Poetry Center San José presents San José Poetry Slam – Live In Person!
Come join us for poetry and some of the most delicious pizza in San José at our new venue in willow Glen:
Wheelhouse of Willow Glen
1173 Lincoln Avenue
San Jose, CA 95125
Sunday, March 15, 2026
Room opens at 6:00pm (PST)
Sign up list will be open until 6:30pm
Slam starts at 6:30pm
Admission is by donation; no one turned away for lack of funds.
Hosted by Scorpiana Xlent.
Our Featured Poet is Nazelah Jamison!
Nazelah Jamison is a poet, comedian, performer, and multidisciplinary artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the 2026 Janice Mirikitani Poet Theologian in Residence at Glide Memorial Church in SF, and a Lead Artist with Skywatchers, an SF Tenderloin-based arts organization, where she helps guide collaborative performance work exploring justice, memory, and collective care. She is the author of the chapbook Evolutionary Heart (Nomadic Press 2016) Her writing appears in The Racket Journal, Culture Counts Magazine, La Raiz Magazine, Better Ancestors, Sparkle + Blink, and The Town: An Anthology of Oakland Poets (Nomadic Press). Jamison’s work moves between poetry, comedy, theater, and film, often exploring survival, grief, humor, and the stories we carry in our bodies.
Poetry Slam Competition Info
Cash prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place.
If you have never been to a Poetry Slam before, a poetry slam is a competition, imagine spoken word poetry as an olympic sport. The rules are simple:
1.) Poets must use their own poems.
2.) poet must use only one poem per round.
3.) no musical accompaniment.
4.) no props.
5.) there is a time limit of 3 minutes and 10 seconds. going over that will result in a time penalty.
This is a two-round slam, poets with the highest scores will move up to round two.
If you're not competing, we could use judges.
Please remember to submit a quick audience survey to help us improve our logistics and content and report to our funders and sponsors. Here is the link to the survey: https://bit.ly/3M63VqH
Poetry Center San José promotes and supports the literary arts in San José. Over the past four decades, PCSJ has brought hundreds of exceptional writers from around the country to read from their works and, in many cases, to conduct workshops for local writers. PCSJ is a nonprofit organization established in 1978. Its base of operations is in the charming turn-of-the-century Victorian home where the renown poet Edwin Markham once lived, now located in San José History Park. Poetry Center San José is a member supported organization and is funded, in part, by grants from Applied Materials Foundation, the City of San José's Office of Cultural Affairs, Knight Foundation, Poets & Writers, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, SVCREATES, in partnership with the County of Santa Clara and the California Arts Council and also supported in part by a SVCreates National Endowment for the Arts American Rescue Plan grant. We also thank Brandenburg Family Foundation and Anne & Mark's Art Party for their generous giving.