Bill Mohr, Rhony Bhopla, and Faustin Rusanganwa

On the 11/15/23 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Dr. Andy is visited by this week’s featured readers, Bill Mohr and Rhony Bhopla, and an additional guest, Faustin Rusanganwa. Mohr kicks off the episode by expressing his nostalgia and fondness for the earlier periods of publishing. He mentions how his creative journey and academic journey complement each other greatly, then shares a poem about a beautiful garden. Rhony Bhopla is the next guest. She delves into the necessity of recognizing that one is an artistic artifact when given the task of creative writing and giving oneself permission to be creative. Bhopla then reflects on her time studying Comparative Literature as an undergraduate at UC Davis, crediting the skills she learned that allowed her to branch into book critiquing. Faustin Rusanganwa closes out the podcast by imparting what compelled him to write and publish his memoir My Exile to the World: A Citizen of the World, which captures his travels as a young man after leaving his home of Rwanda in order to escape tribal conflicts.

Poet, editor, publisher, scholar, and critic, Bill Mohr is widely recognized as one of the leading literary activists in Southern California in the past 40 years. His writing has been featured in over a dozen anthologies, and translated into Spanish, Japanese, Italian, and Croatian. His work as editor/publisher of Momentum Press received four awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his honors include being a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and fellowships at the Huntington Library. His highly praised account of West Coast poetry, Holdouts: The Los Angeles Poetry Renaissance 1948-1992, was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2011. He is a professor in the Department of English at California State University, Long Beach. The poems, prose poems and creative prose of Bill Mohr have appeared in dozens of magazines in the past 40 years. Bill Mohr has a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of California, San Diego and is currently a professor in the Department of English at California State University, Long Beach, where he has taught since 2006. 

Rhony Bhopla is a poet, emerging book critic, and visual artist. Her poems have appeared in PRISM International, The Hopper, Notre Dame Review, Cherry Moon: Emerging Voices from the Asian Diaspora, and The Good Life Review. Her book reviews can be read in Northwest Review and Harvard Review. Rhapsody, a series of acrylic and collage artworks, was on show in the Promise Me a Rose Garden exhibit at the Kennedy Gallery in Sacramento in 2023. Her artworks are a regular feature of the Big Names Small Art (BNSA) art auction for the Crocker Art Museum.

Faustin Rusanganwa is the author of the book “My Exile to the World.” The book is about his escape from his native Rwanda as a teenager. Incredibly, Faustin traveled by bike across Burundi, Tanzania, Congo, Morocco, and Algeria. His travels then took him across Europe, and the United States. He now lives in Davis where he keeps in his garage the original bike he rode across Africa.

The Poetry Night Reading Series is excited to feature poets Bill Mohr and Rhony Bhopla at 7 PM on Thursday, November 16th, 2023, on the first floor of 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, visit his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com and follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andyojones.