Author Talk: Claire Blotter
Performing Poems About the Desert and Discussing Her Debut Poetry Collection EXPANDING.WATER.WAYS
Former Palm Springs High School ASB Vice-President and Prom Queen, Claire (Nancy) Blotter will read and perform poems about the desert and growing up in Palm Spring as well as more experimental work from her new book, EXPANDING.WATER.WAYS. She has been performing her recent poems along California waterways to bring attention to the 2023 Supreme Court decision that threatens US wetlands.
Claire Blotter was born in Rahway, New Jersey, and grew up in Palm Springs, California. She holds a B.A. in English Literature from the University of California at Berkeley and a Special Master’s Degree in Creative Writing,Women Studies and Speech Communications from San Francisco State University. She has published three poetry chapbooks, and EXPANDING.WATER.WAYS is her first full length collection. She is the recipient of two Marin Arts Council Artists Grants in Poetry and grants from the Marin Community Foundation and the Nathan Cummings Foundation which supported her poetry performances and original musical theater collaborations. She has represented San Francisco in National Performance Poetry Slams in Chicago, Boston and San Francisco. She was a Finalist for the Telluride Fischer Prize in Poetry in 2018 and judged the competition in 2020. Her award-winning video documentary, WAKE UP CALL: SAVING THE SONGBIRDS, has been screened in 11 film festivals from Mill Valley to Chicago. She has taught performance poetry at San Francisco State University, Dominican University, John F. Kennedy University & the College of Marin. She currently teaches elementary, middle and high school students in the California Poets in the Schools Program in Marin County, California.
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