Susan Flynn, Jemi Reis McDonald, and Jane Beal

On the 7/19/23 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

We are joined by three interdisciplinary poets, Susan Flynn, Jemi Reis McDonald, and Jane Beal. 

Susan Flynn works as psychoanalyst, poet, and photographer and teaches at UC Davis. She shares how she writes with a photographer's eye in her works, allowing the image to use  languages and stretch for what we don't directly know. Flynn shares a poem about what happens when one leaves the body, a reflection on her own experiences with loss and her desire to make the mundane and tragic beautiful through her work. 

Jemi Reis McDonald explains how her role as a Buddhist practitioner grounds her in the present, ultimately enunciating reality to be unmistakable and oftentimes spiritual. Her love for connection, walking and people-watching is revealed as the inspiration for her latest book, Evening Light. McDonald’s process involves viewing images and realization that come to her as conspiracies she is being invited into, allowing her to feel deeply connected to her writing.  

Jane Beal, who has appeared on DAPATH in three different decades, shares her unique educational journey and teaching process as a student and educator during the pandemic. She then reads a poem from a series inspired by her travels to the United Kingdom, which is a rhythmical, image-based poem that navigates the reader through terrains experienced by the speaker.  

Susan Flynn is a poet, photographer, and psychoanalyst living in Sacramento and Georgetown, California. She has a private clinical practice in Sacramento, and is assistant clinical professor at UC Davis, where she teaches and supervises psychiatry residents. Her poetry has been widely published in journals and anthologies. Susan is trained as an Amherst Writers and Artists group facilitator, and she has facilitated a series of writing groups for trauma survivors called “The Body Keeps the Score, The Spirit Tells the Story." Seeing Begins in the Dark (2022) from River Rock Books is her first poetry collection.

Jemi Reis McDonald is the author of the 2022 collection Evening Light: A Retrospect in Stories and Poems, published by Mandorla Books. Jemi is a California native, life-long writer, twenty-two-year Soto Zen Buddhist practitioner, decades-long wife, mother, new grandmother, and enduring friend. 

Jane Beal, PhD is a poet and a writer, educator,  and midwife. She was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she received her BA (Sonoma State University), MA (Sonoma State University), and PhD (UC Davis) in English, with concentrations in biblical, classical, medieval, and early modern literature, and an MFA in Creative Writing (Bay Path University). She also holds a Certificate in Midwifery from Mercy in Action College of Midwifery and a graduate Certificate in Narrative Medicine from Bay Path University. She has taught at Wheaton College, Colorado Christian University, and the University of La Verne as well as UC Davis and the UC Washington Center (in Washington, D.C.). 

The Poetry Night Reading Series features Susan Flynn and Jemi McDonald at 7 PM on Thursday, July 20th, 2023, at the John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 1st Street in Davis.

Find out more about Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, subscribe to his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com.