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POETRY READING TO CELEBRATE TRANSCENDENT LOVE?

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As part of its ongoing 60th anniversary celebration, and in conjunction with Valentine's Day, ACCI Gallery will hold a?poetry reading?on?Feb. 13, 2019.?The ceremony starts at 7:30 p.m. at ACCI (1652 Shattuck Ave. at Lincoln St.). Refreshments will be served at this free event.

The poet in the spotlight is Georgia-based?Lisa Anne Smartt,?a linguist and educator reading from her 2018 work?Veil: Poems from Across the Threshold.?She believes she channeled the poems in this volume from the spirit of her dead father, the poet Morton Felix.

Just weeks after he died, Smartt heard his voice asking that she transcribe poems meant for?Susan Felix,?his wife of of 54 years (and art ambassador to the City of Berkeley). Smartt didn't know whether she were truly hearing his spirit or merely imagining it, but she found the poems beautiful, so she collected them to honor his life and love.?

The poems reflect an expansive vision, as if from a perspective much greater than ours. Rafael Gonzalez, Berkeley's poet laureate, writes, "And whose poems are they? Lisa's? Her father Morton's from beyond the threshold? It matters not. What matters are the poems themselves, celebrations of life and of love, lyrical, tender and passionate ..."

In her work, Smartt has long focused on language and consciousness. In 2017 she published?Words at the Threshold,?in which she analyzed people's dying words, finding that when language is not literal or clear, it often reflects unusual and expanded perspectives. Her 2018 novel?Cante Bardo,?a tale of a flamenco singer making peace with the past before returning to Earth for a new life, also feels "channeled" from beyond.?

Phrases from poems in?Veil?will be on display at ACCI during the reading. Susan Felix chose the phrases and inscribed them into pit-fired ceramic plaques.