Celebrating National Poetry Month and welcoming Spring, five beloved and well-known West County Poet Friends will read from their recent collections. Poets include William Greenwood, Shawna Swetech, Raphael Block, Tamsin Smith and Larry Robinson. Musical accompaniment by David Field.
Free event. Readings, Conversation with the audience, Book Sales and Signing.
William Greenwood was born in Arizona and grew up in California. After graduating from UC he worked with farm workers and small farmers on the Central Coast for 20 years, then another 25 years in many Latin American countries as well as Palestine and Afghanistan. He has translated several Latin American poets and has three chapbooks of poetry. His latest book is "Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Hope". Since 2010 he lives in Sebastopol.
Shawna L. Swetech is a retired hospital nurse, is a poet and mixed-media visual artist. She is also a health coach, using Reiki, intuitive writing and other integrative practices to assist clients on their healing journeys. Her poetry appears in Rattle, The Healing Muse, Ars Medica, Pulse, the American Journal of Nursing, and other journals and anthologies. Her work ranges from the personal to universal, the body to the body politic, drawing from the deep wells of human nature and the natural world. Shawna is a co-host for the monthly reading series, Rivertown Poets. She is the author of a poetry collection based on her thirty-five-year nursing career, entitled Standing in Their Fire, by Kelsay Books. Shawna believes poetry and art are important medicines for the ills of our modern world.
Raphael Block has lived on three continents and resides happily in Northern California. A long-time meditator, he breathes in wonder at Earth’s and our own rhythmic ebb and flow. He is the author of five poetry books, most recently, The Dreams We Share, and produced a monthly Earth-Love Newsletter (2016 – 2025). To learn more about Raphael, please visit his website, raphaelblock.com, where you can listen to three audiobooks and watch a National Geographic-selected five-minute documentary.
Tamsin Smith is a Sonoma-based creator. She has published five collections of poetry — Word Cave, Between First and Second Sleep, Displacement, Geology, The Profound M, and New Species of Color — and a novel XISLE. She also frequently writes art reviews and catalog essays. Smith’s paintings have been widely exhibited in solo and group shows throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Smith co-founded the indie rock band WUNDERCAT, for which she co-writes songs and plays keyboard. Smith holds an MA from Tufts and a BA from Kenyon College, where she graduated summa cum laude with highest honors in English. She’s a Henry Crown fellow at the Aspen Institute.
Larry Robinson is a retired ecopsychologist, recovering politician and
practicing potter. He is the founder and producer of Rumi’s Caravan, a
performance ensemble of poetry in the oral tradition.
David Field is a solo guitar instrumentalist with a romantic and flowing style. Over the decades, he has learned to perfectly adapt his classical training to fingerstyle guitar playing. David has performed with and for many poets and has produced an album of solo guitar instrumentals titled "Wordless Poetry."