California Poets Festival Poetry Center San Jose

Saturday, September 22, 2007, 10am-4:30pm. History Park, San Jose, California


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Featured Poets
California Poets Festival 2007 is proud to present readings by the following outstanding poets from all over the state:

Robert Hass, United States Poet Laureate (1995-1997)
Robert Hass's books of poetry include Field Guide, Praise, Human Wishes, and Sun Under Wood, as well as a book of essays on poetry, Twentieth Century Pleasures. He has translated many works of Czeslaw Milosz, edited Selected Poems: 1954-1986 by Thomas Transtromer, The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa, and Poet's Choice: Poems for Everyday Life, and served as guest editor of the 2001 edition of Best American Poetry. Chosen as Educator of the Year by the North American Association on Environmental Education, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2005. His forthcoming books include Now & Then (Shoemaker & Hoard, April 2007) and Time and Materials (Ecco/HarperCollins, Fall 2007). Awarded the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, twice the National Book Critics' Circle Award (in 1984 and 1997), and the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1973, Robert Hass is a professor of English at UC Berkeley.

Francisco X. Alarcón
Francisco X. Alarcón is the author of ten volumes of poetry and numerous children's books. He is a recipient of the Danforth and Fulbright fellowships, the 1998 Carlos Pellicer-Robert Frost Poetry Honor Award by the Third Binational Border Poetry Contest, the 1993 American Book Award, the 1993 Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award, the 1984 Chicano Literary Prize, and the Fred Cody Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association in San Francisco. His most recent book of bilingual poetry for children, Poems to Dream Together/Poemas para sonar juntos (Lee & Low Books, New York), was awarded the 2006 Jane Addams Honor Book Award. Francisco teaches at the University of California, Davis.

Ellen Bass
Ellen Bass's fourth book of poems, The Human Line, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in June 2007. She co-edited the groundbreaking No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women (Doubleday, 1973). Mules of Love (BOA, 2002), won Ellen the Lambda Literary Award. Her work has been published in hundreds of journals and anthologies including The Atlantic Monthly, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, and Ploughshares. She has received numerous awards, including the Elliston Book Award for Poetry from the University of Cincinnati, a Pushcart Prize, and a Fellowship from the California Arts Council. Ellen currently teaches at Pacific University.

Victoria Chang
Victoria Chang's book of poetry, Circle, won the Crab Orchard Open Competition (Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), and won the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award and was a Finalist for the Foreward Magazine Book of the Year Award and the PEN Center West Book Award. Victoria is the editor of the anthology Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation (University of Illinois Press). Her poems have been published in or are forthcoming in Best American Poetry 2005, The Nation, Poetry, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and many other journals and anthologies. She resides in Southern California. A new book, Salvinia Molesta, will be published fall of 2008 by the University of Georgia Press.

Wanda Coleman
Wanda Coleman has risen from the streets of South Central Los Angeles to become its foremost literary writer, with 16 books of poetry, fiction and prose, and numerous awards including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, California Arts Council (in poetry and fiction), and a nomination for the National Book Awards. Her most recent books are Wanda Coleman's Greatest Hits 1966-2003 (Pudding House), Ostinato Vamps (University of Pittsburgh Press), and The Riot Inside Me (Black Sparrow Books).

Jane Hirshfield
Jane Hirshfield is the author of After (shortlisted for England's T.S. Eliot Prize and chosen one of 2006's best books by the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the London Financial Times), Given Sugar, Given Salt (finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award), The Lives of the Heart, and The October Palace. Hirshfield's other honors include The Poetry Center Book Award; fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets; Columbia University's Translation Center Award; and the Commonwealth Club of California's Poetry Medal. In 2004, Jane was awarded the 70th Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement by The Academy of American Poets.

Diem Jones
Diem Jones is a poet, musician and arts administrator living in Mountain View California. His own poetry can be found in Sufi Warrior, A Collection of Words (Juke Box Press) and on Spoken Song collections; Black Fish Jazz (Sufi Warrior Entertainment) and Equanimity (Clear Vision Entertainment). As a renowned photographer, Jones authored #1 Bimini Road, a photo history of George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic in the 1970's. Jones is the executive director of The Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation and director of the Voices Writers Workshops (at the University of San Francisco), a workshop focused on writers-of-color.

Student Poets, Poetry Out Loud
Poetry Out Loud brings the dynamic aspects of slam poetry, spoken word, and theater into the English class. Through memorization and performance, this exciting program helps students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about their literary heritage. Supported by a partnership of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation with the California Arts Council and California Poets in the Schools.

Yuki Teikei Haiku Society Team, San José The Yuki Teikei Haiku Society was founded in 1975 in San José, California. Its purpose was to foster and encourage the art of writing haiku in English following the traditional guidelines developed in Japan. Yuki Teikei members meet monthly to study and write haiku. The Society publishes a bi-monthly work-study journal, Geppo, and has an annual retreat at Asilomar on the Monterey Penninsula.


Sound by:
Rick Chelew
Oral Tradition Sound and Music Services