapting to inter-cultural relationships.
Praise from an accomplished poet and university professor:
“Carol Park’s gorgeous and poignant debut collection, Songs Sharp and Tender, is a love letter to the self in relationship with others and the earth, even as it holds space for the grief and loss that always attends deep love. The poems interrogate fraught identities, personal and political, mapping out a path to wholeness and redemption. Park reflects on the vulnerability of loved ones and the joys and burdens of bearing a self into the world. Through all comes an affirmation of forgiveness and reconciliation sustaining us in a bewildering and beautiful world.” —Heathen Durr
Readers praise Songs Sharp & Tender:
The techie husband of a friend wrote: Carol, we are thoroughly enjoying your poetry. It is truly the finest I have ever encountered. I won’t return the book to (my wife) unless she pleads for it back. It’s clear that you have poured your heart and soul into this work, and it shines through. The stories are deeply moving, drawing readers into the intimate and spiritual realm of your mind in a surreal manner, sharing joys and frustrations with remarkable honesty.
A woman grabbed me. She'd bought a book because she attended a poetry reading to see friends and hadn't read poems since high school. She enthused about how she was enjoyed my book. "I didn't know poetry could be about so many things and so relatable and so varied in how it's written! I read one poem before bed every night."
