inspired by Italy crafted by Alan Bern
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Author
Alan Bern
As a teenager, Alan Bern lived with his family in Napoli, Italia in 1965-66 and attended an Italian high school, a liceo, where he learned Italian and got to know Napoli. He never recovered- as you’ll see in his writing and photography!
After returning to the US and attending college, Alan went on to earn an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University and became first a printer and then a children’s librarian. While at BU, Alan studied with poet Anne Sexton and classicist Donald Carne-Ross.
Alan is a Pushcart nominee and has published three books of poetry and a hybrid fictionalized memoir, IN THE PACE OF THE PATH, UnCollected Press, 2023. Alan has a chapbook, because lack, from back room poetry (June 2024).
Recent awards include: Longlist, The Bedford Competition (2023); Winner, Saw Palm Poetry Contest (2022). Recent/upcoming writing and photo work include: Third Street Review, EcoTheo Review, Thanatos, The Hyacinth Review, DarkWinter, Feral, Porridge Magazine, and Mercurius.
Alan performs with dancer/choreographer Lucinda Weaver as PACES: dance & poetry fit to the space, is a published/exhibited photographer, and for over fifty years has run a fine press/publisher with artist/printer Robert Woods, Lines & Faces: linesandfaces.com.
Available Fall 2025
Dreams of the return
In Dreams of the return, Bern remembers being a teenager in the mid-sixties, living in Napoli for just one year with his family, and falling in love with it as if it were his true second home.
Napoli was a city of extremes, beauty and chaos, the bests in terms of food (Christmas cookies –roccoco napoletani– and pizza pie!). The young people were the most beautiful he had ever encountered though, as they got older, they began to sag into an uncomfortable and often unpleasant aging. The traffic was monumental, and the pick-pockets were so numerous! Menacing Vulcano Vesuvius loomed over all with the beautiful blues of the Bay of Naples in the background as some relief.
Join Alan as he recounts his travels in Napoli and Southern Italy through poetry, prose, and photos.
Other Books
No no the saddest
(Fithian Press, 2004)
In 1979 Alan Bern’s wife gave birth to a healthy son three months after having a ruptured aneurysm that left her permanently brain damaged. She died four years later without ever knowing that she had had a child. This book is about that period.
Waterwalking in Berkeley
(Fithian Press, 2007)
In Alan Bern’s second book of poetry, images and dreams start in the home of the author’s heart. Born and raised, and still living, in cosmopolitan, international, and, yes, provincial Berkeley, California, Bern recalls his childhood life in the quiet, but dangerous 1950s and then transports the reader abroad in both time and place, especially to Southern Italy, where he has traveled for years.
IN THE PACE OF THE PATH
(UnCollected Press, 2023)
Alan Bern’s fictionalized memoir In the Pace of the Path also represents a diverse array of styles as he moves between free verse poetry and prose to build the story of his life in Berkeley and his career in the public library system.
Bern steps away from the library reference desk to pursue the atmosphere of Berkeley from various vantage points past and present. He captures this milieu with vignettes that move between experiences with the fluid viscosity of time travel and psychological self-inspection.
–D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
greater distance and other poems
(Lines & Faces 2015)
Alan Bern’s greater distance and other poems is an exquisite book. The poems are strong and delicate, minimalist, with just the right number of words, arranged just right. I was particularly moved by the way Bern contrasted childhood memory and the loving sorrow of caring for and caring about aging parents. I know this book will repay many re-readings. And what a visual treat this book is. Designed with great skill and great care by Robert Woods, and Woods’s illustrations are stunning and beautifully made. It’s already a successful book, so handsomely created, a treasure that should reach many people.
— John Daniels
Daniel & Daniel Publishers, Inc.
Upcoming Events (or something else?)
September 23, 2025
Selected Writings
San Franceso
1315, Master of Saint Cecelia San Francesco, you are so small,head in a simple halohands pierced...
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abbern@gmail.com
Contact Alan Bern
abbern@gmail.com