SDPF24 Coda, a poetry festival
Saturday, December 14, 2024
11:00am-5:00pm
UCSD Cross-Cultural Center

* free admission

SDPF24 Coda, a poetry festival—the culminating event of San Diego Poetry Futures 2024—showcases diverse, vibrant, ever-growing, and intergenerational poetry communities throughout San Diego. SDPF24 Coda, a poetry festival will host poetry readings, community dialogues, an interactive creative writing and zine-making lab, a poetry reading room, a special awards ceremony hosted by Poets Underground, and a bookfair featuring local literary organizations, collectives, publications, programs, and award-winning poets. The closing plenary features a poetry reading and conversation with Lee Herrick (California Poet Laureate 2023-25), Janice Lobo Sapigao (Santa Clara County Poet Laureate 2020-21), and Jason Magabo Perez (San Diego Poet Laureate 2023-24). All poetry enthusiasts, all readers, all writers, all community members welcome!

FEATURED POETS Adrián Arancibia, Alissa Tu, Angélica Maria Yañez, Ant Black, Anthony Azzarito, Bara’ah Oriqat, Brandon Som, Crystophver R, Daniela Paraguya Sow, Ella deCastro Baron, Gill Sotu, hamsa fae, Iyari Arteaga, Jane Muschenetz, Janice Lobo Sapigao, Jason Magabo Perez, Jennifer Derilo, Karla Cordero, Kassy Lee, Katie Manning, Kelsey O. Daniels, Lee Herrick, Manuel Paul López, Michael Klam, Rema Ghassan Shbaita, Ron Salisbury, Samira Hassan, Sonia Gutiérrez, Sunny Rey Azzarito, Ted Washington

FEATURED ORGS Hello Barkada; San Diego Writers, Ink Poetry Certificate; Poets Underground; PLNU M.A. in Writing; Last Syllable; Crisis Carnival; pacificREVIEW; Colibri Writers; The Ancestral Teachings Institute; Urban Haiku; Creative Writing Program at Grossmont College; San Diego Poetry Annual; Glassless Minds; Puna Press; The Poetry Party; Poetic Legacy; Kaya Press

PRESENTERS San Diego Poetry Futures 2024, City of San Diego Department of Cultural Affairs, Academy of American Poets

PARTNERS UCSD Cross-Cultural Center, Pacific Arts Movement

 FESTIVAL SCHEDULE

Opening Remarks
Session Time: 11:00-11:25
Location: Cross-Cultural Center > Comunidad

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Zine-Making Lab & Reading Room
Session Time: 11:30-3:30
Location: Cross-Cultural Center > ArtSpace

facilitated by Hello Barkada

Hello Barkada serves historically and presently marginalized communities through digital and traditional media and programming, such as online and print media and virtual and in-person events. We champion, advocate, and provide a platform for people and women of color, LGBTQIA2S+ folx, disabled peoples, and intersectional voicesthanks in part to a growing community of Barkada Backers that contribute to our ongoing crowdfund. Founded in July 2021 and launched in September 2021 by Filipina American storyteller and award-recognized coordinator Christine Pasalo Norland, Hello Barkada is based in San Diego on the unceded territory of the Kumeyaay.

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Session Title: Poetry From The Heart 
Session Time: 11:30-12:30
Location: Cross-Cultural Center > Comunidad

Gill Sotu
Jane Muschenetz
Karla Cordero 
Michael Klam
Samira Hassan

Gill Sotu is a 2x Grand Poetry Champion, 2x Performing Artist of the Year, and 5x TEDx presenter. Currently, he is a teaching artist and a commissioned playwright with The Old Globe Theatre & La Jolla Playhouse, and author of the new book of poetry, Equally Strange, Beautifully Different.

Winner of the 2024 California Press Women Communications Award in Creative Verse, Jane Yevgenia Muschenetz arrived in the US as a Jewish refugee from Soviet Ukraine. Featured on Spoken Word Paris and KPBS, Jane’s latest collection, POWER POINT (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2024), combines humor, science, and poetry to skewer societal inequalities.

Karla Cordero is a 2021 California Arts Council Established Artist Fellow. Her poetry collection, How To Pull Apart The Earth, is a San Diego Book Award winner and finalist for the International Latino Book Awards. Karla’s work has appeared on NPR, Academy of American Poets, The Oprah Magazine, among other publications. Follow her work on IG @karlaflaka13.

Michael Klam is the executive editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual and also serves as associate publisher of the SDPA. He is the editor-in-chief of Elixir, the bilingual edition of SDPA. Klam organizes and hosts San Diego Central Library’s video and audio series, Conversations with Poets.

Samira Hassan is an activist, poet, writer, and aspiring journalist born and raised in San Diego, California. Samira grew up in the diverse, beautiful neighborhood of City Heights. Throughout childhood, Samira participated in artivism programs and had the amazing opportunity to be a part of the San Diego Opera music and theater programs. Since the age of 10 years old, Samira has been a very present community member through spoken word, theater performances, or canvassing the neighborhood. Samira continues to advocate and organize in City Heights.

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Session Title: Poets at Play: Resistance Through Theatre
Session Time: 11:30-12:30
Location: Cross-Cultural Center > Library  

Crystophver R
Iyari Arteaga
Kassy Lee
Manuel Paul López
Rema Ghassan Shbaita

Crystophver R is the author of Intellectual Suicide (Garden Oak Press) and Poetry to Die For (Garden Oak Press).

Iyari Arteaga is an Indigenous poet, storyteller and arts advocate who believes that the arts are a powerful modality for healing and liberation. She has performed throughout the United States with Teatro Izcallli, co-curated exhibits, organized community workshops and in 2023 published her debut poetry book, The Incantation of My Hands.

Kassy Lee, poet and Cave Canem fellow, has work in The Margins, FENCE, and African American Review. She received fellowships from Vermont Studio Center and Helen Zell Writers’ Program. Currently, she’s working on her debut poetry collection and teaches at the University of California, San Diego.

Manuel Paul López’s books include Nerve Curriculum, These Days of Candy, The Yearning Feed, and Death of a Mexican and Other Poems (Bear Star Press). He also co-edited three anthologies. He lives in San Diego and teaches at San Diego City College.

Rema Ghassan Shbaita was acknowledged by The Atlanta Review as the Dan Veach Young Poet of 2019, does not consider dandelions weeds, and is allergic to grass. You can find some of Rema’s work in PacificREVIEW, the Mosaic Art & Lit Journal, with the Inlandia Institute, and upcoming in “Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry” distributed by Haymarket Books.

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Session Title: CWP Wrap Party 
Session Time: 12:35-1:25
Location: Cross-Cultural Center > Comunidad 

hosted by Conversations with Poets and PLNU 

Celebrate the 2024 season of Conversations with Poets with the whole CWP family…Open to all!

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Session Title: 2024 Poets Underground Poetry Awards
Session Time: 1:30-2:30
Location: Cross-Cultural Center > Comunidad

hosted by Poets Underground (Anthony Azzarito & Sunny Rey Azzarito)

The 2024 Poets Underground Poetry Awards honor outstanding talent and celebrate the transformative power of poetry. Owned and operated by Anthony and Sunny Azzarito, Poets Underground stands at the intersection of art and advocacy, championing mental health, creative expression, and inclusivity. At this groundbreaking event, Poets Underground will present awards to key individuals in the San Diego poetry community, recognizing their vital contributions to the city’s dynamic poetic culture.

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Session Title: Enlaces and Linked Verse: A Conversation in Poems
Session Time: 1:30-2:30
Location: Cross-Cultural Center > Library

Adrián Arancibia
Brandon Som
Daniela Paraguya Sow
Katie Manning
Ron Salisbury

Dr. Adrián Arancibia is a longtime educator, critic, and author. He has worked as a teacher in all levels of education from elementary to graduate school. An immigrant from Iquique, Chile, he holds a Doctorate in Comparative Literature from U.C. San Diego. Dr. Arancibia has been a member of numerous artists organizations and literacy groups. He has worked as an educator for nearly 30 years and currently teaches English Composition, Chicano Studies, and Creative Writing at Miramar College.

Brandon Som is a Chicano and Chinese American poet. His poetry collection Tripas was awarded the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and was a finalist for the National Book Award. His previous collection The Tribute Horse won the 2015 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He teaches at UC San Diego.

Daniela Paraguya Sow was born in New York City and raised in the Philippines and in Southern California. She is an English instructor at Grossmont College. Her writing has appeared in The Plentitudes Journal, The Hyacinth Review, and elsewhere. Half Moon Rising, her debut poetry collection, was published in May 2024 (Kelsay Books). Website: danielasow.com.

Katie Manning is the editor of Whale Road Review and a professor at PLNU. Winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, she’s the author of eight collections, most recently Hereverent (Agape Editions, 2023). Her writing’s been featured at Poetry Unbound, Tangle News, Verse Daily, The SDU-T, and elsewhere.

Ron Salisbury is the inaugural Poet Laureate of San Diego 2020-2021. Ron has taught poetry for the past forty years. He is the author of Miss Desert Inn, winner of the 2015 Main Street Rag Poetry Prize, and Please Write And Tell Me What I Looked Like When You Met Me, published by Wholon in 2023. Ron teaches the Certificate in Poetry for San Diego Writers, Ink.

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Session Title: Future Ancestor, Wild Dreamers
Session Time: 2:35-3:35
Location: Cross-Cultural Center > Comunidad

Angélica Maria Yañez
Ant Black
Ella deCastro Baron
Jennifer Derilo
Kelsey O. Daniels

Dr. Angélica M. Yañez is a professor, poet, and dedicated advocate for Indigenous knowledge and cultural education. She holds a doctoral degree in Ethnic Studies from UC San Diego and is an advisor to several student groups such as M.E.Ch.A and a writing group on her college campus. Her poetry has appeared in Latina: Struggles and Protests in 21st Century USA, Volume 2, LitStack, Sunshine/Noir III, The San Diego Poetry Annual, FlowerSong Press, and Writing in a Woman’s Voice, and has been featured by Planned Parenthood. She is also a traditional Aztec Dancer, that honors the legacies of her Native ancestors through dance and ceremony, bridging academic and cultural spaces with her work. As the founder of, The Ancestral Teachings Institute, an in-person and digital platform for Indigenous wisdom and decolonization. Angélica can be reached through info@ancestralteach.com and visit her website www.ancetralteach.com to learn more.

Dr. Anthony Blacksher is a poet, professor, and cultural scholar specializing in spoken word, Africana Studies, and Hip Hop. He is the faculty chair of sociology and ethnic studies departments at San Bernardino Valley College. He collects vinyl, savoring music with soulful melodies and groovy bass lines.

Ella deCastro Baron (she/siya/we) is a second generation Filipina American from Coastal Miwok lands (Vallejo, California). She teaches English and Creative Writing at San Diego City and Mesa Colleges as well as in the Zoom-verse with Urban Haiku. Ella’s books are Subo and Baon: a Memoir in Bites (2024) and Itchy, Brown Girl Seeks Employment (2009). She conspires with art-ivists to produce workshops and kapwa (deep interconnection) gatherings that stir love and justice via writing, art, joy, grief-tending, movement, food and community.

Jennifer Derilo (UCSD BA ‘03 / Mills MFA ‘08) teaches writing and literature at SD Mesa College. An alumna of VONA, DISQUIET, Sirenland, and NVM Gonzalez workshops, Jennifer is working on a memoir triangulating ghosts, cancer, and the Bataan Death March and on a poetry collection about sisters and grief.

Kelsey O. Daniels is an artist organizer baddie scholar from Southeast San Diego. Her work centers on storytelling, world-building, and dreamwork as tools for liberation. As a fat Black queer disabled femme, Kelsey honors their ancestors and descendants by revoking consent from the failed experiment of white supremacy and dreaming up worlds that are affirming and lit.

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Session Title: FIGHTING POEMS  
Session Time: 2:35-3:35 
Location: Cross-Cultural Center > Library

Alissa Tu
Bara’ah Oriqat
hamsa fae 
Sonia Gutiérrez
Ted Washington

Alissa Tu (she/her) is a Vietnamese American writer from Olympia, Washington. She received her MFA in Writing from UC San Diego and debuted her experimental memoir Confessions of a Modern Day Kumiho (2023) with Blue Cactus Press. Her work plays to soak the reader into her writing.

Bara’ah Oriqat براءة عريقات (she/her) is an independent Palestinian artist who lives for a liberated Falasteen. She graduated from UC San Diego in her hometown, on indigenous Kumeyaay land, with a degree in Communication and an emphasis in media and film production.

hamsa fae (she/they) is a Vietnamese-French poet and contemporary performance artist from Los Angeles. Her poetry book, Blood Frequency, was shortlisted by C&R Press and the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network in 2022. She has publications in diaCRITICS, Vănguard, new words {press}, Yale School of Environment, Fruitslice, and the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Sonia Gutiérrez is the author of two full-length bilingual poetry collections, Spider Woman / La Mujer Araña (Olmeca Press, 2013) and Paper Birds: Feather by Feather / Pájaros de papel: Pluma por pluma (El Martillo Press, 2024), recipient of an honorable mention for the ILBA’s The Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award—One Author—Bilingual, and the novel, Dreaming with Mariposas (FlowerSong Press, 2020), winner of the Tomás Rivera Book Award 2021, the International Latino Book Awards 2022, and the ILBA Book into Movie Awards 2023. She teaches composition, critical thinking and writing, and creative writing. She lives in the Californias.

Ted Washington is an author, artist and reluctant businessman. He is the founder of Puna Press and author of Bone Lyre released in 2023.

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Session Title: California Lyric (closing plenary)
Session Time: 3:40-5:00
Location: Cross-Cultural Center > Comunidad

Lee Herrick
Janice Lobo Sapigao 
Jason Magabo Perez

Lee Herrick is the California Poet Laureate. He is the author of In Praise of Late Wonder: New and Selected and three other books. He co-edited The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit and Afterlives: An AGNI Portfolio of Asian Adoptee Diaspora Writing. Born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted to the U.S., he lives and teaches in Fresno.

Janice Lobo Sapigao is a community college educator and Filipina American writer and author of the poetry collections like a solid to a shadow (Nightboat Books, 2022) and microchips for millions (PAWA, Inc., 2016). She has received fellowships from the Montalvo Arts Center, the Newberry Library, and the University of Michigan. She was the 2020-2021 Santa Clara County Poet Laureate.

Jason Magabo Perez serves as San Diego Poet Laureate 2023-24. Perez is the author of This is for the mostless (WordTech Editions, 2017) and I ask about what falls away (Kaya Press, 2024). Recipient of a Challenge America Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, previous Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Art and Thought, Perez was a recent Poet Laureate Fellow with Academy of American Poets. Perez organizes with The Digital Sala and is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at CSU San Marcos.

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The After-Festival
5:00 at The Loft 

Join us for a reception at The Loft, next door to the Cross-Cultural Center. Sponsored by Provost K. Wayne Yang (UCSD Muir College).