Author Archives: Oscar Bermeo

Anticipating: LOST, The Series Finale

I’m coming to accept the fact that the Lost finale will disappoint me. Not because the writing, characterizations, or acting has been bad, I actually think this season is as strong as any of the previous seasons. Ok, the first season kicked major ass and hooked me on the Island mythos with the quickness. So, yeah, that was the best season but novelization like teenage romance is all about fast, addictive starts; rocky, drama filled middles; and awkward, sloppy endings. That’s why Lost is bound to fall short on its promise, and that’s why I will be super-glued to the television on Sunday to see exactly how far it will fall from my grace.

I mention novelization because teledramas like the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Sopranos, and Battlestar Galactica have really given novels a run for their money as the modern myth makers. I have no doubt in my mind that future generations will speak of the work of Ronald D. Moore and J.J. Abrams in the same breath as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. In fact, I’d bet they’d be more associated with these great authors then they will be filmmakers or even other television producers since characters like Quark, Big Pussy and Gaius Baltar have some serious sci-fi cred going on.

The other reason I say novelization is to make sure I don’t trample on the iconic “Great American Novel” which none of these shows are since (and here is where I don my I ♥ Haters shirt) putting together a TV novelization is harder than putting together a novel.
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Launch party for 580 Split, Issue 12


580 Split, Issue 12
Originally uploaded by OBermeo

OAKLAND, CA — 580 Split, the literary journal of Mills College’s Graduate English Department, presents an evening of poetry, prose, and music to celebrate the release of Issue 12. The event will take place on Friday, May 21, from 5:30 to 8 p.m., at the Layover bar in downtown Oakland (1517 Franklin Street). It will be free and open to the public.

Among the many talented Bay area poets and writers featured in this year’s issue of the journal, who will be sharing some of their most recent work at the launch party, are Chinaka Hodge, Josh Healey, Aimee Suzara, Oscar Bermeo, Sonya Shah, Amir Rabiyah, and Janine Mogannam.

There will be an informal reception following the reading, with DJ Diet spinning a soulful assortment of music old and new, as well as an opportunity to be among the first to purchase the print edition. The print edition will also be available for purchase online after the event.

We hope to see you there…

Oakland Word Summer-Urban Poetry: Found in the Everyday

Oakland Word Summer—Urban Poetry: Found in the Everyday with Oscar Bermeo

This poetry workshop is for beginning and advanced writers seeking to expand the definition of urban poetry.

The class will focus on incorporating routine speech from common urban environments and transforming pedestrian situations into powerful personal narratives that define and document our history with city. We will create persona poems, craft narratives of place, and remix poetic verse with found language.

Students will use poems to map out and define their place in city. They will develop poems from both the insider and observer perspective to see where these viewpoints intersect and depart. Students will study and emulate poems of place that incorporate elements of codeswitching between English and Spanish (and other languages), oral tradition and written text by such authors as Willie Perdomo, Barbara Jane Reyes, Frances Chung, Patricia Smith and others.

Oakland Public Library (Chavez Branch)
3301 E 12th St (near Fruitvale BART)
5 Saturdays, 1-2:30 pm
June 12, 19, 26 and July 3, 10

FREE
Wheelchair Accessible

To register, email your name, email address, phone number and workshop title to theoaklandword@gmail.com by June 4.

About Oscar Bermeo
Born in Ecuador and raised in the Bronx, Oscar Bermeo is the author of the self-published poetry chapbooks Anywhere Avenue, Palimpsest and Heaven Below. He has been a featured writer at a variety of institutions including the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Intersection for the Arts, Kearny Street Workshop, Bronx Academy of Letters, Rikers Island Penitentiary, San Quentin Prison, the Loft Literary Center, Sacramento Poetry Center, UC Berkeley, UNC-Chapel Hill, NYU and many others. Oscar is a BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own), CantoMundo, IWL (Intergenerational Writers Lab) and VONA (Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation) poetry fellow.

He makes his home in Oakland, with his wife, poeta Barbara Jane Reyes. For more information, please visit: www.oscarbermeo.com.

Oakland Word

Harriet Caught the Vapors


Originally uploaded by Pro-Zak

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about sharing poetry in different forums to help reach different audiences and how so many poems sound so similar because they are written for only one room. For me, one of those rooms include poetry blogs especially since they give a poet not only the opportunity to share their work but also give valuable insight into process, revision and recitation. Even though poetry blogs are still relatively young in comparison to the advent of the Information Age in general and incredibly new when compared to the Gutenberg Revolution, they’ve offered some great information about how poets think. They also offer a lot of crap about folks who seem to want to blog about everything except how they actually put a poem together.

One of the best places to see this mix of the dope and the whack in poetic action was the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Blog. I say was because as of today What’s New at Harriet is that it has gone from being a crossroad of dialogue to a dead end alley of news links making it no more better and probably less efficient than setting up a Google alert for: poetry, poetics, poems.
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Currently Viewing: Paperback Dreams

Just got through seeing the very well-done documentary Paperback Dreams which goes over the origins, importance and fates of two Bay Area independent bookstores: Cody’s Books and Kepler’s Books.

I haven’t had a chance to visit Kepler’s but the documentary sure did make me want to hop in the hooptie and pay em a visit.

As for Cody’s, I was lucky enough to have visited the iconic Telegraph Ave store and even got to catch a poetry reading there before they closed up shop. The old space on Telegraph has yet to be filled so when ever I pass by a part of me hopes to see a sign saying that Cody’s will be back.

Back to Paperback Dreams, the documentary is able to put the cultural importance of both bookstores into historical perspective while also maintaining a pragmatic edge by showing us how hard it is to keep an indy bookstore financially solvent in current times. It’s not just the economy that threatens the corner bookshop but also community apathy—we all love our institutions when they’re about the close their doors but can we love em while they’re still strugglin’ to survive?

A more focused series of questions for this blog’s audience (which I imagine is poetry authors and aficionados): Will Amazon host our poetry readings? Will Barnes and Noble carry our chapbooks? Will Borders order our favorite titles based on community demand? For those multidisciplinary poets: Will any of the big chains carry your CDs and/or videos of live performance? Can we continue to survive as poet authors if the independent bookstore fades away?