 What an amazing turnout we have for tonight's program. Let's hear it for Kim Shuck. You know when we were at the reception, it's amazing how when you get a group of poets and poetry lovers, it's like family. So thank you for making us feel so welcomed and for joining us tonight. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Luis Herrera. I'm the city librarian and I'd like to welcome you to the library in the Carretta Auditorium for tonight's inaugural 7th San Francisco Poet Laureate Kim Shuck. I also want to do a quick plug. This is a summer of love 50 years later, but nonetheless we have an amazing exhibit. So love continues. So take a moment to check out this lower level right after the program to see a wonderful exhibit put on by our exhibition staff. They do a fabulous job. So again, thank you for joining us tonight. I do want to take a moment to recognize and thank the members of the San Francisco Poet Laureate Selection Committee. They did a tremendous job of not only vetting the many nominations that we received, but also carefully identifying three finalists who met the very strict criteria for the Poet Laureate. So I want to have them stand up. Some of them I know are here. But wait, wait, wait. Let me call them out so you know who they are before we give them a round of applause. So we have Bob Booker. Yes, none other than Jack Hirschman, former Poet Laureate, Jack Hirschman, Joyce Jenkins. I know Joyce is in the house. Joyce Jenkins. Is she here? There she is. Absolutely. Great work. I didn't see Stacy Lewis, but Stacy Lewis here. There you go. There you go. Great work. And I know she's here. Janice Mirikitani, a former Poet Laureate as well. Alejandro Muria is not. Yes, she is. Yeah, Alejandro. And let me tell you, let me tell you something about Alejandro. He's a little tired because he's the longest standing Poet Laureate that we've ever had. So thank you for a job. Well done, Alejandro. Really appreciate it. Several other folks, Derek Brown from the mayor's office. I don't think he's here today, but definitely acknowledge him. Teresa Ono from our library commission. Stuart Shaw from our library staff. Byron Spooner, who does a great job with the Friends of the Library. And Michelle Jeffers. Michelle, shout out for you as well. Thank you also to the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. They've done a great job. Marie Cipella, our executive director, is here. Thank you for helping us put together and bring to life our wonderful event tonight. And certainly my boss, Mayor Ed Lee, who had the most difficult job, which was to actually make the final selection for a Poet Laureate. So I want to thank him as well. As one of the most literary cities in the nation, it's no surprise that San Francisco has established a tradition of selecting a Poet Laureate, a person who will lead our city in honoring our literary rituals and creating new ones. The great Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who was selected as a first Poet Laureate way back in 1998, when he was selected as that. Yes, let's hear it for Lawrence Ferlinghetti. At the time that he was appointed the first Poet Laureate, it was noted that all San Franciscans benefit from the cultural perspective of artists and writers, the individuals who see the poetry and beauty in our everyday lives and lay the foundation for our cultural enrichment. And that's as true today as it was way back in 1998. That's right. Over the past 19 years, we've honored six truly remarkable and legendary poets in our city. Our Poet Laureates have been essential to our city. This is an important position. They serve as a voice of our city during these challenging and difficult times, and they bring meaning and beauty to our experiences as residents in our wonderfully diverse city. It has been said that great poetry has a power to light a fire within our passion, our souls, to alter the way we see ourselves in the world, and poetry is nothing short of transformative. And if anyone can light a fire, it's none other than our next Poet Laureate, Kim Shuck. She will add her own brand and identity to the position. So tonight we gather here to inaugurate and honor our seventh Poet Laureate, a native daughter of San Francisco's Mission District, the incomparable Kim Shuck. Yes, let's hear it for her. And and we're very honored. We're very honored to welcome her. Welcome to the stage tonight. Devorah Major, former Poet Laureate, who will do the honors in introducing Poet Laureate. So Devorah, let's hear a warm welcome for her. Thank you all. I think I can do this. OK, thank you. It's it really is nice to see all of the poets and poets, poetry lovers and chief five of seven of us are here, huh? And the two who aren't. Well, I guess when how old is Lawrence? Ninety eight yet. Ninety eight, you can beg off of stuff, you know. And Diana Prima would be here, but she just doesn't have the strength. So here we go. Kim Shuck is a weaver of words, of grass, of straw, of cloth, a stringer of beads, as ornament and spirit, as poem and prayer. Polish and to Segali Cherokee with the dash of African. This San Francisco daughter has walked these streets and written of underground creeks, steep hills and rolling fog. In one poem, she wrote, wind and thick fog blow in, suckle at the heat of the day, their sticky fingers cut my hair, damp at the neck behind the air, leaving it a trap for words. She has won awards for her writing and her textile and beadwork. She has worked at the crossroads of culture, honoring ancestors and celebrating difference, respecting culture and acknowledging varied perspectives. She knows laughter as an intimate friend and shares this her humor in a rabbit stories as well as her poems. Kim has worked at the fine arts museums, leading young people through the collections and as an artist in residence at the De Young Museum. Kim has curated poetry series and visual art shows taught in college and universities, as well as in schools, grades K through 12. She is educated in her craft with the formality and deep roots of the old ones, as well as the credentials of modern university systems. This San Francisco native has raised children, forged strong bonds of love and friendship and now as the new poet Laureate will bring the legacy of four generations of San Francisco living to her work in this city. This crafter of words and singer of morning prayers and meditations writes, memory spirits give me days full of words I've forgotten or never been taught. And in her newest book, she reveals truths such as, you will know the poets by the dirt under our nails. Kim Shuck is now San Francisco's seventh poet, Laureate. Hooray. Those who translate those who translate the power of numbers say that the essence of symbolize of seven symbolizes our struggle as humans to know and understand how appropriate San Francisco will be well served by this woman who is my friend, colleague and fellow poet. Please welcome our newest poet, Laureate Kim Shuck. I promised that I'd read more than half a poem. So shit, it is always an honor to read in a lonely territory. Always. Now, we are very close to an old village site. And although I could not throw a rock to there, I feel fairly certain there are at least two men in the room who could if these buildings weren't here. So that's where we are. It's important to root in that. So I'm going to start by reading the work of two Ohlone poets. First, Stephen Meadows. And I'm going to ask Doug to do me a favor. I got all the way up here and realized that in my purse are the glasses that I need. I waited for years because I always saw I saw people, you know, doing the glasses thing when they read poetry, and I thought, that looks so cool. I need to do that. And now I can't remember to hold on to them. Anyway, I think I can do this one without cosmology. Generations of spiders weave their interminable webs among the rough cut boards, the hay-colored chronicle of bodies in the soft light, pendants of spirit, rivaling in abandon the acrylics and oils on canvas that speak to me of friends. In this room with its colors spasmodic over 50 some years, neither the sound of traffic nor the rotting of the walls nor the murmuring of poems will halt this cosmology of gems. Each delicate, past over body, a bright crypt in the air. It's in the side pocket. Thank you. Oh, I got it. Now you make all kinds of plans and you go, OK, the books, this is what I'm going to read. I should know better this morning. I was making jumping frogs at the Mission Education Center in a language I don't speak very well. And and now I'm doing this and people asked me before I walked in. Are you worried? Second graders who are waiting for you to make a linguistic mistake are so much scarier. So this is by Demer Raranda, who is also a lony. If you don't know either of these writers, you should. And my great gratitude, I think they're both heyday books. Are they both heyday books? There's a heyday person here. They're both heyday books, by the way. It's called Petroglyphs. All my life, I knew I would disappear. I knew my presence here on earth was so tentative that I was in constant danger of being devoured, absorbed, vanished. So from the time I could hold a crayon, I scribbled, I scrawled. My hand grew cramped and tired. Calluses formed on my fingers from holding a pen, a pencil. I gripped my writing utensil with four fingers instead of three. I used my pinky to support the others. I gripped so hard my fingers hurt, but couldn't stop. I couldn't stop because if I did, I would disappear. Everyone I loved had disappeared and I knew I was next. A lot of questions in the last couple of weeks. And a lot of people have spoken of me as a native writer, which I am. But I can't help but remember the time that my mother came to one of my art shows and looked at my bio, which had been edited by the people at the gallery. And they'd taken out the fact that I'm half Polish. So those of you who know what they're looking at will recognize a good all mountain hat from Poland, the Alpine Carpathians, where my grandfather is from. Think the other side of the mountain from the vampires. My grandfather was was a union organizer for the Painters Union here in San Francisco. When we really, really remembered how to do that. When you didn't have to say you were a pro union in this town, because we all knew it. Thank you. This is by Harina Lara Silva, who wrote a piece called Blood Sugar Canto, that you should know about. And when I was trying to write this, this said it a bit closer. I read something about American artists in their mindset, something which did not include me, Harina, as American, not her in this brown, Mexican, indigenous, queer, disabled body, something which did not speak to her art. She forgets sometimes that for some people, art is a luxury, a pastime. And even those who make art, they see it as something to chase, stealing the stories of others, seeking out experiences in order to have something to write about, pushing themselves to extremes to make themselves feel. She forgot that because it's not the art she makes, nor the art the people in her world make. Writing is the closest art, so I will say writing, but mean art making in all its forms. In Harina's world, we write because we must, because no nos queda de otra, because it's how we survive, how we crawl out of self-destruction and hopelessness, how we dream, how we create ourselves, how we speak, how we believe, how we reach out to one another, how we build, and how we heal ourselves. So part of the process of, well, I didn't nominate myself for this. I was at a party actually at Hay Day Books, and Kurt Schweigman walked up to me and said, I think you're going to be the next poet laureate of San Francisco, and I laughed at him. And then I went off to the corner to finish my Aram sandwich and drink some juice quietly by myself. Somebody else came up to me that day and said the same thing, and then later at a different event, Cesar Lav asked me if he could nominate me, and I said, sure, and I'll even do it if, hello Cesar, I'll even do it if they choose me. Justice Richard. The three of them went around the city. I see nobody else raising their hands, but they're both here too. They both went around the city encouraging people to nominate me for this. There you are. There's one of you. Yeah. So there's Richard right back there. So here I am. What I decided to do was make, it's a project I've wanted to do for a long time. I'll come clean. It's not a new idea for me. I wanted to make a poetry map of San Francisco. So in coming times, many of you who are out there in the audience are going to be tapped from poems. Many of you are going to be tapped for poems about heroes who have left us and about places that mean something really important to you, specific places, not vague places, because this city is amazing. And it's an incredible place. How many of you know that we used to have a native elder center in Hayes Valley? Right. There are a lot of, what? I know you did. I was hoping you'd say something. That's Mary Jean Robertson. This is an incredibly high rent native room right now. You have no idea. There are native people in this room from halfway across the continent. And I am honored that you're all here. When Louise got up here and said, it seems like a family, I almost went, you know what? This actually is my family. I hope you've got your pictures because I'm about to stop looking like an adult. The people cheering are probably the ones who know what rabbit represents. So if nobody else ends up writing about her, I'm going to end up writing about Mary Tall Mountain, but only because, although Bill doesn't know it yet, he's writing the piece for Carolee Sanchez. So Mary Tall Mountain, The Last Wolf. The Last Wolf hurried towards me through the ruined city and I heard his baying echoes down the steep smashed warrens of Montgomery Street and past the ruby crown high rises left standing, their lighted elevators useless. Passing the flicking red and green of traffic signals, baying his way eastward in the mystery of his wild-loping gait, closer the sounds in the deadly night through clutter and rubble of quiet blocks, I hear his voice ascending the hill and at last his low whine as he came floor by empty floor to the room where I sat in my narrow bed looking west, waiting. I heard him snuffle at the door and I watched. He trotted across the floor. He laid his long grain muzzle on the spare white spread and his eyes burned yellow. His small dotted eyebrows quivered. Yes, I said, I know what they've done. So people have been asking me things, reporters have been asking me things like, why do you write? I think I've covered that. I always want to ask people when they ask me that, why don't you? Because I don't know how to do it any other way. And in similar questions, I've been asked things like, sort of surreptitiously, what's it like to be Native American? Now, for clarity, this isn't something I learned how to do later in life. And that question always sounds to me like, what's binocular vision like? How about bipedal locomotion? I don't have an answer. What's it like to be you? I don't know that either. So, but I will say this, do you look around you? Being Chalagi for me is knowing that I'm loved because whenever I need them, my family shows up. Do you see them all here? Okay. Five years ago, my daughter died. People asked me how I kept going and I'll answer it with these people. See who carries part of my sadness for me? That's how. And that's what it's like. Carol E. Sanchez did a lot of things for me. Among them introduced me to DeVora Major, although kind of in a roundabout way. It didn't happen directly, but it happened in that poetry way. And without her, I wasn't paying my bills the last couple of years. Okay. Just for clarity's sake. Thank you, Deb. It's an honor to be in your footsteps up here. This poem is Carol E. It's from a section called Notes from San Francisco from an incredible book called From Spirit to Matter. The Song, The Dance, The Poem. I toil in the field, syllable into line, through the breath. The breathing is difficult, the birthing. I dreamed of you, Mama, far away, talking hours into the night. The breathing was difficult and you changed again, trying to tell me something I couldn't remember, except the field was there and stretched on and on. The stubble would not be replaced with new corn and spring is soon. The breathing is difficult at times, from syllable into line. Why a rabbit hat? Rabbit is the trickster god for the Cherokee people, or the trickster spirit depends on who you talk to. And rabbit haunts me. So I figured I'd bring him directly so that I didn't get swamped by him. The first thing that happened when the announcement was made was that somebody contacted me and asked me if I identified as LGBT. I am in my 50s, okay? And I have, people have found that an amusing puzzle since I was 14. I don't answer that question anymore, okay? Because there have been a lot of different answers to that question. And I am not currently interviewing for the position of current lover, which means that there are three whole people on the planet who need to know who I personally feel like snuggling up with at any given time. That would be when important, my doctor, my partner, and me. I already know the answer. My partner is taking another picture of me right now. And I don't think my doctor's here. So I answered that question the way I have for a while. I mean, generally, sometimes I say it depends on who I'm trying to piss off, okay? Sometimes I say, you know, I have a number of flip into answers because it's really nobody's business. Now, the way adults deal with this, rather than asking, is that you look, you make your guess, and you keep the answer to yourself, right? But I said, no, not really, because no, not really. And then somebody printed that I was evasive and did not want to go on record. So I'm going to go on record about a few things. In my 50s, technically obese, Cherokee, Goodall Polish, baseball, although I wouldn't really want to say what team, because, you know, I wouldn't want to play favorites or anything. And I'd go to more games if I could figure out how to trade a poem to get in, you know what I'm saying? I got another one here. Some people may recognize it. Okay. So libraries, absolutely public school. Those of you who kind of know where I went to high school are going to try to call bullshit on that one. But the fact is, I went to high school at a private school, public school guys, public school, generally monogamous, omnivore. Yes, so far they're all my own. How's that? Anybody have any others that they really wanted cleared up? Things that are probably important. I am the kind of person who believed in the giant squid before they found one. And because I actually think Lee would find this funny, I'm going to read his poem with the giant squid hat on. This is from Lee Francis' book, The Good Red Interstate, Nya Carol. I try to keep you in present time, message bringer woman, disconnect you from a common past, guitar playing poet, build boxes for all my memories, San Francisco nights skipping down Telegraph Hill, Santa Fe evenings drinking with movie stars, Cubero mornings climbing the sandstone rocks, Washington daylights looking at the monuments. I still wear the shirt you made last year, artist drawing mentor, greet each day with a smile, mother and grandmother place memories in little boxes, Santa Monica swimming in the ocean, Albuquerque walking city streets, Sausalito listening to John Handy, San Fidel playing kick the can. I pass the 50 to you again, horse rider Capricorn, spend quiet moments alone, entertainer teacher, add memories to little boxes, corales where Louis always played, fair facts talking all night long, Las Vegas hoping to change reality, seal beach sharing our grief and pain. I visit a thousand planets, counselor companion, consider well your message, oak clan cousin sister, stack boxes logically in order, red for son and passion, blue for water and rest, green for earthen action, yellow for corn and change. Going back to this because it's part of the story. This was made for me by my nursery school teacher who's here tonight has known me since I was three years old. Let me tell you about this city. The woman who made this hat for me tonight, I had her until I went to elementary school where I was one of the early people in the Ruth Asawa Alvarado Arts Project. After elementary school, I went to junior high where my best friend's mother was Kate Wolf, the singer-songwriter, dated Carolee Sanchez's son. Carolee introduced me to California poets in the schools where the next person I'm going to read was a big mover and shaker. This is from No Easy Light by Susan Herron Sibet. It's called What It Will Be Like, a mistranslation from Cesar Vallejo. I will live in a city with walls made of light, of water, where the tender fuchsias are never thirsty. I will live in a city made of intricate wires and sand, a city without flying paper or Kleenex, a city of bread. In my city, the crusts will be chewy, sour, golden stucco and brown shingle. The heel of the loaf will be the curve of land's end. And in this glass of air and clouds, my city will be dazzling, especially when the light slips under the fog just before the glittering night. The hills will be made with the bones of houses, and the gulls will fly up silently at night. The only one awake will be my small black cat, and his song will be so beautiful no one will ever be sad again. I have had the best education in art and having a good heart than anybody could have, but I'm not pretending it's over. I'm going to read one piece out of the Tongo Eisenmarten's book that's not having a release party tonight. You will have to go to that to get the other one. This is, we're going afterwards. You want to write? This is called Waiting for Prints. I'm not kidding. I view it as one of my jobs. Waiting for prints. Like weapon is to jacket and precinct holds Friday hostage, fossil jaw, then judge. Tunnel at the end of the light, see an overtime hurricane smacking more houses, sleep until woke by dry cereal and surrender. This holding cell only needs a giant panhandler's palms to shake these coin men around. The man's a genius. I fully expect at some point to be standing or to be sitting in the audience while he's standing up here doing this one of these days. Okay, I suppose I've actually worn out reading other people's poems. So here's one of mine from Sidewalk Indian. This one's a little hard to get, so I think they have some outside. It's called The Great Urban Indian Poem. The Great Urban Indian Poem has already been written. Most people missed it. The fancy dancer had finally finished his urban regalia, collected his last windshield wiper blade for his Oklahoma, Oakland backbustle, complete with Harley gas cap rosette, found himself lining up next to a redheaded San Francisco girl, her shawl edge marked with graffiti from outside of Eli's Mile High Club, and John Lee played the two step himself. The Great Urban Indian Poem is ongoing, but most people miss it because there will never be a release party or even a book. And Deb Isle, though she may want to, will not play the event. And the tribes involved are conflicted because one of the poets has no CDIB card, and the other is from an unrecognized band that had never been more than obscure, and she refuses to wear the official tribal dress because, well, it's horrible. And it's not even historically relevant, and it makes her look like a cloth muffin, and she'd really like the cute girl in the shawl competition to look at her, but muffin dress isn't getting that done. Which is a whole other can of politics. The Great Urban Indian Poem will be found when you least expect it, and yes, parts are even scrawled onto those fussy coffee cup insulators, but only coffee from small local cafes because culture is at its root not something that can be sold by chain stores. There will be no signs directing people to the poem. It will not be reviewed or published in a sanctioned literary organ, but pay attention, because if you hear Jim Pepper in the background, you might be closed. If she needs a lozenge, I have them in the purse, but it's okay. This is called Owl Feathers, and some of you just winced. I apologize. I love a room where I can tell Indian jokes, and some people are laughing at them. Thank you so much for being here. Sometimes she wears her skin privilege like a diving belt, and the meeting after meeting where there is no ally is just more poppy dust. The gradual immunity to one pain, eventually eventual oversensitivity to another ache, becomes something she has to have to work to wake up. Sometimes she wears her skin like a hair shirt self, mortification she and Isabella's daughter share with feet on similar stones. Those stones become a wall she can rest her forehead against in moments of exhaustion, a chrysalis for this new person that becomes their loss, the cool of rock of foothold. Sometimes she wears herself like summer heat, like the Owl Feathers, they say she doesn't completely understand here on the edge of a continent, shifting in this moment of change, in an era of change, and doesn't the backspin make everyone a bit dizzy. The moray of offset grids. Active tectonics and caffeine, you are not me, my love, and the old kitchen table cure needs continual renewing. The old foods, the old press of non-compliance, desktop glyphs in the endless paper costumes, the handful of unusually soft and banded feathers. Not to bang on about it, but I am not a California, I am a native Californian, I am not a native California native. My people are from the other side of the continent. In Europe, this is how I explain it because everybody always asks me questions like, so tell me about totem poles, or have your people lived in tepees? Not really. My people lived in longhouses. I don't know anything useful about totem poles. It is as though you went to someone in Prague and asked them about the troubles in Ireland. I have studied a lot of it, so I can speak to it somewhat, but it's better that I don't. So anyway, this is actually a poem from a personal perspective with a nod at California natives. This river runs west. And counter to every story I drank deep in those small dull days, strange, heavy with collective unconscious, with all of those west-running improbable relations spending lavish hands worth of emotion on this imagined west, in this city which also runs west into an ocean I own no stories for, a borrowed ocean full of marvels fed by these long men who collect different water, who polish stones that won't tell me the future in any language I know. This house is so familiar, I swear, one of us has to change. The clothes forgotten on the line in the dark with the fog and wind and what schedule there is ringing through me. How is it the notion of a person can shatter into so many pieces that they are absolutely everywhere? So overwhelmingly unavoidable, and we talk about them as gone or past as if they weren't in every surface ever touched, and every action, silly or greedy or beautiful, weren't as arresting as the tea kettle or any other demonstrated noun, and aren't we having enough trouble managing those without all of these endless, breath-stealing curtain calls. Untangle the words and write a poem of visibility, of relaxing into what is and is not fighting, a poem of expressing the nouns you know, lay the words end to end and write something about celebrating years of reading each other bedtime stories, of playing games, and even though I hate them, a poem for those damn red high heels, a poem of singing and fairies and taking pictures, because the question for each moment is different. Write a poem for red currents eaten off the canes of waiting for the wild strawberries to get ripe, a poem for the bright orange pearl-sized tomatoes on the vines right now, and the way that they would smell if I picked them. This is called what is culture about having hands living on the edges of water? We can agree that there are things that bite, that chill wind might not love mammal flesh or love it too roughly for our desire for hairless skin to skin communion. We share the notion of brine ghosts of something that there is about salt and unbound water and what is drawn from emotion and fear and maybe the relaxing into inevitable experience. There are deaths I wouldn't fight, I think, or not fight hard, but we can also agree that invaders will be resisted until there is no more salt or handprint or tide, until the conquest itself has evaporated, leaving rhyme in the sand and is remembered only in names and other kinds of maps. I want to say, even though they've been acknowledged already, that I personally, as a writer, as an artist, as a human being, have received some gift in the words of every one of the people who has been a poet laureate before me in this city. It would be really difficult to say how much I've gotten from Laurence Farlingetti's work, and because I knew he wouldn't be here, I didn't try, because it's just too bafflingly enormous to come to terms with. When I, not when I was a baby poet, but when I was a baby reader in public, I read for Jan Merakatani's millennial celebration. I was one of her poets for that. And I had actually not done that before, and particularly not for an audience that large. And I listened to you read, and I just went out on stage with that. Your words are so, there's a shape to the way you write that has changed the way I look at things in the world, and I wanted to say thank you. DeVora is such a good friend that sometimes I forget what an excellent writer she is, but not when I'm being careful in reading your work. You are a marvel and a gift to the city, and I'm really grateful for your presence. There are a lot of things your work has given me, Jack, but I have to say this because I think you'll like the joke. One of the things that's been asked of me recently is, can we have a more glamorous photo of you? And my response has been, I'll even pose for it if you can answer yes to this question. Did you at any point ask Jack Hirschman for a more glamorous photo? And then a slightly more serious note. I love, the first time, and you may not remember it, but you read from my poetry series, but it was my partner who asked you to read Jennifer Fox Bennett. And it was when Burden Beckett Books was in the old location, and you got up and you read Roque D'Alton instead of your own work. And that was a huge gift to me. It helped me grow a lot, so thank you. Alejandro, I took a lot of notes while you were poet laureate. We've kind of known each other for a long time in the same orbits. We worked for a long time in the same department at San Francisco State University. And the thing that you've given me, even though all of these people are activists, you more than anybody else, the thinking of what you did while you were poet laureate is going to keep me on my toes about the activism. Make no mistake. And also, just an extremely unapologetic approach to reading work rooted in my own cultures. And I really thank you for that. It's huge. What I'd really like to do is take a sip of water and see if we can get one or two questions while I do that to kind of cover the pause. So does anybody, we might need the lights up a little bit. That makes that so much worse. You know what I'm going to do? I love this hat, but I'm going to get the goat hers one out to kind of cover that. Does anybody have anything they want to know? Anybody? Yes. Okay. Yeah. All right. The thing that I was just doing, you like that. So, you know, I did miss Diane. That's shocking. I will blame the psycho last couple of weeks for that because I have thought about it a lot. I was introduced to Diane de Prima by Carol Lee Sanchez actually. And just fierce words and passion and commitment, the willingness to put your body on the line for the things you believe in. That's an amazing gift. And I hold that one. I hold that one so close. Sometimes I forget it was a gift. So thank you for reminding me. A nerve problem in this arm. Somebody asked me a damn question, please. Come on, family. I don't have that much bandwidth, but I'll read another poem. How's that? My brother-in-law. That was big points here. Here's one. I made a comment about activism. I should probably walk my talk, right? This is called Refugee. They're firing parts of words at other words hoping to split them, untie the energy, control the explosion. Refugee. A word we will only use if the damage was done somewhere else. Internal itinerant, unhomed, threatened, burned out, moved on. Internal itinerant when we don't use that word. Treated like shopworn apples, spoilage in boxes on the street, the politicians split the words, bet against flash over, twist the laws back and forth and back and forth until they snap. I've been given a particularly interesting moment to be Poet Laurean in this city. They announced it, and I went in kind of a traditional way, which is not, wow, I'm amazing. Thank you for recognizing it. So since I couldn't hire Key and Peele to be my emotion interpreters, you're going to have to settle for this. My internal response was, don't for a moment think I'm not grateful for this, but there's a lot of work to do, right? So what happens? I get named this in the middle of, I'm not even going to allude to the person, but we all know who I mean. I think we were all kind of in this spasm of collective migraine from last November and shock. It's pretty startling and horrible. The Nazis come to town. They're not really the Nazis either. They're kind of cosplay Nazis. They're dressing up like the biggest monster they can think of. And I'm not overwhelmingly impressed, to be perfectly honest, although I'm depressed that we actually allow this on some level enough to make it happen, right? It's not a unique thought to me. And then we've got what, storms. I'm actually waiting for the plague of locusts to come. I feel sure they're coming. But then there's some fun things. The Cherokee nation is resolving its issue with our freedmen relatives, some of whom are in the house tonight. And I had said pretty clearly to a lot of people and anybody who had listened when that was an amazingly uncool perspective to take in the Cherokee nation, I will not be part of this art show until everybody who is a member of our nation is able to participate. No, do not send me an invite. This became more and more awkward for them as time went on and pretty much almost immediately after the decision was announced, I got an invite to participate in something. So I guess they were paying attention. I had no power, but I did what I felt was right. So there are interesting times to try to write anything about anything because there's just so much. I mean, do we have time to write every poem that we need to write? I'm not leaving out the D.A.C.A. thing that's going on or any of the other massively frustrating, completely horrible things that are taking place. It's just really baffling. And people keep taking my picture. So there's all of that plus photographs. Good Lord, really. Mostly from there, up my nose. I had no idea the inside of my left nostril was so fascinating to people, but I see all these photos of it on Facebook, so it must just be riveting. The other thing that's changed is my intros, apart from tonight gotten much shorter for years. I was adding things. She was in this, she wrote that, several books, all of this. And now I get introduced as the current poet laureate of San Francisco. So I'm usually caught a little flat-footed because I generally take a sip of something right before I walk up, but I usually have a little bit of extra time to cover that. So now I'm like, these songs and others. Shoes are generally overrated. We've sung some dust shoes, some stone shoes, some shoes that drift away in the water near the dam and leave our feet surrounded by flashing fish and the dimple shadow of water striders. Then we learn to walk through the archache of seeing a snake swim so close we could see it. We've sung our own skin shoes, some make-do shoes, some balance better with none shoes because shoes can be overrated. We've learned songs about our grandma's shoes, her sister's shoes, the dilashloh, toes pounded smooth by stones, pounded smooth and those other generation boys who made shoes out of their own dancing and boy didn't they know how to dance. We've sung some songs about shoes that take us out of those small houses, take us where we can help more. Shoes that we wear under our these days shoes, there are some shoes that cannot be taken off. These shoes that teach us language beyond language. The belonging we know, those are some good shoes too and some days we still wear them but we know some things we didn't then and we can easily do without. This is called bilingual. Skin a treaty and stake it out flat for scraping and it will barely cover the distance between disappointment in a country that made you childish promises and our beloved dead arranged end to end from mystic river to ashile. As the winter goes by it will go white and stiff and then convenient reminder of things not finished but it can be softened with random words and languages you don't speak like honor tattoos you could buy from local artists. The hide can become a drum head for bonding with young people in a nearby park or shoe soles for walking a mile walking a mile in someone else's dumbass card. A vacation in someone else's reality and you can tell that story for years to come years that you can keep track of on a string of knots and invented anthropology while you whisper a word that you think means something about mystery or sacred but really means keep sake. This is actually going to be the last poem I read so you better think of some questions. This is called little songs. Little songs change everything but if they don't change anything I'm proud to sing small corn songs. Penny and I were watching the planets we were on either side of the water and that's a small song too. Venus and Mars rise they're rising and I'm singing little songs and I keep singing them small corn songs and parts of corn songs the sort that don't kill the butterflies it's okay to live light the planets are louder than the closest bulb this coast is still dancing with abalone songs and we can't all sing those I'm singing corn songs and we're all still and we're all dancing together. For the last two days I've found myself asking myself questions I don't usually ask it's a little funny my daughter would love this actually. There were people coming tonight and they're probably here but I didn't see them yet who are related to a man who was a very good friend of mine named Dove Pate and I was totally baffled because I really wanted to wear the piece the person who made this Michael horse is here tonight and I really wanted to wear this tonight and I am but I also wanted to wear something that Dove had made because he was so incredibly important to me and so I'm wearing that I always have cat's cradle string on me feel free to test that over the next two years I always have cat's cradle string on me and a ring I traded for and a ring made by a young person and Tulsa means a very great deal to me none of this is accidental it's all very very intentional but it's a weird moment when I go what am I gonna wear people who know me are like no that's not you thank you again so much for coming out and I really do hope a few of you have questions but if you don't um there is uh yes okay I'm Jay ask your question um okay you were what was it yesterday working with second graders this morning this morning working with second graders doing origami frogs or something like they were frogs okay so um I heard a rumor that in the two years that you were going to be um poet laureate you were going to work with young people to bring them into the poetry scene in a more um their way yeah that started this weekend okay yep see I was out of town this weekend I was at a wedding in Reno for my niece so I missed that part yeah well you would have been there if you've been in town I know that other questions yeah when did I first see myself as a poet I've been I've been writing poetry since I could write I've been drawing poetry since before I could write um my mother said to me and this was sort of precious my my mother doesn't isn't um she doesn't go out of her way to be enormously um demonstrative I know she's proud of me but she doesn't say it very often the other day she said well I'm not surprised you have no idea this is huge I mean huge and I went why because I wanted a little more she said well she said you know since you knew the stories were since you learned the stories were in the books you carried them around with you slept with them I had to rest them from your hands in the middle of the night you used to have your flashlight under the covers all the time reading them you're a book person you've been making little books since you were tiny I'm not surprised it didn't occur to me but I'm not surprised but I have to say um having been exposed I there were moments in my life okay where I would sit because I was dating Carolee Sanchez's son I sat from time to time at a dinner table with Carolee Sanchez Paula Gunn Allen and Judy Gron and sometimes Lee Francis and Carolee would say something like you have some good poems read a poem and I knew I wasn't them right so I want you to picture that at 16 it was really good practice though because for a number of years I used to frequently end up reading between Devorah and Opal at events you got to kind of get over it I'm not sure I think probably I started really thinking of myself as a poet in a really serious way two months ago but other people seem to have got there before I did which is a good thing anybody else questions yes oh hey Richard hey um since you've been nominated uh there's been a lot of people contacting you I'm quite sure yeah and a lot of people with a lot of great ideas have you heard some that you might pursue okay so uh this has happened so much that and essentially my brain is holding one thing at a time so I I pretty much know the next gig I'm going to do and you know sort of like that it's very linear at the moment I think I'll get practice and get better at it but the next thing that I'm going to do and it's not a huge huge thing but uh Avace is putting together a benefit reading for people impacted by the hurricanes and that seems like a good idea so we'll be doing that one but those of what's that absolutely well there's a lot of that you know I mean the other the other funny thing is that people ask me to say something in Cherokee no one has asked me to say something in Polish okay um so but there is one word I'd like you all to take away from this two years and I'll say it a bunch of times and I do want you to know it garuki community it's enormously important the city can't do without it okay Richard knows me well enough to give me a really good prompt so you know thank you because actually um a thing that I've noticed and people talk about you know the gentrification and the rest of it and a hundred thousand new people over the course of what was at five years that's a huge influx of people and it takes a hot minute for us to like really digest that and incorporate people but when folks don't want to be part of a community and aren't interested in participating and you start seeing articles or studies from Stanford that say don't talk to people on the street because it's intimidating for them don't live in a city there are people in cities if you don't want to deal with any people just put your earbuds back in into your tech you've supplied us with all of the tools we need to ignore one another don't complain because I talked and then you see an article that says the problem with the housing in San Francisco and this one cracked me up pretty good is that the baby boomers refuse to leave now I'm not going to share the first four extremely percussive Anglo-Saxon words that occurred to me when I read that because I've said a couple of them already but um let me just share that I am not interested in participating in this dystopian vision this thing that we seem to have borrowed from a bad version of the Logan's Run movie thank you no I'm pretty sure the gem on my palm has turned black at this point and I'm still not leaving at one point some of these chuckle heads came to the door and were offering us cash for the house my kids get this all the time too it's really bad and I said no no and they said well just buy the paper on your house and evict you my family's been here a long time kids and we work real hard and there hasn't been paper on my house since the 30s but you have fun looking that up community I don't care when you got here I'll be real honest about it I don't care when you got here I'm pleased to be friends with everybody but you gotta buy in a little bit attend things no be part of it because there are a lot of us are not going anywhere and you're gonna be tripping over my old crippled hide as I crawl across the sidewalk because I will not leave it is going to be in the instructions that I am not put somewhere away from vision once that happens so there's that anybody else this is the problem with having your family in all over the event isn't you all know what I'm gonna hi cousin Ken my question is can I say a little something and give you a little gift of appreciation from our family okay thank you Ken okay so um well you know the first thing I'll just stay here I guess I have to go up before the gift huh so um I was very inspired by you being nominated or Nate made the poet laureate and um so I decided I wanted to dress up in a Cherokee style for you and um also I was inspired last night I felt a burgeoning inside me that I was representing our ancestors saying thank you and appreciation for this honor that you give to our family and we wanted to honor you so I wrote a little haiku which is sort of my first public poem I also was born here in San Francisco so um San Francisco beats blessed by a howling wolf let us listen now um you know our we come from a literary family people of letters in our Cherokee family and I thought one of the best ways to represent that was to give you a gift that has um our Cherokee syllabary so um and this this is a this is our clan colors and um also this has the syllabary in it and it's also a trivet because I'm a cook and I love cooking and so you'll know that you always got this from me so now you guys know something about um the whole black and red thing that I so frequently rock it's not it doesn't actually come from the artist depressive place it's clan related well I don't know okay anybody else have a question before I completely yeah okay ed that's my oldest son sure if I counted correctly but was that seven different hats or it's something like that yeah yeah okay I I think I'm reading your palindrome yeah yeah there are people who recognize my my set of symbols so um okay there are if nobody has any other questions okay that's my partner hello Doug what do you need the next hat the next gig so it um Tonga wise and Martin is having his book release party at City Lights tonight we do intend to go over there but I will stay as long as people want to say individual things I'm not going to bail on you I know this is a responsibility and I'm really grateful for all of this and frankly we're going to have a blast I'm a little less serious than most of the other people who've held this position I'm um I'm a I'm an open mic host so I'm going to frequently be handing the mic off to other people and I really really appreciate those of you who are here tonight who are going to be some of those people because I see a lot of you in the audience thank you for being here thank you for supporting me