Local theater troupe presents poetry and prose of Patricia Hernan Grube

Despite a late start, Patricia Hernan Grube’s writing career has been fruitful. Marriage and World War II interrupted her education at UC Berkeley, and raising a family left little time to pursue a lifelong love of writing. But at age 50, she finished her studies at UC Santa Cruz and began writing regularly. Eventually, she began to call herself a poet and a playwright.

Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs earns street cred with edgy and experimental pop

Though 33-year-old Merrill Garbus is the master of mimicking sounds, has the ability to sing in all sorts of pitches—first apparent in tUnE-yArDs’ 2009 debut, BiRd-BrAiNs—and is frequently decked out in eye-catching face paint, that’s about as far as her relation to birds goes.

“I like imitating things with my voice,” says Garbus. “There is something pleasurable about that—this idea that I’m not stuck with having to be any one voice, but that I can be free to explore that voice.” Though born and raised in Connecticut, the singer/songwriter is now thoroughly thriving in Oakland, Calif., a city which, along with the rest of the Bay Area, Garbus finds both fashionable and liberating.

Editor’s note:  This week’s Poetry Corner features Javier Zamora, who was born and raised in La Herradura, El Salvador. At the age of 9, he emigrated to the United States to be reunited with his parents. He’s attended various writing conferences, including the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and one at The Frost Place. His chapbook, “Nueve Años Inmigrantes,” won the 2011 Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Contest.

Dietzman & Co. examines heartbreak in debut showcase

It all started with a rough break up. Well, two actually. “Literally we were offered the show, my partner and I broke up a week later, and then I moved to Santa Cruz,” says Sierrah Dietz, co-director of “It Just Is,” an upcoming dance showcase. The performances run April 13-15 at Motion at the Mill.

Dietz’ longtime friend and fellow choreographer, Molly Katzman, was also experiencing a difficult breakup at the time when the pair was given the opportunity to direct the production. “When we were questioning what this show was going to be about, it was so clear that that was where I was,” explains Dietz. “I couldn’t vocalize anything that was going on for me and I just needed to get it out somehow.”

Late UCSC professor and origami pioneer honored with eye-catching exhibit

Few would see the beauty of an algorithm scribbled onto a page, but when that same math is folded into the paper, the result is something that could not have been created by the imagination alone; it exists thanks to the fortuitous whimsy of mathematics.

At “Origami: Art + Mathematics,” an exhibit which opens on April 8 and will run through June 16 at the Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery at UC Santa Cruz, the art on display might be hard to believe, much less comprehend. The exhibit honors the late David A. Huffman, UCSC professor of information science and pioneer of mathematical origami, whose rarely seen artwork will be featured alongside work from multiple renowned origami artists.

On the passing of Adrienne Rich—a memoriam

With the passing of Adrienne Rich on March 27, the Central Coast lost an extraordinary poet: among her legacies is a vision of how to live as a public person.

I saw this first in 1975, as one of a group of women graduate students at San Francisco State who had begun organizing to change the rules of our program, rules that restricted the women writers we could study to a very few and very famous. Though she was already well known as a poet—“Diving into the Wreck” had come out the year before—she took time out to advise us. From there we went forward, individually and as a group, lit forever with the knowledge that poetry and politics were one.

Santa Cruz prepares to spread the love of reading on World Book Night 2012

On April 23, tens of thousands of people will pass books out to strangers at bus stops and parks, in homeless shelters and jails, on ferry boats and the subway. In Santa Cruz, one man will paddle out into Monterey Bay to give books to fellow surfers waiting to catch waves.

The goal is to spread the love of reading by passing out one million books to light or non-readers in celebration of World Book Night. First launched in the U.K. in 2011, World Book Night 2012 will also be celebrated in the U.S., Ireland and Germany.

Stripe Design Group rolls out Stripe Men. New men’s boutique embraces the masculine mystique

Consider this familiar scene: You’re shopping in a clothing boutique and you see a couple. Oftentimes, the woman is smiling, looking intently at the clothing, pulling hangers off the rack for closer inspection. “This is cute honey! What do you think?” she says to her companion. “Nice, babe,” the significant other might say, looking as though he would rather be getting a back wax than shop for even another minute. This all-too-familiar scene, though supremely common, may become a thing of the past in Santa Cruz.

Photography exhibition at local tattoo studio illustrates traditional world body art

A grayish tattoo streaks down the forehead of a middle-aged woman’s otherwise smooth almond-colored face. Her nostrils stretch wide over circular nose plugs inserted into her skin, and below her lips four more tattooed lines stretch down her chin. The woman peers out from a photograph within Chimera Tattoo Studio & Gallery in Westside Santa Cruz, but her body art is not the handiwork of a Chimera employee. The woman in the photo is a resident of the Apatani region in India, and her facial art is part of a tribal tradition.

12th annual Santa Cruz Jewish Film Festival presents mixed bag of thought-provoking cinema

There are few locations in the world where you can find Muslim freedom fighters, a high jumper, a Holocaust survivor, a Catholic priest, a human rights lawyer, and a music producer, all in one place—aside from a “walks into a bar” joke, that is. But all of the aforementioned characters have a chance to shine at the 12th annual Santa Cruz Jewish Film Festival, which kicks off on March 24 and runs through April 5.