BPW&P existed in Berkeley, California, from 1968-1991. During that time 30 issues of its magazine, 28 books by individual poets, and an anthology of the work from 1970-1980 were produced and published.
Biweekly writing workshops, which were free and open to the public, provided a forum within the community for the exchange of criticism and support for the writing process. The best material from the workshops as well as outside submissions were presented in the magazine. The anthology, edited by unpaid volunteer Co-op members, offered an eclectic collection of talent from the Bay Area during those years, nurtured and cultivated at the Berkeley Poets Workshop and Press.
The Co-op, a nonprofit organization, beat the odds by surviving for more than two decades as a sanctuary and laboratory for emerging writers and their work to become a Berkeley institution, receiving awards from The National Endowment for the Arts, the Berkeley Arts Council and the California Arts Council, and garnering acclaim in such venues as the New York Times and The Berkeley Voice.
A collection of memorial essays The Berkeley Poets Cooperative: A History of the Times was released by Hip Pocket Press in 2013. Please visit our “publications” link for ordering information.
BPW&P Titles
The BPW&P is no longer an active press, but many of the back issues and some of the chapbooks are available on Amazon. If you can’t locate the title you are seeking, e-mail us to obtain information for the books you want.
He jerked it into the boat
and slit the belly open:
lists, inventories,
mouths pressed between pages,
ancient cities half digested,
and all the lost languages vanishing once more
into the skin
like colors that are only true in darkness.
Bruce Hawkins
Books
Boston, Bruce – Jackbird
Boston, Bruce – She Comes When You’re Leaving
Brodine, Karen – Slow Juggling
Coon, Betty – Seaward
Covino, Michael – Unfree Associations
Day, Lucille – Self-Portrait with Hand Microscope
Dienstfrey, Patricia – Newspaper Stories & Other Poems
Divakaruni, Chitra – The Reason for Nasturtiums
Entrekin, Charles – All Pieces of a Legacy
Entrekin, Charles – Casting for the Cutthroat & Other Poems
Entrekin, Charles – In This Hour
Entrekin, Gail Rudd – John Danced
Entrekin, Gail Rudd – You Notice the Body
Fleischman, Ted – Half a Bottle of Catsup
Frazier, Robert – Perception Barriers
Hawkins, Bruce – Wordrows
Hawkins, Bruce – The Ghost of the Buick
Johnson, Belden – Snake Blossoms
Kandinsky, Carla – Instead of a Camera
Lee, Gerald Jorge – Dancing at Ground Zero
McFerrin, Linda Watanabe – The Impossibility of Redemption Is Something We Hadn’t Figured On
Najarian, Peter – Wash Me On Home, Mama
Ostriker, Alicia – Once More Out of Darkness and other poems
Stone, Jennifer – Over by the Caves
Taksa, Mark – Truant Bather
Tulloss, Rod – The Machine Shuts Down
Woolery, J.D. – By Parked Cars