Saturday, September 9th, 11:00 a.m.
FREE! Via Zoom.
For tickets visit Eventbrite
9th Annual San José Poetry Festival presents Poets Laureate E. Stanley Richardson, Henry L. Jones, Dasha Kelly, Dasan Ahanu & Rhea Carmon!
This is Day Three of our four-day festival! Check out the complete list of events that are part of the 9th Annual San José Poetry Festival! Our festival pass will get you into all live events and online events. Visit bit.ly/pcsjtix.
This event is free to all.
The show is to showcase Black Laureates but also the launch of this first time collection of poems of Black Poet laureates. Hosted by Tshaka Campbell, 2022-23 Santa Clara County Poet Laureate.
E. Stanley Richardson is an American Poet, Actor, Playwright and Producer. He is the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Alachua County, Florida. He was appointed to the position in 2020 to serve a two year term and reappointed again in 2022. E. Stanley Richardson is one of five poets selected by the Florida Council on Arts and Culture to be the state of Florida's next Poet Laureate. E. Stanley Richardson's poetry is characterized by its lyrical beauty, powerful imagery, and profound social commentary. Through his words, he weaves stories that illuminate the human experience, shedding light on both historical and contemporary matters. As a storyteller, E Stanley Richardson has an innate ability to transport his audience to different worlds and evoke a broad spectrum of emotions. Whether through spoken word performances or written works, he effortlessly captivates listeners and readers, using the power of narrative to connect deeply with his audience. His stories are both personal and universal, allowing others to find themselves in the narratives he presents. E. Stanley Richardson is the founder and director of ARTSPEAKSgnv Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit literary arts organization operating in north central Florida, since 2012. www.ARTSPEAKSgnv.org
Facebook: E Stanley Richardson
ARTSPEAKSgnv #ARTSPEAKSgnv
Twitter (X): @EStanRich
Instagram: @EStanleyRichardson
@ARTSPEAKSgnv
Henry L. Jones is a multi-disciplinary artist who's an award-winning poet, artist, performance artist and playwright as well as an activist. He digs up old roots to share whether as images or words inspired often by the African Diaspora. In 2021 he was inducted as Hendersonville, Tennessee's First Poet Laureate. Books include: Run into Blackness: Feeling My Poetic Gumbo (Pneuma Publishing International), Tell Me No Lies (chapbook), Coming Home (Parthenon Press) with photographer Carlton Wilkinson, and Black Skillet Blues: Poetry without Cornbread (Beatlick Press) due in 2023. Jones' poems appear in many anthologies, journals, magazines, films and arts installations. Recent anthologies include: In the Fullness of the Word: An Anthology of Black American Poet Laureates (5th Woman Books) 2023, American Graveyard, A Call to End Gun Violence (Read or Green Books) 2023, Blotters Jotters 2023 and SINEW: 10 Years of Poetry in the Brew (April Gloaming Publishing) 2021. He's the 2023 Poet-in-Residence of the Walker Entertainment Film Academy; 2021- 2022 Converge Fellowship of the Converge Center's Fort Negley Master Plan Project; 2021-2022 Poet-in-Residence of the Hendersonville Public Library; 2019-2020 Art Wire Fellow of The Porch Writers Collective and OZ Arts Nashville and 1999-2000 Fellow of Nashville Symphony Orchestra's Tennessee in the Millennium. He's won numerous awards and recognition for his words and images and often featured in cultural and poetry events. Jones is a Fisk University graduate and a Detroit native who lives in Music City with his wife. They have three adult children.
Dasha Kelly Hamilton is a writer, performance artist and creative change agent, applying the creative process to facilitate dialogues around human and social wellness. She is the author of two novels, three poetry collections, four spoken word albums and one collection of personal vignettes. She has taught at colleges, conferences and classrooms and curated fellowships for emerging leaders. An Arts Envoy for the U.S. Embassy, Dasha has facilitated community building initiatives in Botswana, Toronto, Mauritius and Beirut. Dasha is a national Rubinger Fellow and a National Laureate Fellow with the American Academy of Poets. She is a former Artist of the Year and Poet Laureate for the City of Milwaukee and Poet Laureate Emerita for the State of Wisconsin. Her stage production, Makin’ Cake, uniquely engages communities in a forward dialogue on race, class and equity and is touring nationally.
A self-described introvert with a very public profession, Dasan Ahanu is a North Carolina-based cultural organizer, artist, and scholar. As an accomplished cultural leader and poet, Dasan has appeared on NPR News, TV One’s Verses and Flow, and the documentary Poet Son, among other features. He is a resident artist with the St. Joseph’s Historic Foundation/Hayti Heritage Center, co-founder and managing director of Black Poetry Theatre, and the Rothwell Mellon Program Director for Creative Futures with Carolina Performing Arts. He previously served as a founding member and coach of the Bull City Slam Team and has performed and competed extensively across the country alongside the team and independently. A respected recording artist, Dasan has collaborated with many Jazz, Soul, and Hip-Hop artists in North Carolina. He released his most recent album, Words, Rhythms, and Melodies in 2021.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/itisdasanahanu
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dasanahanu
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dasanahanu
Instagram: http://instagram.com/dasanahanu
Among the many great honors throughout his career, Dasan is an alumnus of the Nasir Jones Fellowship with the Hip Hop Archive at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research. In 2023, he was named the 15th Piedmont Laureate, a one-year program that changes genres annually, for which he serves as a poet. His writing has been published extensively, and he is the author of four poetry collections, The Innovator (HWJW Publishing, 2010), Freedom Papers (HWJW Publishing, 2012), Everything Worth Fighting For: An exploration of being Black in America (Flowered Concrete, 2016), and Shackled Freedom: Black Living in the Modern American South (Willow Books, 2020).
Award-winning wordsmith Rhea “RheaSunshine” Carmon is a force that weaves passion, purpose, and power into poetry. For more than twenty years, RheaSunshine has traveled the nation, sharing her gift of the spoken word and facilitating self-expression, liberation, and healing. This art form has led her to touch lives at universities and educational institutions as well as civic engagements and festivals.
Rhea is the creator and Executive Director of the 5th Woman, LLC, a collective of poets that writes and performs to radicalize the souls of people and encourage every one to be a P.O.E.T., Person Observing Exceptional Truth. As Poet Laureate Emerita of the City of Knoxville, RheaSunshine strives to touch hearts and inspire people to share their own stories. She has five chapbooks, the most recent released in 2021 titled Let the Sun Shine In (Iris Press). She has also recorded three audio projects which can all be found on Spotify. She is the host of Beyond the Spark the Podcast which shares conversations with great artists from all over the country. As a testimony, Rhea lives her life telling the beauty and ugly she has experienced in a way that encourages us all to be great. She is always pushing herself to new levels and she will always have poems she hasn’t even written yet.
IG: rheasunshinepoetry
FB: RheaCarmon
PayPal.me/RheaCarmon
Want more poetry? Check out the rest of the San José Poetry Festival lineup.
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COVID NOTICE: If a venue cancels, the San José Poetry Festival event will be broadcast to PCSJ’s Zoom channel. All ticket holders will receive a link to the Zoom. Refund requests for unattended individual events moved online due to a venue cancellation will be reviewed and considered.
San José Poetry Festival 2023 is presented by Poetry Center San José and is sponsored in part by: Festival and Cultural Affairs grants from the City of San José; a grant from 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; support from the offices of San José City Council Members David Cohen (D4) and Peter Ortiz (D5); Literary Arts Emergency Fund supported by the Mellon Foundation; and with support from Anne & Mark's Art Party, Applied Materials Foundation, Brandenburg Family Foundation and Silicon Valley Community Foundation. We thank Four Points by Sheraton for hotel accommodations. We would like to acknowledge and offer our deepest gratitude to past and current venues worthy of your support: 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, Tabard Theatre, Willow Glen Public Library and Works/San José. Please support these spaces however you can. And we thank all our volunteers whose time and effort make this festival possible.