Poets on Padre

Meet the Author Series at Paragraphs

Saturday April 18^th  2015    1 to 3 PM

Poets on Padre

Book discussion, reading and signing with poets Geoff Rips

and Chip Dameron

“Waiting for an Etcher”. From life along the South Texas border to travels abroad to the vitality of family bonds, Waiting for an Etcher provides a series of memorable images and insights.

Chip Dameron’s eye for detail and gift of phrasing offer readers the opportunity to enter the world of each poem and experience its landscape.

Chip Dameron is the author of five collections of poems and a travel book. His poems and essays on contemporary writers have appeared in numerous literary magazines and journals around the country and abroad. He has co-edited two literary magazines, Thicket and Chachalaca Poetry Review, and served on the editorial board of four others. A two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize in poetry and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he lives and writes in Brownsville, Texas

“The Calculus of Falling Bodies”. The poems in this collection span the 40 years in which Geoff Rips has undertaken a deeply personal attempt to understand the mystery of things. The pieces parallel his interest in the greater world and burrow deep inside his own psyche in the attempt to find meaning. His poems include the pantheon of subjects embraced by poets through the ages—life, death, love, and family—and they discuss the natural world and the material world, reality TV shows, looking for work, traffic, the lives of window washers and hot dog vendors, the wetlands, and pelicans, plovers, and dolphins. This is the whole of life, seen by looking closely at its parts.

Geoff Rips was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. He is a former editor of the Texas Observer and has been a Soros Open Society Institute Fellow. He worked as the Freedom-to-Write Committee coordinator for PEN American Center and was the principal author of its important report, UnAmerican Activities (City Lights Books, 1981). His 2008 novel, The Truth, received the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) Award for the Novel. Rips has worked with community organizations along the Texas/Mexico border to bring water and wastewater services to border colonias. He currently works for Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and PEN American Center and has published poetry, fiction and journalism in various places over the years. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Nancy Maniscalco. They have two daughters, Gabriela and Sascha.

This event is free and open to the public

Paragraphs On Padre Boulevard, 5505 Padre Blvd. South Padre Island, TX

For information call us at 956-433-5057