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.

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This month's featured artists include Jalen Eutsey, Ariel Ward, erica lewis, A.A. Vincent, and Marisha Ashanti.

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Featured Artists

Jalen Eutsey (@jaleneutsey) is a 2022-2024 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. He received his MFA from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. He has been the recipient of a Rubys Artist Grant and a Hatty Fitts Walker Scholarship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. His poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2022, Nashville Review, Poetry Northwest, Harpur Palate, and The Hopkins Review.

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Ariel Ward is a professional daydreamer and scholar in the metaphor of the mundane. She writes in the wonder of what happens when our lives move beyond the velvet curtains of taboo and silence to make place together on the main stage of our realities. An alumna of Howard University, she is a civil engineer and city planner by trade, but an interdisciplinary creative and poet by birth. Sustained by the art of gathering, Ariel is the founder of exhale. collective, where she co-curates creative wellness spaces in the Bay Area for Black women, femmes and girls to breathe easy, and heal, out loud. A descendant of the brilliance and joy of black British and Caribbean matriarchs, her work is a call and response birthed from her desire to give words to the wombs of untold stories carried by the women in her family for generations.

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erica lewis (@ericalewisfinein) lives in San Francisco. Her books include the precipice of jupiter (2009, with artist Mark Stephen Finein), camera obscura (2010, with artist Mark Stephen Finein), murmur in the inventory (2013); and the box set trilogy: daryl hall is my boyfriend (2015), mary wants to be a superwoman (2017), mahogany (2023). She is currently writing a novel inspired by the murder of her maternal grandmother. She was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.

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A.A. Vincent (@a.a.vincent) is a poet, essayist, author, and editor, with an MFA from the University of San Francisco. But first and foremost, they are a reclaimed daughter of the South Side. Their poetry has appeared in publications such as Santa Clara Review, West Trestle Review, Foglifter Press, The San Franciscan, and Black Bird Press News & Review. They have been featured at Litquake, Paseo Artístico, Rock Dove Reading Series, BAMPFA’s The Black Poet’s Imagination, and recorded work for KALW: Bay Poets. They are the author of Person, Perceived Girl (2022), and currently live in the Bay Area.  

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With the fusion of neo soul and gospel Marisha (@marisha_ashanti) brings a one of a kind sound to the table with each word spoken. Her most notable accomplishments include opening for established artists such as Londrelle and the legendary Bay Area natives Tony Toni Tone. Marisha has had the honor of spreading love nationwide from the beautiful beaches of Hawaii to centerstage in Boston. She has also completed tours in countries like Ghana and Amsterdam. You can find all her music on all streaming platforms and all her current projects on her Instagram Page @marisha_ashanti.

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About the Curator

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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.

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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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