About
Sharing works that delight, provoke, inspire and rouse, the monthly Poetic Tuesdays series runs from May through October, turning lunchtime into an oasis of creative expression. Lighting up Jessie Square with a fabulously curated line-up of poets and musicians, Poetic Tuesdays offer a vivifying midday breather for neighborhood groups, students, office workers on break and out-of-towners looking for respite from The City’s hustle and bustle.
This month's featured artists include Nazelah Jamison, Joyce Young, meres-sia gabriel, Kehinde Badiru, and David Boyce.
Featured Artists
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Nazelah Jamison is a Bay Area-based performance poet, author, actor, vocalist and emcee. Her first book of poetry, Evolutionary Heart, was released on Nomadic Press in 2016, and reprinted and re-released on Black Lawrence Press in Fall 2023. Her work can also be found in The Racket Journal: Issue Fifteen (2020), Culture Counts Magazine (2021), La Raiz Magazine (2022), Better Ancestors, Sparkle + Blink 115 (Quiet Lightning 2022) and others. In her spare time, Nazelah enjoys writing horror screenplays and saving the day. She hosts Thee Virtual Open Mic every 1st & 3rd Friday on zoom, and gives the best hugs in the Bay Area.
Joyce Young’s chapbook, How it Happens, Black Lawrence Press (2018), was nominated for a California Book Award. Her poetry has appeared most recently in West Trestle Review, The Bloom, WORDPEACE, San Francisco Public Library Poem of the Day, Essential Truths: The Bay Area in Color, The Berkeley Public Library’s #MondayPoetryPause and Clearly Meant Presents: the Berkeley Public Library. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her prose has been published in Smith Alumnae Quarterly. She is an alum of Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Joyce is a Community of Writers, Bay Area Writer’s Workshop, and VONA alum. She has received grants from the California Arts Council,Writers on Site Program of Poets & Writers, Inc., and Writing the Other. She has taught poetry with TheOakland Public Library,The Oakland Museum of CA (OMCA), The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, MOCHA: The Museum of Children’s Art, California Poets in the Schools, Smith College, St. Mary’s College of California, Right Now! SF Bay, Live ‘75. She currently teaches middle school humanities, and privately coaches writers. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Smith College and a Master’s Degree in Interdisciplinary Consciousness Studies from JFK University, now National University.
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Kehinde Badiru is a writer, content designer, and educator. He received an MFA Degree in Creative Writing from Saint Mary’s College of California, and is the author of two Collections of poetry — I Know Why Your Mother Cries & An Assortment of Poetry Genres. His poems and short stories have appeared in journals and anthologies. Kehinde’s poem is featured in Reverberations III, published by the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, and in exhibition this Summer. He is a recipient of the 2022-23 RiskPress Fellowship, and a recipient of the SMC Brenda Hillman Award for literary scholarship.
Kehinde’s writing experiments with visual design and sheds light on the quotidian experience of human life; memory, music, and stories. He currently lives in Northern California, writes for digital products, and continues to inspire students and budding writers to write to the world and tell their stories. You can find him online.
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Born into the Black Panther Party, Meres-Sia Gabriel grew up in Oakland, California before leaving to study at Howard University and The Middlebury College School in France/ Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. After receiving her master's in French, she returned home to pursue her passion for teaching, writing, and performing. In addition to her own artist practice, she is a French professor, a teacher consultant for the Bay Area Writing Project at UC Berkeley, and the founder of her own creative writing program that serves a diverse client base of national and international writers.
Meres-Sia recently completed a poetry performance series for the Kehide Wiley and Lhola Amira exhibitions at the De Young Museum of San Francisco. She has also performed at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival; EDELO and Universidad de la Tierra in Chiapas, Mexico; and her poetry is in a permanent installation at the Oakland Museum of California — “Black Power in California.” She has collaborated with artists of the Zapantera Negra project with poetry featured in their exhibitions in Cuba, Chiapas, Vienna, and Spain. She is the bestselling author of a book of poetry and prose entitled I Twirl in the Smoke and a co-author of the KQED/BE-IMAGINATIVE watch guide for the Emmy-nominated film When the Water’s Get Deep.
Meres-Sia is a 2023-2024 recipient of awards from California Arts Council through Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Center for Cultural Power, which is allowing her to put forth a series of community arts and wellness events centering the voices of children of movements, including the adult children of the Black Panther Party. Through her historic project We Were There Too: Year of the Panther Cub, Meres-Sia is also producing a one-woman show on her personal experiences growing up in the Black Panther Party.
David Boyce spent his formative years in NYC, soaking up the city's vast multi-cultural offerings. In 4th grade, he discovered his father’s extensive jazz record collection and became obsessed with Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, John and Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra, Ornate Coleman......the great black music masters. At the age of 13, he began his studies of the saxophone, starting on alto and then switching to tenor. Music quickly became the focus of his non academic endeavors. He graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations, taught elementary/junior high school in the Bronx. After his plans to move into the city became thwarted due to gentrification and high rents, he moved out to San Francisco just in time for the Loma Prieta earthquake. Living in the Bay Area offered him the chance to pursue music as a full time career. In 1991, he co-founded the iconic AfroFuturist jazz trio Broun Fellinis (31 years running) and became an active free lance musician involved in many musical pursuits that include all styles of Jazz, Post rock, HipHop, World music, Improv and Electronica. His music has taken him to Europe, Japan and Canada as well as around the US. Currently, he performs with Broun Fellinis, Black Quarterback, Shimmering Leaves, Radio Sofia, 6Roses, The Supplicants and Black Edgar's Musik Box.
About the Curator
Nia McAllister is an award-winning poet, writer, and environmental justice advocate working at the intersection of art, activism, and public engagement. As Senior Public Programs Manager at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco, Nia creates participatory spaces for creative expression and literary dialogue. Nia’s writing and poetry have been featured on Poets of Color Podcast, Bay Poets | KALW Public Media, and published in Doek! Literary Magazine, Radicle Magazine, Meridians Journal and Painting the Streets: Oakland Uprising in the Time of Rebellion (Nomadic Press, 2022). She is a recipient of the 2023 San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Awards.
This program is co-presented by the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival. The event will be hosted in-person at Jessie Square located directly across the street from the Yerba Buena Gardens and is part of Yerba Buena Gardens Festival's Poetic Tuesday series. For the full program schedule, visit www.ybgfestival.org.
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