On the second and fourth Monday of each month, San Francisco Poet Laureate Emerita Kim Shuck hosts an online poetry series, with featured poets and an open mic on the 2nd Monday and an all-open mic format on the 4th Monday. Information on how to participate follows at the bottom of this post.

This evening’s featured poets are Lourdes Figueroa and Yeva Johnson.

Lourdes Figueroa is an oral poet. Her poems are a dialogue of her lived experience when her family worked in el azadón in Yolo County. The words el azadón are used by the ones who work in the fields — the work of tilling the soil under the blistering sun. She is the author of the chapbooks yolotl and Ruidos = To Learn Speak, completed during her Alley Cat Books Residency. Her chapbook Vuelta was recently published by Nomadic Press. She works and lives in Oakland with her wife, filmmaker, Peggy Peralta and their red nose pitbull Agnéa. She is a native of limbo nation. Lourdes continues to believe in your lung and your throat.

Yeva Johnson, a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and musician whose work appears or is forthcoming in Bellingham Review, Essential Truths: The Bay Area in Color Anthology, Obsidian, sin cesar, Sinister Wisdom, When We Exhale Anthology, Yemassee, and elsewhere, explores interlocking caste systems and possibilities for human co-existence in our biosphere. Yeva is a past Show Us Your Spines Artist-in-Residence (RADAR Productions/SFPL), a Marion Weber Healing Arts Fellow at Mesa Refuge in 2022, and poet in QTPOC4SHO, a San Francisco Bay Area artists’ collective. She Co-edited Joan Nestle’s book A Sturdy Yes of a People, a Sinister Wisdom Sapphic Classic. Her debut chapbook, Analog Poet Blues, was published by Nomadic Press in 2023.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84350265713…
Meeting ID: 843 5026 5713
Passcode: 244211