To: Board of Supervisors
Department or Agency Name(s): Board of Supervisors
Staff Name and Phone Number: Supervisor Chris Coursey, 707-565-2241
Vote Requirement: Majority
Supervisorial District(s): Countywide
Recommended Action:
Title
Adopt a Gold Resolution Honoring Elizabeth C. Herron as Sonoma County Poet Laureate. (Countywide)
End
Executive Summary:
Adopt a Gold Resolution Honoring Elizabeth C. Herron as Sonoma County Poet Laureate. (Countywide)
Discussion:
Every Poet Laureate is a Sonoma County resident whose poetry manifests a high degree of excellence, who has produced a critically acclaimed body of work, and who has demonstrated a commitment to the literary arts in Sonoma County.
After attending the University of Hawaii, Elizabeth earned a Masters in Counseling at San Francisco State University. She studied the origin of aesthetic behavior and received a PhD in Psychology from the University for Integrative Learning, a fleeting distance-learning program founded by graduates of the Harvard School of Education. She joined the Counseling Center at Sonoma State University and subsequently moved to a faculty position, teaching Creative Writing, Creativity and Contemplative Practice, and Ecological Identity.
Elizabeth writes poetry and articles on art and ecology, the role of art in society, and the importance of natural systems and biodiversity in the physical and spiritual well-being of individuals, communities, and the planet. The theme of her tenure as Sonoma County poet laureate is Being Brave.
Herron’s artistic work includes collaboration with other poets, musicians and visual artists for performances and print projects. She writes essays as well as poetry, and her work appears in literary journals and magazines including Reflections, West Marin Review, Free State Review, Silk Road, Orion, Parabola, Ions, Comstock Review, Eco-Citizen and Jung Journal.
Her poetry shaped itself into four full-length manuscripts, nine books, as well as various chapbooks. Insistent Grace, published a year and a half ago by Fernwood Press brings together poems of the natural world -largely watershed poems. Her forthcoming book (also from Fernwood) is a gathering of poems written about the ramifications of climate change and presented in a somewhat chronological arrangement, going back to a log of Pacific Coast environmental data begun over a decade ago and completed in a long poem titled Report (previously published by dPress as a chapbook). Her current manuscript under-construction brings together more personal poems that have to do with family and domestic life as well as how those are impacted by global events such as the war in Ukraine.
Prior Board Actions:
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Fiscal Summary
Narrative Explanation of Fiscal Impacts:
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Narrative Explanation of Staffing Impacts (If Required):
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Attachments:
Gold Resolution
Related Items “On File” with the Clerk of the Board:
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