Join nationally acclaimed poet David St. John reading with Maxine Chernoff and Joanne Kyger in beautiful Angelico Hall on the Dominican Campus following a rousing afternoon of readings by outstanding spoken-word artists from around the Bay Area. The Fourth Annual Marin Poetry Festival headliners of David St. John and Maxine Chernoff bring a wealth of cutting-edge literary talent while Joanne Kyger is an outstanding personification of the "beat" generation of poets merging a Buddhist sensibility with the social awakenings of the 1960's.

David St. John's books include: The Face: A Novella in Verse (HarperPerennial, 2005); Prism (2002); In the Pines: Lost Poems (1999) Study for the World's Body: New and Selected Poems (1994), which was nominated for the National Book Award; Terraces of Rain: An Italian Sketchbook (1991); No Heaven (1985); The Shore (1980); and Hush (1976). He is also the author of a volume essays and interviews, Where the Angels Come Toward Us (White Pine Press, 1995) and has edited numerous collections including The Pushcart Book of Poetry (2006) and American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry (2009) which he co-edited with Cole Swenson. The poet Robert Hass says of St. John's writing: "It's not just gorgeous, it is go-for-broke gorgeous. It is made out of sentences, sweeping through and across the meticulous verse stanzas, that could have been written, for their velvet and intricate suavity, by Henry James."

Maxine Chernoff is chair of the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State. Her books include Some of Her Friends That Year (Coffee House Press, 2002); A Boy in Winter (Crown, 1999), American Heaven (Coffee House Press, 1996), Signs of Devotion (Simon and Schuster, l993), Plain Grief (Summit, l991), and Bop (Vintage, l987). Also the author of seven collections of poems: Evolution of the Bridge (Salt Publishing, 2004), World: Poems (Salt Publishing, 2002), Leap Year Day (ACP, 1991), Japan (Avenue B Press, l988), New Faces of l952 (Ithaca House, l985), Utopia TV Store (The Yellow Press, l979) and A Vegetable Emergency (Beyond Baroque Foundation, l977). Poetry and fiction published in The Paris Review, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, Story, Partison Review, North American Review, Triquarterly, and Conjunctions. Frequent reviewer for the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. P.E.N Syndicated Fiction Award, l985. New York Times Notable Book, 1993. Editor (with Paul Hoover) of New American Writing.

Joanne Kyger has published more than twenty books of poetry and prose, including Going On: Selected Poems, 1958–1980, (1983);[5] and, Just Space: poems, 1979-1989 (1991). She has taught for 35 years at the Univeristy of Naropa summer writing program in Boulder, Colorado,
and also for many years at the 'late'  New College of San Francisco More recent poetry collections include God Never Dies (Blue Press), The Distressed Look (Coyote Books), Again (La Alameda Press), and As Ever: Selected Poems published by Penguin Books, About Now: Collected Poems from National Poetry Foundation, which won the 2008 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles National Literary Award for Poetry and most recently, Not Veracruz from Libellum Press, and Lo and Behold from Voices from the American Land. In 2006 she was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.

Saturday afternoon's headliner, Bucky Sinister, has written three books of poetry, one of which also contains hort stories and appears in The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. A self-described "street poet," his main poetic influences are Charles Bukowski, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Miguel Pinero, and Sherman Alexie. A late-comer to the comedy world, he released a comedy CD before doing muisc and comedy clubs. His comedy heroes are Greg Proops, Patton Oswalt, Jen Kirkman, Christopher Titus, and Ron Shock, though he does not sound like any of them. He is also a reluctant self-help guru based on his experiences in a 12 Step group. His message is “get someone to help you.”

Charlie Getter, Sam Sax, Steven Gray and Sarah Page are also seasoned "street performers" whose memorized works are anything but academic, while literary aspects of Bay Area poetry scene will also be on hand during the afternoon with San Francisco University professior Dean Rader and Dominican Professor Judy Halebsky who will also host a group of outstanding Dominican writing students reading their poetry. Former Poets in the School Co-ordinator Prartho Sereno, Claudia Champeline of the Stinson Beach art gallery fame, Javier Zamora, a young emerging Marin talent and Rebecca Foust, an award-winning poet on the Marin Poetry Center board will round out the afternoon, hosted by Berkeley's Kirk Lumpkin, a seasoned writer and poet himself. Rhythmic accompaniment to readings will be offered by Geordie Van Der Bosch, a frequent contribtor to great readings in San Francisco.