Dr. Roderick Raña Daus-Magbual, Mayor of Daly City, is an educator and has served on the City Council of Daly City since 2018. A Bay Area transplant via Riverside and Long Beach, he received his BA in Liberal Studies from UC Riverside in 2000, his MA in Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University in 2004, and his Education Doctorate at the University of San Francisco in the Organization and Leadership Program with a minor in the International Multicultural Education Program.
Rod has taught education and Ethnic Studies courses at USF, UC Davis, Sonoma State University, City College of San Francisco, SFSU, and at Skyline College where he teaches in the Kababayan & CIPHER Learning Communities, and is currently Executive Director for the Pin@y Educational Partnerships.
He enjoys playing, reading, cooking, and raising his daughter and son, Amianan and Razón, with his wife Arlene. Rod truly believes that understanding the history of your people, comes with the responsibility to act. He’s motivated by love and the pursuit for peace and social justice.
Poem
A POET IS A POLICY MAKER
A poet is a policy maker Every stanza, rhyme, and critical stance shifts people’s hearts and minds It’s the reflection of time through narrative that brings life to words. Speak your truth, speak from your heart, because your art are whispers from your ancestors. Every stanza, rhyme, and critical stance shifts people’s hearts and minds Your words are meditations where prayers are transformed into reality. Speak your truth, speak from your heart, because your art are whispers from you ancestors. Plant the seeds so they can grow beyond soil and become fruits for generations to come. Your words are meditations where prayers are transformed into reality. You are the paradigm shift that needs to happen. Plant the seeds so they can grow beyond soil and become fruits for generations to come. Challenge the closed mind with your stories of struggle, survival, and imagination. You are the paradigm shift that needs to happen. Your poems become policy as we ritualize new ways of being Challenge the closed mind with your stories of struggle, survival, and imagination. Culture shifts politics. Your poems become policy as we ritualize new ways of being It’s the reflection of time through narrative that brings life to words. Culture shifts politics. A poet is a policy maker.
Kalamu Chaché came to live in East Palo Alto with her family from Brooklyn, New York in the mid-1960s. After graduating from high school and pursuing a college education, she earned an Associate of Arts degree in Liberal Arts from Nairobi College in East Palo Alto. Chaché has been serving the City of East Palo Alto, the Belle Haven community of Menlo Park, and the greater San Francisco Bay Area and beyond in numerous professional, executive, administrative, advocacy, and artistic areas of employment and volunteer service. A strong advocate and practitioner of activism, advocacy, and volunteerism, specializing in the areas of youth development and the Literary/Music/Performing Arts, Chaché has worked tirelessly for many causes, events, and programs. An author of three volumes of poems and vocal recording artist of the record projects, Chaché has been East Palo Alto Laureate since 1983, the longest-serving poet laureate in U.S. history.
Poem on Belonging
WITHIN YOU IS A LIGHT
Within you is a light That needs to shine bright For others to see The true possibility Of what they will need In order to succeed.
Someone, somewhere, is in need of an encouraging word To listen to the voice within that’s been heard. Somewhere, someone is trying to find a way To have strength for what to do or say. Let the light within you Help someone to make it through.
Within you is a light. Keep it forever shining bright. Use it to connect in positive ways That will be uplifting for all of our days. Let the light within help you to be What people in this world need to see.
Kalamu Chaché is a poetry, jazz, and youth empowerment advocate proclaimed and called upon by the people of the City of East Palo Alto to the honorary post of community poet. She is the longest serving poet laureate in the United States.
Chaché founded Wordslam literary hub and the Wordslam Youth Poetry Contest.
Diane Lee Moomey is a painter and poet living in Half Moon Bay, California, where she is co-host of the monthly reading series, Coastside Poetry; her work has appeared in Light, Think, The MacGuffin, PoetryMagazine.com, Mezzo Cammin, and others. She has won prizes for her sonnets in the Ina Coolbrith Circle and in the Soul Making Keats Literary Contests. Her newest collection, the chapbook Make For Higher Ground, is available at Amazon and from Barefoot Muse Press.
Poem on Belonging
FORTY DAYS
From deep within the rows of August corn, a trill, vibrato—every other living voice is still for just a breath. In tangled verge beside the field, in trees, among the ears: cicada’s well concealed. Then locusts recommence their creaking, leaping—sticky feet rebound off stems of thistle, chicory and me, bare-legged, deep in milkweed. Blackbird’s note. I open woody pods, set flossy seeds afloat. On porches, grandmamas weave ribbon out and in and out of eyelets—stitch and snip, pin, un-pin— for owners of curly-headed dolls. Yards of lace! They’re fastening the ends around the tiny waists while grampas speak in adages, chaw, lament the fish that got away. Ayup. And without a pause, it’s circling—as geese fly south and north again and summer follows summer, bringing forth another incarnation of this very thistle, cricket, chicory and milkweed, ribbon, whistle of blackbird and of train, the wispy rows of corn, the grandmamas, the homilies—all circling, adorn this life. Cicada trills again, from spot unknown. Ayup. It’s forty days till frost, grampas intone.
Co-Host, Coastside Poetry, a reading series which provides a space where poets of every color, culture, sexual orientation and gender can feel they have a voice and a warmly welcoming audience.
Lee Rossi is a winner of the Jack Grapes Poetry Prize and the Steve Kowit Prize. His latest book is Darwin’s Garden. Individual poems have appeared in The Southwest Review, Rattle, The Northwest Review, Spillway and The Southern Review. He is a member of the Northern California Book Reviewers and a Contributing Editor to Poetry Flash and Pedestal. Lee featured in the Peninsula Virtual Bookfest co-hosted by San Mateo County Libraries.
Poem on Belonging
I COME FROM SHOW ME
I am from Indian-head test patterns
From 20 Mule Team Borax and “pluck your magic twanger, Froggie”
I am from the last house on the left,
cinder blocks, two stories, fresh pink tuck pointing
I am from elephant garlic,
each whip crowned with flowers
I’m from wine drinkers and prize fighters
From Leo (not Gali-leo) and Gaia (not Mother Earth)
I’m from children should be seen and not heard, from don’t let the dog in the house
From keep your nose clean, and keep your nose to the grindstone
I’m from Stations of the Cross and Confession every month
I’m from Torino, out of New Orleans and the Guinea-hating South
Ham hocks with black-eyed peas and Chef Boy-ar-dee
From the service revolver my dad kept in his top drawer
From the costume jewelry that slept beside the gun
You’ll find it all in my book, the one I didn’t write
Veronica Kornberg is a poet from Northern California. Recipient of the Morton Marcus Poetry Prize, her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Indiana Review, New Ohio Review, On the Seawall, RHINO Poetry, Salamander, Beloit Poetry Journal, Menacing Hedge, The Shore, Spillway, and Tar River Poetry. She is a Peer Reviewer for Whale Road Review.
Poem on Belonging
HEIRLOOM
Child’s chair: sole survivor among things touched by my grandmother. The bent ash, soaked and rounded, gleams where a girl’s muslin dress once rubbed. Scratches, where buttonhooked shoes scuffed. Patina darkened to blood mahagony, sweat silted into every divot. The husband lost to German cavalry. The daughter and two sons handed over to strangers. The starting over.
How did it feel to watch my mother, late child of a second marriage, run her dimpled hand over the same ashwood or tilt back on two legs and stress the frame? To see the seat canes breached, re-woven. Such fights, such marmalades and moths this chair has weathered, yet it promenades still, with a subtle bend in the foot, plaiting light by my workroom window.
“My name is Keiki Leni Ward. I’m a spoken word poet and former student at Ravenswood Middle School. I write about my history and heritage, my environment, my community, and my hopes as a young woman of color. I have entered different poetry contests and have had my work featured by the Ravenswood Education Foundation as part of their Giving Tuesday campaign.”
Poem on Identity
PETUNIA
I used to think of myself as the forgotten As a petunia that fell from a bush into the thick concrete A plant that would never be able to replant itself But would instead lay to rot Where this petunia would constantly be smashed by the sneakers of those who walked by Or perhaps burned by the sun As petals fall off this once beautiful petunia Parts of me began to fall off and become disconnected Discouraged, dissed, discombobulated even disfigured Until my petals my gifts were spread and all I was left with was to look at my shallow core The core laid brown in dark secrets caved in by me But maybe there is hope for a little ole petunia like me Maybe a crack in the cement which allowed dirt to escape A new opportunity Maybe the right wind Or the right angle I just might grow Like Tupac’s rose in concrete Watch me blossom watch me regrow my petals loom in and my giving tree starts to grow Watch my leaves tower over my lost dreams Watch my leaves touch the shoes on power lines Watch me make it out because my tears watered and grew my roots I made it out because I found my roots or maybe, I made it out because I had to lose all of my roots So who am I? I am more than the forgotten I am not the rose that you knew which grew from concrete I am the beautiful petunia which sprouted from a bush of dead weeds in the middle of these streets
Peter Neil Carroll is an American writer and historian. He is the author of over 20 books, including Sketches from Spain (Main Street Rag, 2024), a lyric homage to the volunteers of the Lincoln Brigade, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; Talking to Strangers (Turning Point Press, 2022); This Land, These People: 50 States of the Nation (Press Americana, 2022), winner of the Prize Americana; Something is Bound to Break (Main Street Rag, 2019); Fracking Dakota: Poems for a Wounded Land (Turning Point, 2015); The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War (Stanford University Press, 1994), winner of the 1995 BABRA Nonfiction Award; and the memoir Keeping Time: Memory, Nostalgia, and the Art of History (University of Georgia Press, 1990). He is emeritus faculty in the Department of History at Stanford University, and is Poetry Moderator of Portside.
My grandpa Izzy adored borscht, slurped the soup, steaming or cold, let the red juice spread on his mustache and licked his lips.
Borscht. A Russian scholar once advised me never to underestimate its power to make a community, and in honor of Izzy I bought
the scholar’s book about an obscure laborer in Tsarist Russia, depicting the daily lives of a passionate people unknown to history.
They might be characters of literature, the stuff of Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, yet not fictional, revealing the dreams of ordinary men, women and
the making of working-class consciousness. They drink too much, eat too little, get sent to prison, yet he gives them something they never expected,
maybe even more than he imagined. I see them drinking tea in filthy rooms, fired by factory foremen demanding payment or sex from women workers, and confused by
students who try to uplift them with books they can’t understand. He’s given them immortality, assuming someone like me reads his book. His story tells much
less about my grandpa, a Jew in old Russia, lacking even the slim benefits of Russian nationality. Refusing discipline of factory work, he became an itinerant glazier,
carried his goods on his back, worked outdoors without a timeclock in all weather and loved the glass he cut and framed for all the light, he said, it brought to life.
In 2021, the County of San Mateo named Shireen Malekafzali its first-ever Chief Equity Officer. This is the second newly created County role aimed at bettering the welfare and outcomes of both employees and residents. Malekafzali’s 20-year career includes policy, teaching, research and coalition building work across the nation. She holds a Bachelor of Science in environmental studies and a Master’s in public health. She previously served as health equity officer for County Health where she led the health equity strategy including development of a seven-point approach for equitable vaccine distribution and developed a community-led COVID-testing model.
Between 2021 and 2022, County Chief Equity Officer Shireen Malekafzali, in partnership with the San Mateo County Libraries, launched the “Equity Through Art Series” where communities of color share their stories and experiences through the lens of art, to culminate in a vision for the future of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) in San Mateo County.
Poem on Belonging
I AM…
I am from the womb of a depressed warrior
From a land of empire, oppression, and poetry From a climate of black outs, bombs, and instability
I am an immigrant.
A fresh lens on America – an awkward sense of self and belonging I am from the ingredients of the American Dream –
from hard work, sacrifice, and loss,
school lunches, ESL, and luck,
emergency rooms, student loans, and struggle,
from strength and hope, and pain and more luck
A reluctant warrior – an introvert, a mom, a learner I am from the skies of privilege and opportunity Riding the winds of compassion and gratitude
Flying the spirits of ancestral hope I am connected to all that is and has been Guided by the light in my heart
Ever the optimist Afloat on the waters of anxiety
A unique blend of apple pie – a splash of rosewater, a dash of pomegranate, with a foreign texture I am the scars and ambitions of my parent’s dreams I am a shadow of the American landscape
Aileen Cassinetto is a poet, editor, and publisher. She was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow in 2021 and a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100 awardee in 2023 for her contributions in building regenerative and equitable communities through the arts. She served as San Mateo County Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2022.
Poem on Belonging
STILL, LIKE AIR
we rise toward the light, our movement widening as though
in prayer, holy and urgent. I will say your name—
an act of love more powerful than the weight of air
or the falling of light. Like clouds speaking their truth—every
heap and layer, every curl of hair, a reckoning. Still, I pray
for grace, to hear your story, and what you know of clouds—
why they shine at night, where they touch the ground,
how they birth a star. Perhaps you will want to know
my story, and why these queries—like, what will it cost
to cross an inch of scorn? Or climb a wall of fear? How much
to plough the air, to read the clouds? How much for a sip
of water, a gulp of air? How much for three square
Aileen Cassinetto was appointed by the County of San Mateo Board of Supervisors to initially serve as Poet Laureate from January 2019 to December 2020. Her term was extended twice, from January 2021 to December 2021, and from January to June 2022, culminating with a final reading at the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors Meeting on June 28th and a Summer of Poetry Celebration & Farewell at Skyline College’s Farallon Room on June 30th.
COMMUNITY PROJECT
“Speak Poetry in San Mateo County” (January 2019-June 2022) is a three & a half year community project that produced over 120 events and workshops featuring over 400 poets and artists including the first “Convening of Bay Area Poets Laureate” (co-organized with former poets laureate Caroline Goodwin & Lisa Rosenberg, former Arts Commissioner Robin Rodricks, and the San Mateo County Libraries) and the “Peninsula Virtual Bookfest” (supported by the San Mateo County Libraries and city libraries), as well as three print anthologies, community poems, a web archive, civic initiatives, and an ecopoetry project funded by the Academy of American Poets and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
NATIONAL POETRY MONTH (April 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022)
An annual countywide campaign for National Poetry Month, celebrating poetry and the work of local poets.
HERITAGE MONTHS (2019-2022)
An annual celebration of heritage months through poetry and other events in partnership with various local organizations: Black History Month (February), Lunar New Year (February), Women’s History Month (March), Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month (May), Immigrant Heritage Month (June), Pride Month (June), Hispanic Heritage Month (September), Filipino American History Month (October), Native American Heritage Month (November), Christmas (December)
CLIMATE ACTION
San Mateo County Youth Ecopoetry Project (June 2021-June 2022) is a series of readings and workshops that produced collaborative and individual poems and short poetry films on ecology and sustainability, in partnership with high school students countywide, Urban Word, Youth Climate Ambassadors, San Mateo County Office of Sustainability, Office of Education, Office of Arts & Culture, Skyline College, South San Francisco Library, Menlo Park Library, and Midpen Media Center, with support from The Academy of American Poets and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Book-to-Action advocacy including launch of Burlingame Reads which convened discussions and action around themes of environmental justice, equity, and community care
Filoli Ecopoetry Award was launched in 2022 (two years after the launch of Filoli’s Annual Haiku Competition in 2020) in collaboration with San Mateo County Poet Laureate Aileen Cassinetto to encourage poetry submissions that highlight the relationship between humans and the environment. On average, Filoli receives over 1,000 haiku submissions each year, and the top 10 poems chosen by Cassinetto are displayed as poetry installations in the Spring Garden in the month of May. In addition to the ecopoetry award, categories include First & Second Prize, and Best Under 18.
Tree Planting (of nearly 200 trees) through One Tree Planted in honor of San Mateo County’s poets and poetry advocates.
YOUTH ADVOCACY
San Mateo County Youth Cultural Ambassadors (2023-2024), a pilot program celebrating the work of youth poets and artists, and precursor to the San Mateo County Youth Fellowship Program.
“Step Into the Light” Youth Arts Competition (2023-present), organized by the Cow Palace to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, is inspired by Dr. King’s visit in 1964.
“Home Could Be Here” (May 2020) and “Growing Home” (May 2021), a collaboration with the Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo County to raise awareness of Affordable Housing Month and empower youth voices in the community through poetry and the arts.
Youth Poet Laureate Project (2019-2022), a campaign to adopt youth poet laureate/youth poet-in-residence programs around the county. The Daly City Youth Poet Laureate program was launched in 2020, followed by the Burlingame and South San Francisco Youth Poet-in-Residence programs in 2022, and the Burlingame-Hillsborough Youth Poet Laureate program in 2023.
WOMEN’S ADVOCACY
“Poets Rise” at RISE 2020 (March 2020), “The Future of Women’s History: A Panel Discussion” (March 2021), & “Poets Rise” at RISE 2022: Women’s Leadership Conference (March 2022), in collaboration with the San Mateo County Commission on the Status of Women.
Makerspace Poetry Lab Pilot Project (April 2022), integrates poetry into the makerspace to encourage divergent thinking and diverse perspectives, and inspire poetry-making using recycled objects and tools in the Makerspace, in partnership with Redwood City Public Library.
COMMUNITY & BELONGING
Community Poetry Open Mic at Burlingame Public Library (2023-present), co-organized with Erika Bojnowski, second Wednesdays 6-7:15pm (January to June, August, September)
Belonging Begins With Us (September 2021), workshop and community poem, in collaboration with the County of San Mateo Office of Community Affairs and Welcoming America.
Filoli Haiku Contest (2020-present), an annual haiku competition for all ages in collaboration with Filoli Historic House & Garden, as a way to share stories and memories across cultures, and help create a sense of place and belonging. Categories include First and Second Prize and Best Under 18; the top 10 poems are displayed as poetry installations in the garden in the month of May. In 2022, the Filoli Ecopoetry Award was launched to encourage poetry submissions that highlight the relationship between humans and the environment.
Peninsula Virtual Bookfest (September-October 2020), 60 authors and 17 readings and conversations, organized by San Mateo County Poet Laureate Aileen Cassinetto in collaboration with the Burlingame Public Library, the Daly City Public Library, the San Mateo County Libraries and the South San Francisco Public Library, and various booksellers. Three of the events were hosted by former San Mateo County Poets Laureate Caroline Goodwin and Lisa Rosenberg.
Power to the Poets (June 2020-August 2020), a reading series of poetry, solidarity & social justice featuring poets from the East Coast & West Coast.
Poetry & Community Concerts (February, April, & December 2019), celebrating the power of poetry and community, in collaboration with local poets, Aragon Music, the West Bay Community Band, Burlingame Library, and San Mateo County Libraries.
HEALING & MENTAL HEALTH
“Love in the Time of COVID-19: A Community Poem for Healthcare Workers and Other Frontliners“(April 2020), a poetry fundraiser in support of the San Mateo County Health Foundation’s COVID-19 fund for San Mateo County hospitals and clinics. For every line submitted, a dollar was donated to SMCHF. The community poem was completed on April 10, 2020, and presented at the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors Meeting on April 21, 2020. Aside from raising funds for the San Mateo County Health Foundation, the poem was used as a resource by the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project in Minnesota and the Montgomery Independent School District in Texas. It was also featured in Mystic Seaport Museum’s 2020 Memorial Day observance in Connecticut, the New Orleans Poetry Festival in Louisiana, Taiji Terasaki’s Transcendients Exhibitions at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles and the Maui Arts and Cultural Center in Hawaii, and the San Mateo County Community & Covid: 4th Town Hall.
Menlo Park Library’s Mental Health Open Mic (May 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022), breaking the silence surrounding suicide and mental illness through poetry, music, stories, and resources in partnership with Menlo Park Library.
Intergenerational Community Gatherings (2020, 2021, 2022) in partnership with the Peninsula Family Service and Daly City Library & Recreation Services.
Author Talks & Readings (2019-2022), including the Peninsula Virtual Bookfest, in partnership with Burlingame Public Library, Daly City Public Library, Menlo Park Library, Redwood City Public Library, San Mateo County Libraries, San Mateo Public Library, Skyline College Learning Communities, South San Francisco Public Library, local writers and various booksellers.
Speak Poetry Vol. 2 (December 2019), a print anthology featuring work by poets from San Mateo County.
Speak Poetry Vol. 1 (April 2019), a print anthology featuring work by poets from San Mateo County.
Poetry & Community Concerts (February, April & December 2019), celebrating the power of poetry and community, in collaboration with Aragon Music, the West Bay Community Band, Burlingame Library, and San Mateo County Libraries.
First Convening of Bay Area Poets Laureate, a day-long gathering of poets laureate past and present from around the San Francisco Bay Area with workshops, presentations, a public reading, and reception.
Speak Poetry in San Mateo County 