Johanna Ely

Johanna Ely is the author of three poetry books, Transformation, Tides of the Heart—Poems for Benicia, and Postcards From a Dream (Blue Light Press 2020). She is an award-winning poet, and had a poem nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2018. She has also been published in literary journals and anthologies. Johanna served as the sixth poet laureate for Benicia. In 2018, she collected poems written by the Benicia First Tuesday Poets, and put forth the anthology, Light and Shadow, published by Benicia Literary Arts. Until COVID-19 changed our world, Johanna hosted the monthly poetry series, Poetry Inside Out, inviting poets from all over the Bay Area to come to Benicia and read their work. She also enjoys writing ekphrastic poetry, and has coordinated many ekphrastic readings at the local galleries. Johanna is on the board of Benicia Literary Arts, and the Ina Coolbrith Circle of Poets, helping to organize prose and poetry events.

Johanna featured in the Bay Area Poets Laureate Gathering & Public Reading on September 21, 2019 co-hosted by the San Mateo County Arts Commission, and the Peninsula Virtual Bookfest co-hosted by the San Mateo County Libraries.

Read Johanna’s poem, “November 7th, 2020“.

Cynthia Bryant

Cynthia Bryant was the Poetry Coordinator for Alameda County Fair in 2004 and in 2005. In June 2005 she was appointed the 4th Poet Laureate of Pleasanton and served until June 2007. Later, after returning to Pleasanton, Cynthia Bryant was appointed the 7th Poet Laureate serving 2011-2013. Published in over 50 anthologies, Cynthia’s poetry books Sojourn, Pebbles in the Shoe as well as No Time to Shoot the Poets have been accepted in the new Ina Coolbrith Circle library section in Sacramento’s State Library’s Special Collections Reading Room. Cynthia is currently the host of LAST SUNDAYS’ FISHBOWL POETRY in Monterey where she also resides with her husband Allen and fur babies, Oscar Wilde and Gracie Mae.

Cynthia featured in the Bay Area Poets Laureate Gathering & Public Reading on September 21, 2019, hosted by the San Mateo County Arts Commission and the San Mateo County Libraries.

Kim Shuck

Kim Shuck was born in San Francisco, California, and is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She received a BA in Art and an MFA in Textiles from San Francisco State University. Shuck is the author of Deer Trails, forthcoming from City Lights Books in October 2019), Clouds Running In (Taurean Horn Press, 2014), Rabbit Stories (Poetic Matrix Press, 2013), and Smuggling Cherokee (Greenfield Review Press, 2005), as well as of the chapbook collection Sidewalk Ndn (FootHills Press, 2018). In 2019, Shuck was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. She served as the 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco.

Kim featured in the 2019 Women’s History Month Poetry Reading hosted by the Daly City Public Library; the 2020 San Mateo County Peninsula Virtual Bookfest; “Empower Women, Empower Earth: Poetry Reading & Panel Discussion” hosted by Skyline College; RISE 2020 Women’s Leadership Conference hosted by the San Mateo County Commission on the Status of Women, and “Poetry that Blooms” hosted by Filoli.

Read Kim’s poems, “Quarantine Poem 1” and “Quarantine Poem 2.”

Iris Jamahl Dunkle

Iris Jamahl Dunkle is an award-winning literary biographer, essayist, and poet. Her academic and creative work challenges the Western myth of progress by examining the devastating impact that agriculture and over-population have had, and continue to have, on the North American West. Taking an ecofeminist bent, her writing also challenges the American West’s male-oriented recorded history by researching the lives of women. She obtained her MFA in poetry from New York University, and her PhD in American Literature from Case Western Reserve University.

She is the 2017-2018 Poet Laureate of Sonoma County. Her poetry collections include Interrupted Geographies (Trio House Press, 2017), Gold Passage (Trio House Press, 2013), and There’s a Ghost in this Machine of Air (Word Tech, 2015). Her works have been published in Tin House, San Francisco Examiner, Fence, Los Angeles Review of Books, Split Rock Review, Taos Poetry Journal, Pleiades, Calyx, Catamaran, Poet’s Market, Women’s Studies and Chicago Quarterly Review. In 2020, her biography on Charmian Kittredge London, Jack London’s wife, was published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

Iris featured in the Bay Area Poets Laureate Gathering & Public Reading on September 21, 2019, hosted by the San Mateo County Arts Commission and the San Mateo County Libraries.

Cathy Dana

Cathy Dana is the 2017-2020 Alameda Poet Laureate and president of Alameda Island Poets. She regularly leads two workshops at the Home of Truth, and facilitates “Storytelling Swap” at the Frank Bette Center for the Arts. She also teaches creative writing at Alameda Community Learning Center, where she began the Mighty Pens teen poetry group, as well as the first poet laureate program. Her first published book of poetry, My Dad Believed in Love, was released in early 2016.

Cathy featured in the Bay Area Poets Laureate Gathering & Public Reading on September 21, 2019, hosted by the San Mateo County Arts Commission and the San Mateo County Libraries.

Portola Valley First Graders

This collaborative poem by Portola Valley First Graders appeared in the anthology, I Have a Dream: Inaugural Poems for a New Generation (2021).

Poem on Belonging

WOODLAND POEM

You can put anything 
on the magic paper

Shining sun
Pollen for bugs

Flying in the water
Eating fish

Cold yummy
Ice cream

I love watermelons
On a hot summer day

Sunny days
Play catch

Skraps like little 
Vagume cleeners

Peeps are yummy
Nature is awesome

The beautiful white petals
Are like unicorn mane

The keys on the piano
Are sparkling like bubbly water 

I see a sparkling sunset
With the colors green and purple

Rain falls
The deer look for shelter

She looks like a wild fox
She runs like no one’s there

This leaf is ripped
Like a broken wing

Can you love, love?
Yes, everyone can love, love.

Some are easy
Some are hard

Family is all healthy
Heart is full like a cheerful bird

When my mom is not around
I feel very lonely

My dog 
Needs lots of love

My dog
Likes to eat my food

I see myself
There’s a copy of me

It looks
Like white and pink cotton candy

It looks like
A sunset could be a tree

Copyright © 2021 by Ms. Ivana Hansen and Ms. Monica Gojcaj for their first grade students. Used with permission of the authors.

Abigale Wee

Abigale Wee was a freshman in high school when she won first place in the inaugural countywide 2020 Housing Leadership Council Youth Poetry & Art Competition.

Poem on Belonging

GROWING HOME

There’s a certain endearment
About the black and white tiles on the floor 
of Toy Boat Dessert Cafe,
the lingering smell of coffee,
the figurines that line the wall.
I grew a piece of home
in the table next to
the ice-cream-sticky rocking horse. 

I planted a seed of home
between the rocks leading
to the creek where time
seems to flow like honey
and the leaves above make verdant 
stained glass. I watered it 
with trust and peace
so I would never forget
the home I found in friendship. 

There’s the sprout of home among the faded blue seats 
that stand as silent sentinels
in the 3:42 Southbound Caltrain
from Hillsdale station. 
In the Debussy that plays
to the sound of the train, the people 
who seem to live
in a world of their own. 

In the place where the waves crash 
like cymbals against the grainy sand 
revealing shards of shells
and frosty sea glass, 
I hid a tendril of home inside the wave-battered wood. 
I watched as it sent roots, giving life
to the tired grey trunk of the fallen tree. 

The ecstasy of performance is woven
into every branch of my home, like amber 
strung on gold wire.
Amber for the last note of the piece,
the sweet exhaustion as I relinquish 
my hold on the burning energy
that fills my veins when I play music for others. 

When I step back
and look up, towards the sun,
I see the leaves and branches of an oak tree. 
My feet stand next to gnarled roots
that stem from the little seeds of home
that I scattered
and tended around the bay. 

And I know
the oak-tree-home I nurtured 
mapped by the roots on the ground 
will continue to grow.

Copyright © 2020 by Abigale Wee. Used with permission of the author.

Jescent Marcelino

Jescent Marcelino immigrated from the Philippines in 2019. She is the first runner up in the 2021 Inaugural Daly City Youth Poet Laureate and 2022 San Mateo County Poetry Out Loud competitions. Her work has appeared in the anthology, I Have a Dream: Inaugural Poems for a New Generation. She has also been featured in “Celebrating Young Poets” produced by The Midpen Media Center. Jescent’s poem, “Dear Jefferson High School,” was presented at Jefferson High School’s centennial celebration, Jefferson High School: “100 Years of Us” in March 2022.

Poem on Belonging

DEAR JEFFERSON HIGH SCHOOL,

Here’s my love letter to you.
The first time I saw you,
I was scared and unsure
I was the new kid carrying big dreams.
The one who traveled thousands of miles to be here. 
I often wondered if I was enough,
but my teachers showed me that I am more than a label.
That Jeff is home and home is working together
to be the best people we can be.
But we never thought these halls would be empty in 2020.
That we would know forced isolation and loss.
At that moment, all the world seemed to fit on a screen.
We were faces on little black squares
zooming through the whole school year 
using little icons to plant seeds of friendship,
private messages to stay connected.
But we got through it.
We’re the Grizzlies. We can get through anything.

We’re from percussion and brass, and woodwinds vibrating.
From K Building, Little Theater and gym.
We’re from debates about hotdogs, 
and the scent of bread and soup around J Building.
We’re from royal blue and majestic gold,
from skateboards and scooters in the attendance office.
We’re from culinary arts and GSA Club,
from “Hope” and “What Matters Most”.
We’re from the friendships we formed and the memories we make.
We’re from Mission Fusion and ASB,
from digital arts and the Grizzly News Network.
We’re from a tradition of uplifting people and creating spaces for peace.
We’re from excellence through equity,
and one hundred years of community.

Copyright © 2022 by Jescent Marcelino. Used with permission of the author.

(L-R): Jescent reading her poem, “Dear Jefferson High School”; photo with friends; photo with Congresswoman Jackie Speier (Courtesy of Victoria Maier Magbilang)

I Have a Dream

I Have a Dream: Inaugural Poems for a New Generation, an anthology featuring the work of 115 students ages 6 to 16, was released on January 9, 2021, nine days before MLK Day and 11 days before Inauguration, with support from the San Mateo County Arts Commission and Office of Arts & Culture Executive Director Robin Rodricks, and co-edited by San Mateo County Poet Laureate Aileen Cassinetto and English teacher Jim Ward.

The idea for this anthology came about after more than 100 San Mateo County high school students spent December of 2020 attending poetry workshops facilitated by Cassinetto and crafting their own inaugural poems. Partly inspired by the Academy of American Poets’ 2021 Inaugural Poem Contest, we challenged San Mateo County’s youth to write about their views, their experiences and their hopes for America as we were preparing to enter a new decade.

San Mateo County in Northern California is home to over 158,000 youth under the age of 18 who were raised in the age of technology: as an example, 90 of the anthology’s contributors are Gen Zers born the same year as Facebook; the others, ages 10 and below, belong to Generation Alpha, born around the time (or after) “app” was voted word of the year. As our youth explore and engage with digital innovations, it is our hope that they also gain a deeper appreciation for the nuances of language, to give voice to all that is possible and remarkable.

The anthology is out of print but available online here.

Maya Khosla

Maya Khosla is a wildlife biologist and served as the Poet Laureate of Sonoma County from 2018 to 2020. Her Legacies Project brought Sonoma poets and students together in film. Her poems have been featured in documentary films, nominated for Pushcart Prizes and featured in The Literary Review, River Teeth, Poem, and other journals. Her books are All the Fires of Wind and Light, new from Sixteen Rivers Press, Web of Water: Life in Redwood Creek, a guide book, Keel Bone, which won the Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize, and a chapbook, Heart of the Tearing, from Red Dust Press.

Maya featured in the Bay Area Poets Laureate Gathering & Public Reading on September 21, 2019, hosted by the San Mateo County Arts Commission and the San Mateo County Libraries, and at “Empower Women, Empower Earth: Poetry Reading & Panel Discussion” hosted by Skyline College.

Ecopoem

CAMISSONIA RISING

For the Bay Area Poets Laureate
 
To take you all along a path
to the hairy suncup, the pink clarkia
the sweet-seeking,
underground dwelling, solitary bee,
to the youngest, most independent bear
of spring, who surprises a Sierra fox
into a canter. To take you all
where the undersides of stones
are still wet from last year’s rains,
where subterranean tunnels,
full of glow-in-the-dark fungus,
are where the rootwads burned
all the way down, down,
and the oak tissue underneath
lies asleep, lies awake, half-dreaming
sending messages to the beginnings
of leaves in their nodes, sending
chemical announcements
to their neighbors, the buckeyes,
and the manzanita, who are also rising
from the ashes, unfurling like fists
all their facets admitting light
into microscopic corridors
of water running new leaves.
To take you all into the quiet,
into the small hours of regeneration.

Copyright © 2019 by Maya Khosla. This poem was first presented at the 2019 Bay Area Poets Laureate Gathering & Public Reading at Millbrae Library. Used with permission of the author.