Poetry at The Dalí

Helen Pruitt Wallace’s first collection of poems, Shimming the Glass House, won the Richard Snyder Prize for Poetry and a Florida Book Award, and her chapbook, Pink Streets, was published by Yellow Jacket Press. Helen’s individual poems have been published in journals and anthologies including The Literary Review, Harvard Review, Plume, River Teeth and The Slowdown podcast edited by Major Jackson. She earned her Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing from FSU, and taught poetry and non-fiction at Eckerd College before serving as Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg (2016-2022).  Helen initiated and has served as curator of the Dali Poetry Series since 2015.

At age 90, poet Peter Meinke never expected to still be reading poetry to an audience. Professor emeritus at Eckerd College, Peter became the first Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg (2009), and later Poet Laureate of Florida (2015).

Five years later, he received the Florida Humanities Lifetime Literary Award for Writing. Peter has published sixteen books of poems, with eight in the prestigious Pitt Poetry Series, three collections of short stories and several collections of essays. His late wife, artist Jeanne Clark Meinke, illustrated many of his books, including his most recent book of poems, Tasting Like Gravity (2018).

Bob Devin Jones, a native of Los Angeles, began his theatrical career as an actor performing in Shakespeare Festivals, including Oregon, Berkeley, Illinois, Idaho and eventually in St. Petersburg at American Stage’s Shakespeare in the Park. A graduate of Loyola Marymount University, he attended the American Conservatory in San Francisco as well as a one-year tutorial with instructors from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the London Academy of Dramatic art in London, England. For the past thirty years, he has worked in the theatre primarily as a playwright and as a director.

He has been a resident of St. Petersburg since 1997, participating in many educational and cultural organizations. These include Academy Prep, Pinellas County Cultural Affairs Task Force and the Florida Humanities Council. Bob currently serves on the board of Pinellas Diaspora Arts Project and sits on the Public Arts Commission for the City of St. Petersburg. He is a recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the Bank of America’s Hero Award, Weekly Planet’s Best of the Bay for Directing and Playwright, the Tampa Bay Lightning Community Hero in 2018, the Tampa Bay Business Impact Award and was awarded The Key to The City of St Petersburg by then Mayor Rick Kriseman.

Bob is currently a contributing writer for The Artisan magazine.