 Okay, thank you for joining us here at the Mechanics Institute. I'm Laura Shepard, Director of Events, and I'm very pleased to welcome you to our program with San Francisco Poet Laureate Kim Shook in conversation and readings with Poet Tango Eisen Martin. And before we begin our program, I'd like to know how many of you are new to the Mechanics Institute? Who's never been here? Ah, welcome. So, right off the bat, please join us again on Wednesday at noon if you'd like to take a free tour of the library. Our staff will take you through our gorgeous building, show you our general interest library and our historic chess club, which is right down the hallway, and give you a little introduction to our long history in San Francisco since we're founded in 1854. And we are a vital, lively cultural and educational center that's been going on for a long time. So you'll find our library, you'll have a whole list of author events like this one. We have our Friday Night Cinema Let's Film series. The library is hosting various writers workshops and book clubs, Proust Group, and the Chess Club offers wonderful grandmaster lectures and a tournament every Tuesday. So there's a lot going on under one roof, and we hope that you'll become a member and join our ever-growing cultural family here at the Mechanics Institute. So tonight is a particular pleasure to welcome these two incredible poets to our stage, and I'd like to introduce them first. Kim Shook is the seventh poet laureate of San Francisco, following in the footsteps of Alejandro Murguia and Jack Hirschman. She has two full-length collections of poetry, one chapbook, and one collection of prose poems to her name. Her recent works include Sidewalk, NDN, and Clouds Running In, and she is working on a new collection that will be published by City Lights Publishers in 2019. Kim serves on the board of directors for the San Francisco American Indian Cultural Center and is also involved with the Cherokee Society of the Greater Bay Area and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. In addition, she is a former Indian Studies instructor and a visual artist who works in traditional textiles, and she's also a weaver of words. Really from San Francisco, Tango Eisen Martin is a poet, movement worker, and educator. His book titled Someone's Dead Already was nominated for a California Book Award, and his latest book of poems, Heaven Is All Good Byes, was published by City Lights Pocket Poets Series. As a human rights activist and educator, he has organized against mass incarceration and extrajudicial killing of black people throughout the United States. Subscribing to the Frarian model of education, he designed curricula for oppressed people's education projects from San Francisco to South Africa. He has taught at Columbia University and in detention centers across the country, and his poems are powerful messages and incantations. So please welcome Kim Shook and Tango Eisen Martin who will be reading their works and also be in conversation. Please welcome them. I had to turn it up a little bit. Tango, I think you actually need to sit there because you're on all camera now. Oh. Sit still, movement worker. Sit up straight. That's right. Apparently, too much of San Francisco was not there in the first place. This dream requires more condemned Africans or put another way, state violence rises down. Or still life is just getting warmed up, or army life is looking for a new church and ignored all other suggestions, or folk tale writers have not made up their minds as to who is going to be their friends. This is the worst downtown yet, and I've borrowed a cigarette everywhere. I've taken many a walk to the back of a bus that led on out the back of a storyteller's prison sentence, then on out the back of slave scars, but this is my comeback phase. I left my watch on the public bathroom sink and took the toilet with me. I threw it at the first bus I saw eating single mothers half alive. It flew through the bus line number then on out the front of the White House. Hopefully you find comfort downtown, but if not, we brought you enough cigarette filters to make a decent winter coat. A special species of handshake lets all know who's king and what's the lifespan of uniform cloth this coffin needs to quit acting like those of birds singing. Rusty nails have no wings, have no voice other than out of a white world dying, their book pages in the gas pump catchy isn't it. The way three nooses is the rule, or the way potato sack masks go so well with radio codes, or the way condemned Africans fought their way back to the ocean only to find waves made the 1920s burnt up piano parts, European backdoor deals and red flowers for widows who spent all day in the sun mumbling in San Francisco, red flowers but what's the color of a doctor visit. There are book titles in the streets, book titles like hero you'd make a better zero or a fur coat lady the president is dead or pay me back in children or they hung up their bodies in their own museums and other book titles pulled from a drum solo run here hero lied the hiding place all the bullets and 10 precincts know where to go and no heaven nor any other good idea in the sky politics means that people did it and people do it understand that when it's San Francisco and other places that were never really there I bet this ocean thinks it's an ocean but it's not it's just 60 mission street all know who's king king of thin things like America I'm proud to deserve to die I'm gonna eat my dinner extra slow tonight in this police day candy dispenser you all call the neighborhood no set of manners goes unpunished never mind the murderers insomnia or the tea kettle preparing everyone for police sirens guided by teeth goes this country there's a cow's mouth on the flag a peculiar notepad whole street life dear but the writer's not here he's somewhere talking to tombstones about the good old days or a splash and reborn water on his latest face or wondering how his old gun is doing in the afterlife wondering how much death trap is in those gas station hours it got to be a million dollars a day on this concrete island new engine in the moon why it never goes down I mean 72 straight hours of night at least according to everyone's posture around here 830 in the morning is really 30 minutes to closing the city shuts down for a sleepy rat race elevated shoe shuffle to the nearest heaven laughing with rats the whole way up their scabs everywhere in puddles of city and concentrated schools and TV live warm rooms the light reveals military fatigue when it hits just right on the ties that are wrapped around the necks of lazy white guys empires too easy baby and chin at the walls or some if you feel like it that best way for a target to move a shooting back running for a tree line made of freeways wisdom says against the war machine on Tuesday you stand no chance but may we be the last poor men to play safe cows mouth on the flag a politician raises his hand and the crowd shows their teeth an oligarch raises hand little girls and not safe outside you are all high depressed and comrades in function 15 minutes of closing in the city survived another black rebellion we just paying dues by trash fires not just anybody can set and don't you love how deadly things whisper in the moment and people kill like feathers fall with everybody screaming aside the writer knows that death is not a matter of dignity rather humor in a house that smells like road traces nuclear percentages on touring stoves I mean here life never was just lazy matches and manic inhumanity hands rushing away from life towards those what we're doing here surviving for no reason in particular there's nobody gone far today nobody will go farther mall trust me hell in heaven cannot count strange gardens were secondhand clothes play and concrete wishes to be human so that it could be accountable where they find you drenched and drains wish to be human so that they could be worthy arms for you to die in that greet them all grandson prepare for the day when every child is calm and don't say we ghost didn't write you a poem don't say we didn't dig your life remember the shotgun by the coat rack that everybody in the house knows how to use remember the tight rope made of needles for walking in between driveways and man made best friends go ahead grandson to the street again never mind this country kills musicians first broken neck night scar neck life if these walls could write lyrics they say what's your angle angel eyes 3050 rounds pass by on a street with no daughters this street has no signs this young prisoners of war in a racist city that means to make capital and we know so much we know it all we were stood against walls who's on the third cross around here cows mouth salivating over the street and that is the story of why we aim at teeth I'm off to make a church bill I'm off to make a church bill out of a bank window kitchens near more to the masses back in the day and before that we had no enemy somewhere in America the prison bus is running on time you want to lose that job before the revolution hits it's somewhere I won't be home for breakfast everyone out here now knows my name and I won't be turned against for at least four months the cop in the picket line is a hard-working rookie the sign in my hands is getting more and more laughs it says the picket line got cops in it and I could take care of those windows for if you want but someone else got to go inside your gas tank was clear to the man that rich people would talk too much this year and once you go ahead and throw down that marble park bench everyone's looking up at you know get the Romans out of your mind maybe a good night's sleep with a change the last 20 years of my life playing instruments like punching the wall and what would you have me do replace the population give brotherhood back to the winter stop smoking cigarettes with the barely dead you know they listen in on the Sabbath police called the police on me there was a white candlestick beneath my detention I ruined the soup again thought the judge as he took off his pilgrim rope behind a white people's door and more I didn't get lucky I got what was coming to me he told us they fight me back the man said of course to himself washing windows with a wheel to live tin can on his left shoulder and join the bright brand new blight with all party goes both supernatural and supernaturally down there what is this elevator traveling side to side like 1000 bitter polaroid pictures that you actually try to eat all the furniture on this street nailed to the cement cheap furniture but we have commitment this morning an essay opens the conversation between enemies why because you control every grain of processed sugar between here in the poor man's border because in a tin can on my left shoulder I can hear the engines of deindustrialization you should get in the painting you know tell lies more deeply this month I'm rooting for the trader carting cement to my pillow here we will build I'm high again not talking much and what you climb up the organ pipe to our apartment floor I'm high again calling everything church singing along to a courtyard thanks to a horn players holy pastime man I'm just putting a real jacket on it you know talking about a real five years keep memories like these in the pocket next to the toilet seat that man lost the wager with the God of good causes you know stood up for himself a little too late maybe too early I can still see 20 angles of his jaw zigzagging through the cold world of deindustrialization there's an art to it I will tell my closest friends one day you know if you reverse the car any farther you will run over all the scenes in the back of your mind I never cared for teachers just the patterns of their fainting spells of course induced by a wall art all that to say propaganda is courage you know the price sticker hides my tattoo I treasure my problem with the world my mother becomes from Brooklyn first thing in the morning that's a proverb around these parts a proverb or peasant entrance password writing short notes the famous Europeans on the back of postcards with ransom requests they reply with a newsreel or cigarette announcement I can't tell the difference noble dollars that you die inside but only inside they call it sleeping deep in your stalker and stalkers all that badge makes you says a great spirit dressed in the bloody rags tuxedos became meanwhile my punch is feared by no one proud of yourself I asked my fret hand port slice is what they call our guns I've seen this house in a dream I believe a trumpet was the first possessed object to fly keep going she cheers the draft in the room becomes a toddler toddler obsessed with an alter the alter becomes a runaway child I got I got a thousand paintings like these cascading down my skinny arms dictionaries piled up to the window bars a reminder to the population that your blanket can work with or against you human reef we will be a big human reef for concepts that finally gained a metaphysical nature and they will swim around our beautiful poses we stopped being flashbacks and stopped being three different people then I was alone the pistol one city away one of the drug triangles lines runs through my head I tap the bottle twice and consider the dead refresh they don't you want to rest your bravery they don't you want to be a coward for a little bit back and forth to a panic attack with no problems nor fears a man gets a facial expression finally a Friday finally goes his way his life is finally talked about happily in his head I can't possess the body of a hermit I must be the last of his smoke now running the other way with three blocks of alley tucked under my arm you ever see a man get to the bottom of his soul in a car ride down a missing cousin street half step to the right I mean I took the whole car outside of history half step to the right I mean a whole pack of wolves stepped to my left road marker is what I call the light bulb we have for a son a whole civilization might slink to the sink or a chain gang shuffling next to a sucker also known as the lone look in the mirror a stack of money starts talking from four cities away a tour guide the robbery he also is cigarette saying look what I did about your silencer ransom water and box spring gold this decade is only for accident grooming I guess a ransom water and box spring gold the corner store must die war games I guess all these tongues rummage junk the start of mass destruction begins and ends in restaurant bathrooms that some people use and other people clean uh you telling me there's a rag in the sky waiting for you yeah we've written the same we set aside we should have been in warehouse jobs and for communists but now more cordial hallway of walking into our lives now the whistling is less playful and the bar bar overcrowded to my dear if it is not a city it is a prison if it has a prison it is a prison not a city when the courtyard talks on behalf of military issue all walks take place outside of the body dear life to your left a medieval painting to your right and it's really makes an impression crop people living in there you have five minutes to learn how to see through this when the mask goes sideways barbwire becomes the floor barbwire becomes the roof 40 feet into the sky becomes out of bounds when the mass breaks in half you on the mind which way the eyes go you know they killed the world for the second given everyone the same backstory we're watching giri indiana fight itself into the sky old pennies for win for that wind feeling you get before the hood goes up and over your headache pennies that stick together mocking all aspirations stuck together pennies was the first newspaper i've read along with the storefront dwelling army that always lets us down where the holy spirit favors the back room souls in a situation to offer a hundred ways to remain a loser souls watching a clock hoping their eyes don't lie to sad people what are we talking about again the narrator asked the graveyard at ten minutes flat said the graveyard the funeral only took 10 minutes never tell that to anyone again are you just gonna pin the 90s on me all 30 years of them then why should i know the difference between sleep and satire the period minutes corner stores fell on our heads we died right away that building wants to climb up and jump off another building these are downtown decisions somewhere on this planet is august 7th and we're running down the rust thinking one more needs to come with me what evaporated on so that we could be sent back down i will put mine on mute no you will not it's it's it's i'm going to ask some questions now i'm going to ask some questions now i'm down i will not mute thing i hate to sound quite that vehement except following him is very difficult i actually need to develop a reading set that is labeled what to do if you have to follow tango just do what i do yeah keep a sense of human well yeah i'll do it i had to follow julio Gomez the other day too not easy um you know you just do it right so you about your writing who do you who are you reading right now i'm i'm reading i'm rereading the counter revolution of 1776 by gerald horn it's a it's a movie i mean movie it's a it's a book about the invention of the united states as basically the invention of whiteness and how whiteness resolved all of these old world contradictions that were holding other empires back and how the united states wasn't necessarily inevitable and all the global realities that made it possible and you know just kind of like how slavery went into hyperdrive based on the ascension of a new kind of bourgeoisie and all the the history of resistance and you know how georgia was originally of all white state by law because they needed a buffer between south carolina in uh in florida which is an interesting point that is an interesting point because i would contend that cherokee territory had to collapse so that there could be roads through that area and so that commerce could be waged more effectively but it is an interesting jump off point for conversations what would you call your the structure of your poems i'm only asking you that question because somebody asked me that earlier today and i had no idea what to say so i'm wondering if you'll feel did any better the the structure i like i i think the structure of my poems are basically retreats into other kind of like possibilities of extension so that it's kind of a it's actually a kind of a pessimistic style where i i get to a certain point of insight and i feel like i can't i don't have the courage to go any farther so i jump to the left or right or up and down for the sake of building an idea that has kind of more than one dimension or can operate within more than one thread at the same time so there's like a lot of there's a lot of synthesis or synthesized kind of realities that that these lines are made of and it's it's kind of i'm structured more around defining phenomenon it's more like definition than imagination you know so it sounds weird because the it's fairly i guess image heavy but it's not necessarily like imagination that produces it it's more my pursuit of defining things and poking at reality and stretching it and you know warping it and walking in different directions in order to to define these kind of like to define the observable universe that makes sense ross nobel at one point who's a british comedian said that he heard himself introduced as a surrealist comedian and that he'd always thought he was an observational comedian sometimes i feel like your work takes that kind of structure that's all and so like if this is reality it's just i'm just going like this yep you see so i might suspend a certain law of the physical universe and just go like this or you know just pull at it or walk it towards you or pull it back you know but it's always starting like i'm not trying to mystify anybody there's reality there being just being played with that makes sense so i guess i have one last question for you which is uh no this is hella weird though this is so weird we have these conversations you know right we do except it's usually over our over doug's kitchen table and there's generally dinner involved right and we get pretty metaphysical right mathematical and mathematical and the nature subatomic particles that too why do you suppose i wanted to read with you tonight huh two nerds two nerds yes it's the nerd collection he's gonna get his revenge in a minute so i better be good well give me something to write with i need some notes oh you need notes i don't toss it oh your own camera all right thank you just find an empty page rough mythology roots run down between street lights and parking meters sturdy bindings what pennies will you toss into gutter water in and between the rainstorms the places where the hybrids find you earned identities pinned to second hand lapels street fashion hey you know i'm sorry i didn't make it for the last 200 years come around next time if you can take the weight we can't run the misery scenario every weekend and i want to see you dance barefoot right here on this street learn how to walk like yourself we might get there and under 30 takes maybe i'll tell you what navigating this coast taught me in 79 in 83 roots run down between street lights and parking meters my accidental self shows bones through the pavement it's an earnest rebar did you know you're my favorite story so far i think the rain may kick up again so i don't recite from memory this is from a collection i'm putting together called with hope that love untangles mazes the coastal sage knows recent full moon and i want to wake up hearing the weather report from port arthur or somewhere else that didn't know it was making history the darkest claimed by specific tides it was transformation and fog and this morning draining pulling west with songs from sausalito and texas they clicked like switching tracks the trains still run here they still mumble love songs to the rails and what's love if it isn't careful mapping kind measuring come awake to the weather report from port arthur the wed shed over the coastal hills the coastal sage knows in leaf and vein and stem that it is a prayer for dancing it is always an honor to read in a lone territory learn how to sing we're all rummaging through buffy songs stop songs and the tree philosophies that dust over us when we aren't thinking about it learn to sing the things that happen and the ones you don't sing will happen too oh the spilled paint and drop leaves sing barefoot on a beach that won't cut you this art of misery is a fad and like millstone collars the portraits will tell on you later sing sing at the root at the fine core that mourns the rain and times of no rain sing of the prayers that are there as solid as an apple in your hand the songs of knowing the songs that only you know find them sing the deep thoughts of ravens can change you the dark of the feathers sure but that lancet eye the meteor burn of them will paint on your thoughts what's a pine cone for rabbit whispers from eastern marshes whispers in shapes with irregular angles the shapes fill with this western fog as solid as i can remember it the kind we haven't had recently and i can show my sons how to stir the fog i can show them what to look for there are no answers just stunning shapes the time has come to break the shells crush them do it lovingly i won't be telling the future with them anymore you have to hide the small brown gossipy rocks you got to separate them out they need to practice silence we can be quiet together but they must stop telling secrets the stories have changed right while they were watching they changed and it's time to watch other stories time to work no expectations no promises from the unreliable just call up the river the vegetables this season are beautiful in a language you don't speak so you can't talk about it call up the river to take a song like flying like ravens can like their gifts and the things that we give back freely the vegetables are beautiful just now with the wax and leaf of them they take our breath away and bring back the creeks that yearn for daylight whose old names you also don't know but whose underground singing could explain those stories one more time so um i like i used to like hassling reporters a lot i used to teach at san francisco state university and i have a pair of dance shoes that i wear in pow wow that have cars beaded onto them i think there's a picture on the back of one of these books i'm not sure but i think there might be i don't know maybe not oh no it's on the back of this one yeah so the headlights and the and the rear backup lights are done in glow in the dark beads so when the light goes down a little bit the lights go on and that amused me a lot when i made them and one of the reporters from the school newspaper came up to me and said so you're moccasins and i'm like they're not moccasins he said what do you call them i said shoes he said no no in your language what do you call them i said shoes he goes but they're for pow wow i said yeah i dance shoes and i just i ran circles around and then i felt bad a couple years later so i wrote this and the word is actually i mean we have a word for them there are days i just don't choose to be exotic for anybody you know what i mean shoes are usually 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 archaic of seeing snakes swim close we could see it we've sung some of 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 dilashulo toes pounded smooth by stones pounded smooth and those other generation boys who made shoes out of their own dancing and 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 those shoes that teach us the language beyond language the belonging that we know those are some good shoes too in some days we still wear them but we know some things we didn't then we know we can do without every time i touch this thing i know this looks like slick like i've kind of worked out the tech it's only because i haven't yet accidentally played you a commercial on it little songs change everything but if they don't change anything i'm proud to sing small corn songs we're watching the planets we're 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 migrate over generations it's okay to live light the planets are louder than the closet bulb this coast is still still and dancing with abalone songs and we can't all sing those i'm singing corn songs and we are all still and we are all dancing together yeah i've just forgotten how to find what i'm looking for but fortunately i tap dance verbally very well so it doesn't matter i don't know how well you guys are following the situation with that sculpture and civic center and i recognize enough of you to know i'm not entirely surrounded by people who disagree with me so you're going to get this poem it is the first of the series there will be one every day until that sculpture is gone yes it is early days this is for the board of other entitlements who decided on april 18th 2018 that the early day statue should stay in the san francisco civic center and have denied the permit for removal san francisco is a sanctuary city but it likes to remind my sons to cower cower before colonial religion before land grabbing industry all are welcome but some of us have to stay on our backs san francisco panned out of mud and water now curls in mythology seductive and moral on the bay shore and smiling where's the diamond necklace of how the west was one down market street if you will not kneel you will be kneeled if you will not submit you will be cast in bronze submitted our skins are still traded in for treasure at the city hall in san francisco so there's that did i just tell you how i felt about that city and in her dance shoes flash patterns lights torn out of worn cartoon character shoes picked out of a box on shot well with a fleece jacket she gave to the shirtless street preacher she makes them uneasy she beaded stars around the led's northern style and dark brown upholstery hide with the smooth on the inside she dances the city back into balance every weekend she dances for the city perfect technique and protocol pigeon feather fans saluting truck wheel honor beats on the overpass choice i've been they are daylighting the tennessee watershed in the presidio and i've been spending a lot of time there writing to that the city is already speaking houses sidewalk squares footbridges resist translation but can be spoken for by their human community our feet transfer RNA that memorizes chemical pairs re-zips the fabric of this place walking story into recreation every communication is code uncode recode story play our relatives spectacular and alligator boards money games the accelerant for the bonfire offerings on the altar our relatives tracking the attacking the street tents down retelling the stories with their feet canes wheels we are a specialized language of recycling in landfill story spills fingertip to stare window frame to woodworm fence libraries watersheds collections of neurons linked songs and i'm going to finish with this one with the first four-legged frog cousin pulled herself out of water it wasn't rejection soft wet skin called her back again and again blood a contract with water a promise in the cells a rattle we pick up and hand on a moaning song that arches and clenches to bring our babies cradled in water a gift returned a rattle we pick up and hand over one generation to the next right professor isan martin just a couple of a few kind of craft questions first um do you operate with like when you're writing do you operate with a kind of like artistic objective or idea of what you want to accomplish whether in the poem or in the in this kind of era of your poetry and if so what is it um i write every morning i don't time myself i pretty much i get up when it's quiet when it stops being quiet i stop writing but there are days when people have asked me for things poems about a thing and um and there are days when there's just no escaping the fact that i am going to write a poem about a specific thing because it's in the way and it won't leave until i write it i have to cough it up but i have no particular artistic agenda i just um i think what i have is a mild case of synesthesia so it comes off as a bit artistic sometimes but it's probably just a disorder that i've learned to turn to my own good effect yeah psychological problem so uh yes and no i think sometimes um i've been told i've known a few female writers who've had this said to them that their work would be why isn't their work prettier and it always sounded to me like another thing i've heard often which is if you smile more you'd be prettier it turns out it's not true i just look menacing so my work isn't always pretty and that's that's okay all right question number two another kind of craft question um uh what what are you know what's your process like line for line like the quest to get to the next line what are some strategies that you use it's an excellent question i know you ask that also having tried to read my work and you know my line breaks are weird he said that he was trying to read one of my things and he looked at me in the middle of the reading he goes these line breaks i'll explain them i i don't think i ever have before um i started uh trying not to end on minor words if that makes sense i wanted them to mean something which meant i it couldn't be a small verb and it couldn't be a pronoun and um i read at the university exeter in um in britain and the woman who was teaching the class was like that's quite an affectation and i thought and so i started doing it more regularly and more self-consciously did a whole book like that now i'm tired of it and i'm not doing it anymore um so i think really it was it was a little moment of rebellion to see why it didn't happen that way for everybody i guess question number three i'll tell you this is weird how um like how heavy um on your mind or even on your psyche are the people that you describe in the course of your poetry are they you know how do you experience them as they come out and as you read back like these people that that you write about well some of them are real fair-skinned native woman in a time when we die at a ridiculous rate and pretty much mostly killed by i hate to say this but the leading cause of death among native women is white men there is a level of responsibility that kind of gets drowned into you because you will probably not be the target of that but everyone you love might be so though when i write about other native women it's big for me including my daughter by the way so when i say big i mean big when when you're the kind of person who realized that some point that you your birth as a person who passes was very very dangerous for your big brown dad these things weigh heavily and it's interesting because i'm not sure people understand exactly how serious i am about a lot of this stuff my delivery isn't angry i don't read like i'm angry i've never found yelling at people particularly helpful but i mean it i am as serious as death itself about my characters and the people that i describe and the things that i talk about so very interesting a segue appears yeah to question question number four um you know kind of like partly because i personally know you know that you're um you know you're you're a fighter yeah and um and also you just you're just super sharp um and what i dig about your poems though is you have like all these kind of possibilities for intensity but you do keep this kind of like wonderful composure on a page how do you pull that off how do you pull off that kind of like to to to balance kind of like the the brilliance and the the kind of convergence of political realities you know historical forces modern you know current event like how do you take all of that but produce this like really sharp but composed work how do you keep that composure i'm stuck on trying to say something about my own genius because you did just say how do you have a sharpness i don't know i fumble around with a lot of things i'm curious about a lot of things and i'm lucky enough to understand them for the most part but i'm also stubborn enough to figure figure them out even if it takes a while i think i was uh a sophomore in high school when i decided i would study enough japanese to eventually read basho in the original and i'm in my fifties and i'm almost there um so mostly it's patience um but in terms of keeping composure there's nothing like age to knock the edges there was a time when i'm not sure i was quite so composed i mean nobody's born with flat knuckles right should i move on before you incriminate yourself i don't know you know i'm pretty sure some of my former high school classmates are members of this institution and i'm kind of surprised i'm not seeing any of them many of them could have incriminated me number five um and you know kind of like panning out to all of us again kind of like on this you know interesting or i guess maybe the president is always an interesting convergence of you know just kind of like again historical forces and you know interesting all that good stuff what is it to be kind of like a writer in these times i feel like you and i are in a real similar boat on that one and i think it feels like a huge responsibility you know there's a lot that needs to be said and represented and actually you and i are both in a really privileged circumstance in that a lot of people are listening to both of us right now and uh it's kind of uh an interesting prize when all of your work and your intention to read to people who need to hear the words and then people say yes i want to hear them now do it during a crisis so it's a lot and like anything else you eat the elephant one bite at a time with a lot of sauce and so concludes my question all right thank you keep the pan you can take some questions from the audience so if you have a question for kim or time okay here we go i'm not going to ask a question i'm just going to thank you both for being such incredibly fine readers i um i go to a lot of poetry readings and often i'm a little disappointed at the reading that's done by some of the poets but not only are you both phenomenal as readers but the contrast work just absolutely perfectly so thank you very very much thank you there's a trick to reading well by the way you read with people who are better than you are by choice it's true that's how you learn i uh i i choose to read with qr hand in avacha as often as i possibly can for that reason oh dear poets um i'm curious for you both when do you know how do you feel when a poem is done quote unquote if you can read it at a reading and not want to change things it's done i kind of uh i actually i look at the beginning and the end of poem that be both the beginning and the end serve a purpose and that purpose is to kind of prove you are a poet your first line should let it be known i am a poet i will give you some lines that are more insightful than what somebody is just can speak and so that's where i like to start and that's where i like to finish um for the most part you know i think uh you don't necessarily need to to land um you don't necessarily need to to land anywhere a point is never doesn't have to be all the way proven um i think if i can get you know if i can bring the poem to the end of the kind of the treasure hunt then it's then it's then it's kind of done you know and and when i edit again i edit to make it less mystifying when i feel like i got like those are the bugs to get out lines that are kind of just like inside jokes between you and yourself or lines that are just kind of lazy you know um this type of thing you just kind of really massage it you know active pressure you know release the knots in there and when it's done enough then it's done sometimes you know like during the course of a reading i will like i'll be like okay some things just because there's like i actually it might not sound like it but i actually don't chase dissonance like dissonance just kind of plagues me and appears i try to you know and when you're saying it in real time that's when you know just kind of how it deletes too much like if i can't if i'm talking to you then all of a sudden i just start talking like there's an elephant behind you or something you know what i mean like like that makes no sense right then i know like okay i've gone too far that's a metaphor you know what i'm saying metaphorically speaking if i was just throw you off and so you see because you can just see how like you can even feel or intuit how to click that there'll be too big of a drop you know and so when i kind of sense that then i'm like okay maybe that part you know can go or let me or let me change it but it's only my my strategy is just kind of like the reader is your friend and when the poem is friendly enough then it's kind of watching the youtube video of your acceptance of the your new role and you mentioned that you're working on a map of sam a poetic map of san francisco and i wanted to see how it's going it's okay so here's how it's going the reason it's not up online at the moment is because um there are vast areas in the city that have not provided me with poems yet so i slightly switched tack and now i am going around to every one of the branch libraries and doing poetry workshops there and then i am going to harvest poems from those because i'm asking leading questions about areas so essentially i found that people a didn't think i was serious or b didn't think i'd take them seriously or you know lots of things but i i mean it and i'm i've hit two branch libraries now hit a third on sunday we'll see how it goes and the more often i say that in public the more poems i've been getting so at first it was i could have poems from north beach and the castro and the mission and a couple of people in noe valley that i basically mugged for poems and there was it was as though there were no other neighborhoods which is unacceptable it's particularly unacceptable because across the table for me as someone who doesn't live in any of those neighborhoods and could probably give me a poem about this but that hasn't happened either um but now i've managed to extract a few other poems from people i just really need them to be the poems need to be really location specific and then i i kind of shook a former in-law of mine and coughed up a poem in cantonese and i said fine and i will have it translated and i will use it which was not i think the point but it it will be the result it's coming together but it's slow work it's a big city so i think probably what i have to do is plan to release a certain number of poems at different times but i honestly am unwilling to imply that there are four neighborhoods in this very large diverse place kim in addition to the poetry map um could you talk a little bit about your vision as the poet laureate of this great city um through the next year or so yeah it's not just a year or so they came to me pretty quickly and said well you know in order to put out a call for nominations we need an elected mayor and a city librarian and right at the moment we have neither so it is likely to be three maybe four years you're stuck with me for a while and that's not necessarily a bad thing my vision is really to put more under represented in the sense that they're not in the anthologies and the collections and all of that poets on stages language story all those things are changing so quickly that younger people actually have have always had more to offer than they got credit for but at the moment they have even more to offer than they get credit for and um i have so frequently been the youngest reader and a lot of readings and i am as i have said beyond the 50 year mark now which is ridiculous when i am at a reading and i am 20 years younger than the next oldest reader we are not serving a whole community so i've been trying to spend a lot more time with younger poets um and older poets keep cropping up so that works too they will tend to find me on their own and some of them even think they have you know license and invitation which i suppose i've i've actually given them so that's fine but you know i'm looking at um the spark poets who are kids in high school and i'm working with some second graders right now i mean young people who have a better handle on things because they're not expecting things to be the way they were they're seeing them for what they are and that's enormously um it's just enormously helpful so that's a big part of what my intentions are well if you ever wanted to an intergenerational poetry reading bring them on bring them here i'd love to do that actually no i would really love to do that we'll talk you better be serious that one i'll tell you absolutely absolutely any other questions all right well we've got our next project in process um i want to thank with a heartfelt thanks to kim shook and tango ison martin for their powerful and personal poetry that's so inspiring and we hope we inspire all of you as well um thank you for your great insights and your activism through your beautiful poetry also if you want to carry on in this vein but in another forum um we have our next program next thursday which is april 26th 6 30 bay area women on the political front lines and our guests will be a panel with rose agrolar from k al w natasha middleton candidate for oakland city council christine polosi chair of the california democratic party women's caucus jackie smith running for ca state assembly sixth district claire winterton from the global fund for women panelists will be the moderator for the panelists castelany from the madera group so let's keep our political conversations going and join us next week thank you to kim and tango and good night