Brandon Cesmat -- profe@csusm.edu
website: http://www.csusm.edu/profe

While still an undergraduate at San Diego State University, Brandon Cesmat began his professional writing career as a freelancer with the San Diego Reader. He earned of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from SDSU in 1992. While supporting his family as a freelance writer and adjunct professor, Cesmat has continued to publish poetry and fiction. Cesmat's chapbook Ice Drum and his short story "Playing Peon" recently won San Diego Book Awards. His writing has appeared in California Quarterly, inside english, ONTHEBUS, Teachers & Writers, Weber Studies and many other periodicals.

As a broadcast journalist, Cesmat has conducted television and radio interviews featuring such acclaimed poets as N. Scott Momaday, Billy Collins, Steve Kowit, Quincy Troupe and Genny Lim. As a staff writer for Go!, Cesmat twice won the San Diego Press Club's award for critical writing about film. As a technical consultant, Cesmat has worked on screenplays for High Valley, Inc. and Hummingbird Productions.

Cesmat serves as Area Coordinator for California Poets in the Schools for San Diego County. His poetry workshops in public schools, libraries and community centers are in high demand.

As a featured reader, Cesmat has performed at many of the venues in Southern California; however, he is also becoming well known as the voice of Drought Buoy, a performance ensemble created by choreographer Terry Sprague with bassist Gunnar Biggs.

Education
• 1992, Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, San Diego State University, emphasis on fiction and correlative study in screenwriting.

• Master of Fine Arts Thesis, Enemy Song, a collection of stories, Jerry Bumpus, chair

• Bachelor of Arts, 1989, Liberal Studies, San Diego State University

Recent Readings
San Diego State University (2000), California Center for the Arts, Escondido (w/Drought Buoy, 2001), Claire d'Lune (San Diego, 2001), D.G.Wills' Books (La Jolla, CA 2002), Dizzy's Jazz Club (w/Drought Buoy, San Diego 2001 and 2002), Escondido Public Library (w/Drought Buoy 2002), En Voz Alta (w/Drought Buoy, San Diego 2002), The Flying Bridge (Oceanside, CA 2002), Hill Street Coffee Co. (Oceanside, CA 2001), La Casa de la Cultura (w/Drought Buoy Tijuana 2001), Magee Park (Carlsbad, CA 2001), Schulman Auditorium (w/Drought Buoy, Carlsbad 2002), Southwestern College (w/Drought Buoy, Chula Vista, CA 2000), The Ugly Mug Café (Chapman, CA 2002).

Honors
• 1999, 2001, Scholarship, Squaw Valley Community of Writers

• 1999, Nominee, Arts Education Achievement Award California Center for the Arts, Escondido

• 1996, First Prize for Fiction, Bridge Illustrated Magazine

• 1997, Scholarship Aspen Writers' Conference

• 1993, First Prize for Fiction, Shades Magazine

• 1993, 1994, Best Critical Writing, San Diego Press Club

• 1993, Bookstar Poetry Competition, First Prize Barnes & Noble/Bookstar, Las Palmas

• 1991, Work-Study Grant, Writers at Work, Park City, Utah

• 1990, Scholarship, Napa Valley Writers' Conference

• 1989, 1991, Artist-in-Residence Fellowship, Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, Temecula, CA

Teaching
• California State University San Marcos Lecturer, Program in Literature & Writing, Film Studies: served as TULIP (Technology Utilization in Learning and Instruction Platforms) Mentor Teacher in 2001; received TULIP award to design on-line course materials, 1998, 1999, 2000; nominated for Outstanding Professor of the Year 1998; developed Elements of Film course and built enrollment of new film studies course from 35 to 120 in three semesters; assessed Literature & Writing Program with Drs. Dawn Form and Robin Keehn, 1999; coordinated student readings; coordinated on-campus readings by nationally and internationally known poets

• Palomar Community College, Adjunct Faculty for English, American Indian Studies, and Communications: nominated for Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching 1995; co-wrote and received Inter-Tech grant for Career Path Education for Journalists; co-developed Learning Community between English and Journalism; nominated to Who's Who Among America's Teachers

• California Poets in the Schools/Border Voices Area-Coordinator: coordinated San Diego County's involvement in the Poetry Residency Evaluation Program (PREP), the first arts program evaluating the effect of poetry writing workshops on student writing; recruited and trained poet-teachers for San Diego City and County Schools; served on a bi-national committee to link poets-in-the-schools programs in San Diego and Tijuana; team-taught poet-teachers for San Ysidro Poetry Project; co-Produced poetry readings at the San Diego Children's Museum and El Parque de Amistad

• Poet-Teacher: member of the Border Voices Poetry Fair Committee; poetry workshops in public schools including Palomar Mountain School, Community Home Education School, San Pasqual Union School, Standley Middle School, Lincoln High and Scripps Ranch High; bilingual Poetry Lessons at Statewide Conference 1998

Publications
• Ice Drum, winner of the San Diego Book Award for poetry chapbook Caernarvon Press, 2001

• The Pass, a chapbook of poems Oak Grove Press, 2001

• Party Crasher, a chapbook of stories Oak Grove Press, 2000

• Nightsinging, a chapbook of poems Caernarvon Press, 1994, Terry Hertzler, publisher

• Enemy Song, short story collection Oak Grove Press, 2003

• River Murmur, poetry Poetric Matrix, 2003

Abridged Bibliography
• Cesmat, Brandon, moderator. "A Bowl of Cereal with Billy Collins." Border Voices Presents. San Diego County Instructional Television, San Diego. 27 May 2000.

• "Lockjaw Parable" and "Poem in Black & White." Poetry Conspiracy February 2000: 4+.

• "Nexus Poems." Teachers & Writers November-December 2000.

• moderator. "Trading Solos with Genny Lim." Border Voices Presents. San Diego County Instructional Television, San Diego. 27 May 2000.

• "Where Was Fidel When I Needed Him?" ONTHEBUS #18, 2003. Cesmat 3

Services Offered
• Teaching: children teens
• Media/Subjects: Native American Literature, film studies, cw workshops
• Special Needs Groups: Spanish

New Light**
by Brandon Cesmat

I felt your gaze all day as you drove the road toward me.
That night in the observatory I held my breath
to focus on Jupiter with five moons,
each lit like half-closed blind eyes,
all that old light taking eight minutes to reach us.

Then you found Saturn and made out the rings standing on knife-point
and the band of shadow-
the dark older than the light-
the same dark just beyond the porch lamp.
Though our distance is as constant as the dark,
you make the falling light new.

On one of the planets close enough to catch the light from a star,
we leaned into the telescope beneath a dome.
A star sends its light in all directions
like a king dispatching a navy that sinks in the crossing.
Under that dome, dark so we could see stars,
we leaned against the wall and only your light fell onto me.

**Red River Review nominated Cesmat's poem "New Light" for the Pushcart Prize.

 

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