BCC celebrates "Fightin' Words: 25 Years of Provocative Poetry and Prose" from Oakland's PEN, 6:30 p.m., Tue., Feb. 10

A celebration of Fightin’ Words: 25 Years of Provocative Poetry and Prose from “The Blue-Collar” PEN, Oakland’s new poetry and prose anthology, is set for 6:30-9:30 p.m. Tue., Feb. 10, in BCC’s Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public. Featuring works by luminaries such as Rebecca Solnit and MacArthur Fellow Ishmael Reed as well as writers you will be glad to meet for the first time, Fightin’ Words bears witness to a vibrant American literary tradition well outside mainstream consciousness. Pieces span the spectrum of human emotion: from rage, as in Floyd Salas’s declamation against torture, to grief in CB Follett’s “Words to the Mother Whose Son Shot My Son,” to joy and contentment in the work of California poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera. They range in subject from Kitty Kelley’s exposé of the revenge tactics of George H. W. Bush to Paul Krassner’s account of the night Ken Kesey invited him to a Grateful Dead concert at the pyramids of Giza