If you missed Saturday night’s reading at Malvern Books, you missed something rather wonderful (and you should probably keep a closer eye on our schedule—just saying!—so as not to miss out on other awesome stuff, like, for example, tonight’s poetry corner).

The evening got off to a stunning start with a beautiful performance from jazz guitarist Margaret Slovak (pictured above with our two readers). And we continued in fine style with poetry from acclaimed writers Gary Whited (left) and Dave Oliphant (right). Gary is a man of many p’s: he’s a poet, psychotherapist, and philosopher (with a particular passion for Parmenides). He grew up on a ranch in eastern Montana, and his poetry is imbued with a strong sense of place. And Dave is an old and dear friend of Malvern Books—whilst wearing our publisher’s hat, we released several works from the Oliphant oeuvre, including a number of fantastic poetry collections and translations. Gary and Dave were a superb poetic pairing, as evidenced below in these samples from our Whited & Oliphant playlist.