This is Day Three of our four-day festival! Check out the complete list of events that are part of the 10th Annual San José Poetry Festival! Our festival pass will get you into all live events and online events.
This event is free to all youth aged 19 and under and to those with a festival pass. $20 for general public and $15 for PCSJ Members. Admission may be purchased at the door.
# # #
Our Saturday Night main event is a celebration of Yosimar Reyes, our new Santa Clara County Poet Laureate, along with the incoming 2024 class of Youth Poets Laureate and Ambassadors. We want their take on the world to impact us, to inspire us and to influence us. We are certain that their poetry has the power to motivate us to leave a better world for them. With special festival guests, RC Weslowski and Rachel McKibbens.
# # #
[Youth Poet bios to come.]
Yosimar Reyes
Hailing from East San Jose by way of Guerrero, Mexico, Reyes quickly made a name for himself at the tender age of sixteen, exploding onto local Bay Area stages and captivating his audiences with deeply moving spoken word performances.
Reyes’ repertoire has since evolved to include nationally-acclaimed keynotes, writing workshops, and his one-man show, Prieto, a coming-of-age story that explores subjects like migration, sexuality, and socio-economic struggle—all while empowering his audiences to tap into their own creative potential.
His achievements don’t stop there. In addition to being the first-ever undocumented poet to achieve Santa Clara County Poet Laureate status, Reyes was chosen to be a 2024 Creative Ambassador by the City of San Jose, The Advocate named him one of "13 LGBT Latinos Changing the World," and Remezcla included him on their list of "10 Up And Coming Latinx Poets You Need To Know."
Amongst numerous accolades, Reyes has been awarded a NALAC Catalyst for Change Grant (2020), a Gerbode Foundation Grant and most recently, a Walter & Elise Haas Creative Work Fund Grant (2023), . His writing has appeared in publications such as MARIPOSAS: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry, Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival, and New Beginnings and forthcoming UndocuPoetics.
Rachel McKibbens is a two-time New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow and author of three critically-acclaimed books of poetry, blud, Pink Elephant and Into the Dark & Emptying Field. In 2012, McKibbens founded The Pink Door Writing Retreat, an annual writing intensive held exclusively for non-men writers of color.
Ploughshares recently called McKibbens “the witchy folk hero of the disenfranchised.” For over two decades, she has taught poetry to the outcasts, misfits and witches of the world while raising five children. In 2022, Mckibbens was the subject of the podcast We Were Three, from The New York Times and the creators of Serial.
She is currently writing a romance novel and believes Palestine will be free in this lifetime.
RC Weslowski is an award-winning poet and broadcaster/podcaster including the 2024 Hunna Bubba Prize. He’s also a workshop leader, clown and bon vivant. He has performed his poetry across Turtle Island and parts of Europe since 1998. RC is celebrating his 25th year of performing poetry by being at the San Jose Poetry Festival. His first collection of poetry My Soft Response to the Wars is available now from Write Bloody North Publishing writebloodynorth.ca
Want more poetry? Check out the rest of the San José Poetry Festival lineup.
Follow Poetry Center San José on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for announcements about other amazing South Bay poetry events happening throughout the rest of the year. Help support Poetry Center San José by becoming a member.