The event will run from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. with poetry readings beginning at 4:30 p.m.
No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
“Ekphrasis” according to The Oxford Classical Dictionary, means “the rhetorical description of a work of art.” Edward Hirsch, in his resource, A Poet’s Glossary, quotes Paul Valéry as saying, “Each work of art demands its response.”
Annice Jacoby and Maw Shein Win invited accomplished poets Adrian Arias, James Cagney, Jennifer Futernick, Heather June Gibbons, and Yiskah Rosenfeld to respond to the work in Julie Heffernan’s solo exhibtion, "Whether You Fall."
Julie Heffernan’s paintings cover many intricate and intriguing subjects that beg for a call and response: feminism, eco-sanity, the destruction and construction of paradise, chaos and isolation, intimacy and beauty, civilization and ugliness, the past and the present colliding and sliding onto a collective raft of hope. These rich themes engaged the poets with contemporary vigor and contemplation of imagined worlds.
The poets represent an exciting range of celebrated SF Bay Area voices from the lyrical to the incantatory.
Previews of the corresponding paintings are available on our website.
Art cards, featuring poems and paintings, are available in EXiT at Catharine Clark Gallery.
If wish to purchase one for $8, please email Halden Willard at EXIT@cclarkgallery.com.
BIOS
Adrian Arias, a multidisciplinary artist of Moche descent, fuses poetry, visual art, performance, and social justice into transformative work. Guided by ancestral dreams, he bridges reality and imagination, inviting audiences into realms of memory and creation. His murals include commissions for Google, Magic Theater, Clarion Alley, Freight & Salvage, and locations in Peru, Italy, and Mexico, including a three-story mural at Turk and Hyde in San Francisco. Adrian’s honors include an Isadora Duncan Award for Solaz, a multidisciplinary project, and residencies at the de Young Museum, CAST, and European institutions. As co-founder of Mission Arts Performance Project (MAPP), he creates multisensory works like Luna Negra and Tarot in Pandemic & Revolution. His latest book, Mar de Palabras para Amar, is a poetic dictionary of sensations. adrianarias.com
Oakland born poet James Cagney is the author of two books of poetry, including MARTIAN: The Saint of Loneliness, winner of 2021 James Laughlin Award from Academy of American Poets. Please Visit JamesCagneyPoet.com
Jennifer Futernick holds a B. A. in Humanities from the University of California at Berkeley and a Masters in Library Science from San Jose State. She was a research librarian, editor, and writer at McKinsey & Company for over 20 years, then self-employed as a freelance editor at Third Word Editing. She is one of eight poets in the letterpress edition of A Small Box of Poets (Protean Press) and is author of the poetry chapbook, One Curve of Sugar (Legacy Press). In 2011, the storied Capra Press re-launched with her memoir, I Never Expected This Good Life: Poems and Stories. She is currently working on a book of praise, a collection of tributes she’s written over the past 30 years.
Heather June Gibbons is the author of the poetry collection Her Mouth as Souvenir (University of Utah Press), winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize, a finalist for the Northern California Book Award and a recommended read in O, the Oprah Magazine. She has received fellowships and awards from the Academy of American Poets, Vermont Studio Center, the Fine Arts Work Center, and Best New Poets. She lives in San Francisco. More about her work can be found at www.heatherjunegibbons.com.
Yiskah Rosenfeld is the author of Tasting Flight, runner-up for the Arthur Smith Prize and a finalist for the Wheelbarrow Books Prize, and Naked Beside Fish, an ekphrastic chapbook. She holds an MFA in poetry from Mills College. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her awards include the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award, the Reuben Rose Prize and, most recently, a 2023 Frontier Poetry Prize. Poems appear in Lilith Magazine, The Bitter Oleander, Rattle, Wild Gods: An Anthology of Ecstatic Poetry, December Magazine and elsewhere. A single mother by choice, Yiskah teaches workshops on feminism, spirituality, and creativity in the SF Bay Area. yiskahrosenfeld.com
Maw Shein Win's new full-length poetry collection is Percussing the Thinking Jar (Omnidawn, 2024). Her previous full-length collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn, 2020) was nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry, longlisted for the PEN America Open Book Award, and shortlisted for the Golden Poppy Award for Poetry. She is the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito, CA. Win's previous collections include Invisible Gifts and two chapbooks, Ruins of a glittering palace and Score and Bone. mawsheinwin.com
Annice Jacoby has launched large poetry events including City of Poets for the San Francisco Library and Watershed with Robert Hass for the Library of Congress, working with art and poetry in print and performance including Allen Ginsberg, Czeslaw Milosz, Janis Mirikatani, Genny Lim. Her artistic collaborations include public art with Chip Lord, Suzanne Lacy, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Her work includes Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo (Abrams), Fort Point Project, opening performance of the Hague Appeal for Peace, and UNDERCOVER, to rally solutions for the homeless humanitarian crisis. She was Director of Public Relations for SFMOMA and Director of Performing Arts, University of California, Santa Cruz. She co-taught workshops with Julie Heffernan at Anderson Ranch exploring the correspondence between text and image, Landscape and Language & Poetry and Painting. She has been a CAC artist teaching art and poetry, as well as teaching and lecturing at colleges including Bennington, MICA, SF State and Berkeley. www.annicejacoby.com
