These last weeks, stress had reached a fever pitch. After waking up at 3AM night after night with a brain full of tasks, work, and issues to resolve, I started whispering a mantra: “There is only now.” And there is. Only now. As a working writer, teacher, coach, member of two non-profit boards and the [...]
At the registration table for the annual California Poets in the Schools conference a couple of weeks ago, we were handed registration packets and a copy of “The Working Poet” – with a smile. Yes, first, there was warmth and a wonderful welcome. The backdrop for the conference was the 200-acre breathtakingly beautiful Institute for [...]
“A Dreamer’s Guide to Cities” San Francisco Bay Press, Virginia/San Francisco: 2009
In her second full-length poetry collection, Joan Gelfand explores the poignancy of living in a world that is war-torn and environmentally damaged. With a nod to the humorous paradox of modern life, Gelfand writes from the vantage point of a mother, an artist, and a Zen meditator. “A Dreamer’s Guide…” looks beyond the surface of our lives at the connections that make live worth living, and the sensual details that color it. Read More
Seeking Center: A Collection of Poems by Joan Gelfand, Two Bridges Press, Richmond CA: 2006
In Seeking Center, Joan Gelfand joins the reader in a free-wheeling discussion, beyond the poems themselves, regarding what is poetry today, here at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Read More