Dear Friends of Poetry,
The Poetry Night Reading Series is proud to present San Francisco Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin and Landon Smith at 7 PM on Thursday, February 10th, 2022 via Zoom: https://ucdavis.zoom.us/my/andyojones.
Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker, and educator of San Francisco. His latest curriculum on the extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. Eisen-Martin has published three books of poetry. Someone’s Dead Already was nominated for a California Book Award, and his book Heaven Is All Goodbyes, published by the City Lights Pocket Poets series, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize – it won a California Book Award and an American Book Award. His latest book, Blood On The Fog, was released September of 2021 in the City Lights Pocket Poets series. In 2020, Eisen-Martin co-founded Black Freighter Press. He is San Francisco’s eighth poet laureate.
Landon Smith is a poet and professor of English at Chabot College, where he serves on the Student Equity Committee, is a faculty advisor on the Stay Woke Collective (a student-led social justice organization), and works with RISE – a transitional program that works with previously incarcerated students. Smith earned his BA in English from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, and an MA in English Literature and Languages with an emphasis on Black Texts and Social Justice from Mills College. Smith has worked as the Liberal and Creative Arts Coordinator in the Metro College Success Program at San Francisco State University – a program for first generation, low-income, (primarily) students of color.
Smith has performed poetry in New York, Detroit, Berkeley, and at Bowery Poetry’s “No Desk Poetry Concert.” He has been the featured poet for SF MoAD’s Open Mic, and his poetry has been published in publications such as Cathexis Northwest Press and Silver Pinion Magazine.
This event will take place virtually on Zoom (https://ucdavis.zoom.us/my/andyojones) at 7 PM Pacific Time on Thursday, February 10th. Performances at the short open mic to begin after the features will be limited to one chosen text or three minutes, whichever is shorter.
The Poetry Night Reading Series, taking place on the first and third Thursdays of the month at 7 PM, is generously supported by the people and poets of the Sacramento Valley, and by John Natsoulas and the staff at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Your host will be Dr. Andy Jones, the poet laureate emeritus of the City of Davis.
Dr. Andy
Find the Facebook page for this event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/692686261722369/
Upcoming Poetry Night events:
February 17: Joe Wenderoth at the Natsoulas Gallery
This spring we will feature, among others, Davis Poet Laureate Julia Levine, Frank Gaspar, Tess Taylor, Joseph Millar, and Dorianne Laux.
