Kearny Street Workshop

Bay Area Poets Reflect on the Role of the Artist

Friday, March 21

6:30 - 8:30 PM

What does it mean to be an artist in San Francisco today, given our particular history, culture, geography, and economy? In this culminating reading, thirteen Bay Area poets share new work from a recently completed poetry masterclass led by veteran artist Truong Tran in which they were prompted to write about lived experience and a shared sense of place.

This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

Artist Bios:

SITA KURATOMI BHAUMIK is an interdisciplinary artist and educator born and raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles to Indian and Japanese Colombian parents. You may have been to her house for dinner.

A San Franciscan born in Australia, WEI MING DARIOTIS is Associate Professor of Asian American Studies, with an emphasis on Asian Americans and Chinese Americans of Mixed Heritage and Asian American Literature, Arts, and Culture, at San Francisco State University.

MAI ĐOÀN is a queer and anxious poet, dreamer, and heartworker who lives and makes magic in Oakland, CA.

JENNIFER HASEGAWA is a poet, playwright, photographer, and information architect. She is working on a play about a technology worker who believes that he is an alien abductee. She was born in Hilo, Hawaii and lives in San Francisco.

ROSELI ILANO has a decade of experience in community organizing and youth development with an emphasis on integrating writing and arts into youth programming. She is the WritersCorps Teaching Artist in Residence at Mission High School and Oasis For Girls.

TESSA MICAELA LANDREAU-GRASMUCK is a poet, waiter, teacher, doula and wanderer. Tessa was the first community poetics fellow in the MFA program at Mills College. Tessa's writing can found in Makeshift Magazine, Dusie, and in various other mason jars.

DAN LAU is a recipient of a Kundiman Fellowship, a William Dickey Fellowship, an Archie D. and Bertha Walker Scholarship, a Myna Brunton Hughes Award, and an Individual Artist Grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission. His poems have been published in Generations, Cape Cod Review, Gesture, and RHINO.

MIRIAM CHING YOON LOUIE is author of not contagious—only cancer; orchid odes (in progress); sweatshop warriors; aiguh! mental illness can make you nuts (in storage), 2 pop ed + 2 chappy books + umpty ump leaflets.

RADHIKA VYAS SHARMA received her MFA in Creative Writing from the San Francisco State University. Her credits include reviews and features for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Santa Clara Review, The San Jose Mercury News, The Times of India, The Economic Times, KQED FM’s Forum, Pacific Time and Perspectives, and India Currents.

MIRANDA TSANG grew up in San Francisco. She has taught writing workshops for kids at 826 Valencia and recently wrote the introduction to 642 Things to Write About: Young Writer's Edition, out from Chronicle Books this month! She's currently writing as much poetry as possible.

NATALIA VIGIL’s writing and performance has appeared in numerous places around the Bay Area. She is the co-founder of Still Here, a performance and community dialogue project that explores the experiences of Queer/LGBTQI individuals raised in San Francisco.

MARGARET RHEE is the author of the chapbook Yellow (Tinfish Press, 2010) and co-editor of Here is a Pen: An Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets, and GlitterTongue: Queer and Trans Love Poems. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a Kundiman fellow.

DEBBIE YEE’s poems have appeared in Barn Owl Review, Bateau, The Best American Poetry 2009, and Fence. A Kundiman fellow and San Francisco Arts Commission grant recipient, Debbie is in-house counsel for a national bank and periodically teaches writing and Gocco printmaking.

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Poetry Reading: Artist + SF = Meaning?

Instructor's Statement:

“As I sit here articulating my artistic vision and practice, I am keenly aware of how much I’ve changed over the course of twenty years. I came to San Francisco in the fall of 1992 in the hopes of becoming a writer. I was enrolled as a graduate student in poetry at San Francisco State University. At twenty-three, I wanted to write the one body of work that would solidify my place and standing as a great American poet. I was young, naïve and full of hope. I viewed writing as a learned craft and the work of writing as a profession. I viewed this profession as a career and a passport that would allow me to see the world. I viewed San Francisco as one stop in the greater scheme of things. And so it was there and then that I found my beginnings.

Today as I sit in my apartment at the corner of Haight and Ashbury, I’ve come to view San Francisco as my home and so much more. I am informed by its politics, shaped by its consciousness and defined by its sense of inclusion. It is the field, canvas and landscape that hold the entirety of my story. Today, I view writing as an art that extends itself far beyond the consideration of a profession or a learned craft. I see it as a life, my life. It informs my teaching, my practice of making, my way of being. The work of writing, be it the penning of a poem on the page or sculpting a poem as art, are ways of thinking. I remind my students in poetry workshops that they are learning to be thinkers. It is a lifetime endeavor that is constantly changing. It is in this thinking that I’ve come to know myself as a teacher, poet, artist and student. I am still hopeful.

On the occasion of my twentieth anniversary of calling this amazing place my home, I am honored to lead a group of committed artists and writers through a workshop designed to explore the question of what it means to call San Francisco and the Bay Area home.”

- Truong Tran

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR: TRUONG TRAN, is a Vietnamese American poet and visual artist. His collection dust and conscience (2002) won the San Francisco Poetry Center Book Prize. He teaches creative writing at San Francisco State University, and is Writer in Residence at the San Francisco School of the Arts.

Truong Tran. Wish, 2012. Courtesy of the artist.