Saturday, August 15, 2020
7-7-30pm
Cartwheels on the Sky Featuring Toni Bernbaum on KGUA FM Gualala
This interview features the fantastic fort bragg poet Toni Bernbaum. Toni declares herself “a bandit of a poet” — Steeling the right to claim herself worthy of giving readings, accepting the blessing of being born with a poet’s soul, she embraces Mary Oliver as she proclaims her self to just let the *“soft fur of her body love what it loves.” Without a writing degree or teaching credit or a long list of publications, not even a chapbook, she shares that her love of language, the element of surprise and self discovery and the timelessness of writing and its revelations, are what drives her credentials.
She has been fortunate, over the years, to study ways to ride the muse in workshops with Dorianne Laux, Joe Millar, Ellen Bass and Marie Howe so she knows a good horse when she sees one. She has sometimes seen her words on the page, in an obscure journal in North Carolina, a Shamanic publication, Sacred Reflections, no longer in print and a while back, had a poem published in the online New Millennium Writings that garnered her an honorable mention. Her work has also been read by poets performing in the traveling poetry show, Rumi’s Caravan.
She has been honored to be a featured reader at poetry events in Mendocino and Point Arena. She especially enjoys offering her poems at a yearly event, Kaleidoscope, sponsored by Spirit House Center for Healing in Fort Bragg, a non-profit she facilitates and founded with her partner Ron Nadeau. Spirit House is where most of her creativity is expressed, in dedicating herself to healing and providing those who are drawn there a wider access to the wisdom within their own hearts.
This show airs live from 7-7:30pm, Saturday, August 15 on KGUA FM 88.3 Gualala, and will stream live on the web at kgua.org