This is a press release from Playhouse Arts:
On Saturday, May 11th, local poet Jerry Martien, and local musicians Fred Neighbor (guitar), Gary Davidson (bass), and Mike LaBolle (percussion) return to the Arcata Playhouse for an evening of revelry. Martien will read poems from new and old collections, drawing on half a century of life and performance in Humboldt County venues.
“It’s become a kind of ritual,” he says from his home in Elk River. “Poetry reports on the state of the bioregion.” Martien has read up and down the Pacific coast, from San Francisco to Sitka, but he and his work have always found their home in local readings and in poetry workshops from Petrolia to Forks of Salmon.
His poems take the natural world, forests and rivers and their inhabitants, as his principal subject, but this reading will also take in the homeless, the rate payers and citizens of our towns and service districts, as well as the personal issues of family, aging, and coping with the rise of artificial intelligence.
Martien has performed for several years with Neighbor, Davidson, and LaBolle, claiming that their music provides “the honey that helps the medicine go down.” Copies of his books and CD’s will be available.
The performance begins at 8 p.m. with doors open thirty minutes before the show. Tickets are $18 and are available online at playhousearts.org, by phone reservation to 707-822-1575, or at the event at 1251 Ninth Street, Arcata.
On Saturday, May 11th, local poet Jerry Martien, and local musicians Fred Neighbor (guitar), Gary Davidson (bass), and Mike LaBolle (percussion) return to the Arcata Playhouse for an evening of revelry. Martien will read poems from new and old collections, drawing on half a century of life and performance in Humboldt County venues.
