Jacqueline Gallegos leads our June workshop!
Poets@Play is a monthly creative writing workshop hosted by former Santa Clara County Poet Laureate David Perez. Each session features a different guest facilitator—or sometimes David himself—leading hands-on exercises to inspire creativity and new ideas.
Our Facilitator
Jacqueline Gallegos, known as Jacqnasty on the stage, is from the Bay Area, California. She now lives on the California Central Coast with her family. She has never moved away from the Golden State, but travels anytime she has a buck, a calling, and a few days off.
She was a member of the Santa Cruz Poetry Slam Team, placing 8th in the nation at The National Poetry Slam. Her work has appeared in Red Wheelbarrow, Chinquapin, Porter Gulch Review, and Caesura. Her first book Not Yet Fluent in Luminescence was published by Space Cadet Records in 2015. Her second book The Break Up Tapes was published by Rawmeash in 2025.
Workshop Description:
A simple color can elicit some of your strongest memories– the red roses from your first love, the misty evergreen trail you hiked and felt the sublime, or the midnight black sky when you saw your first shooting star. Poets such as William Carlos Williams, June Jordan, Robert Frost, and Emily Dickison utilize color to enhance the beauty of the natural world, and explore the intimacy of human relationships. In this workshop we will learn how to write poems in color by using a hands-on approach. We will sift through paint chips, drawing inspiration from their creative names to write lyrical free form poetry.
No RSVP required. Just show up at 1:00pm
Admission: Free (donations welcome)
📍Location: Markham House @ History Park
635 Phelan Ave, San Jose, CA.
Free parking right outside of the main gate or in the lot at the end of Phelan Avenue (except during some History Park events.)
Once you walk into the park from Phelan Avenue, go straight until the road dead ends, then make a left. Markham House is then the second house on your left. There will be a flag over the steps that reads OPEN.