We will defend this place Till the last drop of beer And the first drop of rain. People’s Park The wizards in old tales used to bury their hearts in secret places And unless you dug up the heart and destroyed it They were invulnerable and heartless. Part of my heart is buried in People’s […]
Julia Vinograd
The late Julia Shalett Vinograd (December 11, 1943-December 5, 2018) was Berkeley’s poet laureate and she was the Bubble Lady. Born in 1943, Vinograd got her BA at Cal and then earned an MA at the University of Iowa at the Iowa Writers Workshop. Her studies focused on poetry. Literary and creative influences that she cited include William Butler Yeats, Elinor Wylie, Federico Garcia Lorca (in English), Leonard Cohen (as a poet), and Yehuda Amichai. While at Cal, she was taught and inspired by Thom Gunn, Gary Snyder, and Josephine Miles. At Iowa, Vinograd says Paul Carroll “blew the lid off all my safety boxes.” Vinograd returned to Berkeley in 1967 to find massive cultural and political changes in full swing. “Everyone had long hair, bare feet, bright clothes, and looked like they’d just stepped out of a tapestry.” www.berkeleyside.org/2018/12/05/julia-vinograd-the-berkeley-poet-known-as-the-bubble-lady-dies-at-75