This is Day TWO of our four-day festival! Click here to peruse all 2025 San José Poetry Festival tickets and passes!
This event is free to all youth aged 19 and under and to those with a festival pass. $25 for general public and $20 for PCSJ Members. Admission may be purchased at the door. Doors open at 7:30pm. Show begins at 8pm
Nearest ParkSJ Garage: 45 N. Market St. near San Pedro Square.
(First 90 minutes free, $1 per 15 minutes after)
FRIDAY NIGHT!
Our second night of poetry brings together three voices from three cultures from across California. A wondrous, eclectic trio! Tonight's poets are Kim Addonizio, Jaz Sufi and Joseph Rios! Not to be missed!
Kim Addonizio is the author of eight poetry collections, two novels, two story collections, and two books on writing poetry: The Poet’s Companion (with Dorianne Laux) and Ordinary Genius. Her poetry collection Tell Me was a finalist for the National Book Award. She also has two word/music CDS: Swearing, Smoking, Drinking, & Kissing (with Susan Browne) and My Black Angel, the companion to My Black Angel: Blues Poems and Portraits, a collaboration with woodcut artist Charles D. Jones. Her poetry has been translated into several languages including Spanish, Arabic, Italian, and Hungarian. Collections have been published in China, Spain, Mexico, Lebanon, and the UK. Addonizio’s awards include two fellowships from the NEA, a Guggenheim, two Pushcart Prizes, and other honors. Her latest books are a poetry collection, Mortal Trash (W.W. Norton), and a memoir, Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life (Penguin). Now We’re Getting Somewhere (March 2021) and Exit Opera (2024) were published by W.W. Norton. More at kimaddonizio.com
Jaz Sufi (she/her) is a queer Iranian-American poet and arts educator. She is a National Poetry Slam finalist and the former executive director of the Berkeley Slam, the longest running poetry slam on the West Coast. She has toured internationally, from Berlin and London to performing alongside the Townsend Opera. Her work has been published or is upcoming in Best New Poets, Best of the Net, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, Muzzle, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Watering Hole, and New York University, where she received her MFA as a Goldwater fellow. She has taught in K-12 and college classrooms across the country, and works as a teaching artist with Bay Area Creative. She is the current Poet Laureate of San Ramon on occupied Ohlone land, where she lives with her dog, Apollo. More at jazsufi.com
Joseph Rios was born in the San Joaquin Valley in 1987. He is a Xicano writer and the author of Shadowboxing: Poems & Impersonations (Omnidawn, 2017), winner of a 2018 American Book Award. A Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University, Rios is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships from Community of Writers, CantoMundo, Letras Latinas, and the California Arts Council. He was named one of the "10 Poets Who Will Change the World" by Poets & Writers Magazine for 2017. He is a VONA alumnus and a Macondo Fellow. He's been a gardener, a janitor, a packing house supervisor, and a handyman. Rios lives on Yokuts land in Fresno, California, where he serves as poet laureate. In 2024, he received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.
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San José Poetry Festival 2025 is presented by Poetry Center San José and sponsored in part by a Cultural Affairs grant from the City of San José; a grant from SVCreates, in partnership with the County of Santa Clara and the California Arts Council; and additional support from Anne & Mark’s Art Party and the Brandenburg Family Foundation. Many thanks to Four Points by Sheraton for hotel accommodations and Robertino R. Ragazza for his guidance and hospitality. We would like to acknowledge and offer our deepest gratitude to past and current venues worthy of your support: San Jose Stage, Central Park Library Santa Clara, Convergence Arts Center, SJZ Break Room, Art Boutiki, Books Inc., Caravan Lounge, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, First Unitarian Church of San José, History/San José, MACLA, Mama Kin, Recycle Bookstore, The School of Arts and Culture at Mexican Heritage Plaza, Tabard Theatre (R.I.P.), Willow Glen Public Library, Works/San José art & performance center and Hillbrook Upper School of San José. Please support these spaces however you can. And we thank all our volunteers whose time and effort make this festival possible.