Barbara Saxton, featured guest poet for June.
Third Thursday is a monthly poetry program in partnership with Poetry Center San José and hosted by Mighty Mike McGee!
Willow Glen Public Library, 1157 Minnesota Ave, San José, 95125.
Sign up for the open mic begins at 6:30pm. Featured guest poet begins shortly after 7pm. Open mic to follow.
Our guest poet tonight is Barbara Saxton!
Barbara grew up (sort of…) in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, the youngest of four children. She moved to California in her senior year of high school, earned a B.A. in Asian Studies (Chinese language/history emphasis) from UC Santa Barbara, and lived in Hong Kong, Berkeley, and Seattle before returning more or less permanently to the San Francisco Bay Area. She worked in the financial sector for many years, before and after a seven-year stint as an at-home mom to her two young sons. Her “second career,” which she pursued for about seventeen years, was as a middle and high school English teacher. She and Owen have been married for over forty years, and have basically been too happy for their union to show up in many of her poems.
Besides writing (and reading) poetry, Barbara engages in a wide range of interests and activities: performing classical, folk and Eastern European vocal music, teaching, folk dancing, hiking, cooking and traveling. Her chapbook Dual Exposure was published in 2015 by Blue Light Press. De-Classified was published in 2024. Her poems and short fiction have appeared in the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Nature Pictures, Poetry Breakfast, Slippery Elm, River of Earth and Sky: Poetry for the Twenty-First Century, Pandemic Puzzle Poems, Canyon, River, Stone and Light and many other literary journals and anthologies.
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Poetry Center San José's mission is to nurture and promote diverse literary expression in our community as a means of exploring, defining, and enriching the human experience.
For those under 18 years of age who may be attending, we recommend that a parent/legal guardian be with you during the program.
Please observe San José Public Library’s Safety Guidelines.
To request an accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act for library-sponsored events, please call 408-808-2355 or email Accessibility@sjlibrary.org at least three business days prior to the event.