The Sin Fronteras Project in association with The Latino Theater Company presents
The First Annual Los Angeles
Street Poetry Festival:
POESÍA DE RESISTENCIA Y AMOR
This event will bring together the best poets in the city to sound off a message of Resistencia y Amor Sin Fronteras.
The festival is free to the public and will include poetry workshops, an open mic, book fair, food and poetry readings.
Saturday, August 24, 2024
11:00 A.M to 2:30 P.M | FREE!
This moment calls for resistance and love. Resistance in the political sense, but also resistance in that we will not accept a narrative that divides us and makes us feel less than anyone else. We invite everyone through poetry to resist our natural reaction to feel fear, hatred, and isolation—towards ourselves and those around us during challenging times. Instead, we invite a resistance that encourages us to imagine a world free of all that divides us, including the seed of racism planted on this land over 500 years ago. We call for a resistance that blares a trumpet sound for liberation and equality. A resistance that reminds us of what makes us human. A resistance through the spoken word that shows how interconnected we all are and how much we need each other—from the child crossing the border without shoes to the unhoused mother who is near death under the 4th Street bridge. We call for a resistance that speaks to our better selves and acknowledges our mutual and individual pain and joy SIN FRONTERAS. And when we do acknowledge each other honestly, with our open hands y con un fuerte abrazo, then we will find love—love of ourselves, love of each other, and love for this planet and everything in it.
WORKSHOPS: 11:00 a.m to 12:00 p.m
Memoir Workshop, Led by OBED SILVA
Location: LATC - Theater 4
Obed Silva is an English Professor at East Los Angeles College. His first memoir The Death of My Father the Pope (MCD/FSG) was published in 2021. He is currently completing his second memoir, In the Hands of My Mother (MCD/FSG). Obed also writes poetry and short stories. Obed is a gifted artist, and his works have been exhibited at art galleries in and around Los Angeles, including Art Share LA, The dA Center for the Arts in Pomona, Brea Gallery, Able Arts in Long Beach, and La Plaza de Cultura y Artes in Los Angeles.
Collaborative Storytelling, Led by Yazlin Juarez
Location: LATC - Room 4B
Yazlin Juarez is a writer and artist based in Pico Rivera, and a recent fellow of the 2024 Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Workshop. She takes every opportunity to forge spoken word poetry, photography, and design into instruments of social change. Yazlin discovered her love of theater through the Cultural Arts and Diversity Resource Center, where served as the Poet’s Corner director. She is published in the Red Wheelbarrow Anthology and TWANAS Press and continues to capture her history from a queer Chicana lens.
Poems of Struggle, Led by Lynne Thompson
Location: LATC - Room 4A
Lynne Thompson was appointed to a two year term as Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles in 2021. She is the author of four collections of poetry, mostly recently Blue on A Blue Palette published by BOA Editions Ltd. in April 2024.
Crafting a Poem, Led by Linda Ravenswood
Location: LATC - Room 4C
love + history — it’s all we have, our memory & sense of times we cherished, & were cherished. People, places, images, songs, scents, fragments, all of these things are maps for artists. We’ll come together to make something beautiful, connected, & meaningful for ourselves, & maybe even to share with a cherished friend. You’re also invited to bring an object or portable piece(s) of yours that inspires you.
WITH PERFORMANCES BY:
RICHARD MODIANO
While living in New York City, Richard Modiano connected with prominent poets like Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and Anne Waldman through the Poetry Project. He served on the board of Valley Contemporary Poets from 1995 to 2001 and became Executive Director of Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center from 2010 to 2019, curating numerous literary events, and he’s the author of Forbidden Lunchbox. In 2019, he was elected Vice President of the California State Poetry Society and joined the Los Angeles Poetry Society board in 2023. Named by The Huffington Post as one of the top promoters of poetry in the U.S., Modiano won the 2022 Joe Hill Prize for labor poetry and is a Pushcart Prize nominee.
MR. CHAI TEA
Sutichai Savathasuk (or Mr. Chai Tea) is a drink of comedy and poetry. He is undefined by an ongoing quench for living life to the fullest as a nerd and an adventurer born and raised in Los Angeles. As an autistic Asian-American with a background in Mechanical Engineering from Cal State University, Northridge, he shares his stories across various mics. He enjoys activities like hiking, rock climbing, 3D printing, board games, and sharing knowledge. You can find him at local boba shops and on Instagram: @mr.chai_tea
JUAN CARDENAS
Juan Cardenas is a Chicano Poet born in Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico. He was raised in the San Fernando Valley, and is an accomplished Poet and Flautist. He is an award-winning author of the book, The Beat of an Immigrant Chicano, which received Honorable Mention from the International Latino Book Awards. He teaches for California Poets in the Schools, and is Associate Director of the LA Poet Society. www.juanflautista.com
MONICA SALAZAR
Monica Salazar is a Los Angeles Native and 4th generation Chicana. She is not only a spoken word poet but author of the poetry book, Wisdom Looks Good on Her. She is a curator, a facilitator of self love poetry workshops; a business owner and founder of typaway poetry, building her own niche and demand creating custom on the spot poems using a vintage typewriter. She's a networking chingonx and has collaborated with many businesses and nonprofit organizations throughout Los Angeles county based on her on demand poetry and workshops. She has been awarded by the United States House of Representatives with a Certificate of Recognition applauding her achievements as a business owner and artist in service of her beloved Los Angeles community. Monica Salazar is all about infusing healing power of the words for individuals in need of self empowerment, bringing individuals and communities in the forefront to be felt, seen, and heard. In her free time, she loves to dance salsa and Bachata, spend time with loved ones and friends and swim in the ocean.
LUNCH & OPEN MIC
12:00 p.m to 12:45 p.m, Theater 4
Maestra de Ceremony Jessica Wilson, founding member of the First Los Angeles Street Poetry Festival Committee.
MAIN STAGE PERFORMANCES
1:00 p.m to 2:30 p.m, Tom Bradley Theater
TAINA BEATRIZ “BEE” LOPEZ — Maestra de Ceremony
My name is Taina Beatriz Lopez, you may call me “Bee.” Born and raised in East Los Angeles and Santa Ana, California from parents who lived their life advocating for community empowerment, immigrant rights, and worker rights. A mother to three beautiful daughters. Being witness to many injustices at a young age it became my passion to help others. Graduated from Santa Ana College with a Degree in Political Science and Paralegal Studies. I continued to work as a Paralegal and community organizer at Hermandad Mexicana Latinoamericana under the direction of Nativo Lopez for more than twenty-five years. As a young student and participant of Mecha and many other organizations. It has been my mission to advocate for betterment. For the betterment of workers in all areas of life because workers are community. I joined the union during COVID as an Amazon associate experiencing injustice. I knew it was time to stand up! I previously worked as an Organizer and Case Manager with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and The Los Angeles Federation of Labor. I am happy to bring my experience and passion to the continued work for the betterment of our communities. SOMOS UN PUEBLO SIN FRONTERAS!
REY M. RODRIGUEZ
Rey M. Rodríguez is a founding member of the First Los Angeles Street Poetry Festival Committee. He is a writer, advocate, and attorney, who lives in Pasadena, California. He is currently working on a novel set in Mexico City and a non-fiction history of a prominent nonprofit in East LA. He has attended the Yale Writers' Workshop multiple times and Palabras de Pueblo workshop once. He also participates in a selective Story Studio Novel in a Year Program. He is a first-year student in the Institute for American Indian Arts' MFA Program in creative writing. This fall his poetry will be published in Huizache and you can find his other book reviews at La Bloga, the world's longest-established Chicana-Chicano, Latina-Latino literary blog, Charter House's blog, IAIA's journal, and Los Angeles Review.
JESSICA WILSON
Jessica M. Wilson Cárdenas, an International Chicana Poet, born in East Los Angeles, CA, and she is a founding member of the First Los Angeles Street Poetry Festival Committee. She is a 3rd generation Beatnik, with a BA and MFA in Writing (UCR and Otis) She is the Founder and Executive Director of the Los Angeles (LA) Poet Society, a literary non-profit organization that makes the literary arts accessible, visible, and accessible to the communities across LA County! She's a California Poets in the Schools Poet Teacher, where she taught Youth US Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman. Jessica is an Artivist, a social justice Publisher for Los Angeles Poet Society Press, amplifying QTBIPOC voices. She’s a DJ for Radio Ollin, (www.radioollin.org) She is a teacher for UCLA Extension’s Writers Program, where she teaches Storytelling for Social Justice. Her books of poetry include: What Breathes, Raw Kit, Marie Morrison, Serious Longing, published by Swan World Press in Paris, France.
JORGE “COQUI” H. RODRIGUEZ
Jorge “Coqui” H. Rodriguez is part of the Sin Fronteras Project and is a founding member of the First Annual Los Angeles Street Poetry Committee and has a Masters in Urban Sustainability. Jorge has been doing civil rights work since he was 12 years old. He lead the largest multinational student walkouts in Los Angeles County, in the history of California in 1970, for culturally relevant education and against the War in Vietnam. As member of CASA a National Immigrant Worker Rights organization in the 70’s and 80’s he and other CASA members lead the long 15 year historic battle to fight and obtain the first amnesty legislation in the history of this country in 1986, giving 5.5 million undocumented workers and their families total amnesty in the USA. Jorge has lead multiple labor ground breaking union campaigns. In1979 he was part of the leadership coordinating team in the unionization of 40,000 UC California workers. He was a national organizer for the Hotel Employees Restaurant Employees Union in 1984, winning union campaigns through out California in the hospitality industry. In 2000 he lead the largest doctor union drive in the history of labor in the USA, winning collective bargaining for over 1,000 LA County Health Doctors. Jorge was a national organizer for mega millions immigration marches in 2006 across the USA, culminating in 450,000 people marching in Los Angeles and hundreds of thousands more across the country on March 25th, leading into the famous Mega Million May Day Marches on May 1st, 2006, “ A Day Without An Immigrant” in 42 cities across the USA. In Los Angeles 1.5 million people took to the streets in Los Angeles and millions more all across the county. These marches were the largest labor immigrant worker civil rights marches in the history of the USA, stopping the passage of the Sensenbrenner Bill the most draconian anti-immigrant law which was similar to the slave fugitive act of 1852.
Jorge is a long time civil, labor, immigration, environmental rights activist to date. At 18 years old in 1970 he was youngest person to serve on the East LA Community Blue Ribbon Committee to oversee the LA County Coroner’s Inquest on Ruben Salazar, the famous LA Times Writer and KMEX Channel 34 News Director, who was killed by the Los Angeles County Sheriffs at the Silver Dollar Bar during the famous 1970 Chicano Moratorium in East LA. He served as Co-Chair of the 50th Anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium Commemorative Committee from 2018 to 2020. Jorge began writing poetry at the age of 14. He is presently working on “Love and Resistance,” a book of poetry and short stories.
JESSE MAREZ
Jesse Marez is a founding member of the First Annual Los Angeles Street poetry Festival and the proud owner of a new community bookstore called “The Libros Lincoln Heights.” Jesse’s vision is to create a bookstore that highlights the writing and artistic talents of local community members. Jesse especially wants to feature works by Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Roosevelt High School published alumni authors. He wants his bookstore to be a place and resource of community pride and inspiration that offers both book signing and book reading opportunities.
LATINO THEATER CO. SUMMER YOUTH CONSERVATORY STUDENTS
The Summer Conservatory is designed to create an opportunity for high school students (9th to 12th Grade) to experience and train in a professional setting. Up to 30 students are selected each year. With the Latino Theater Co., students experience and train in a university-style program to obtain the necessary tools for theater production. They attend courses in acting, playwriting, dance, voice/speech, theater analysis, and movement. The students also read college-level plays and texts to spark their imagination, enabling them to explore the expanse of their own creativity.
TRACI KATO-KIRIYAMA
Traci Kato-Kiriyama (they/she), based in the South Bay of Los Angeles, is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist and author of "Navigating With(out) Instruments." Recognized for their work as a writer, performer, theatre deviser, cultural producer, community organizer, and audiobook narrator, they are grounded in collaborative processes and art+community as means for connection and healing. As a performer and principal writer of PULLproject Ensemble, and recipient of multiple prestigious awards, tkk has presented their work in hundreds of venues over 25 years. They are also a core artist with Vigilant Love, founding member of the Okaeri Nikkei LGBTQ+ Network, and co-founder of Tuesday Night Project, which hosts the longest-running Asian American public arts series in the U.S.
KAMAU DAAOOD
Kamau Daaood, poet, educator and community arts activist, is a native of Los Angeles. He is the Artistic Director of the World Stage in LA, which he founded with drum legend Billy Higgins. A former member of the Watts Writers Workshop, he is the subject of an award-winning documentary, and he honed his skills as a "word musician" in the Pan-African People's Arkestra.
ANTONIETA VILLAMIL
Antonieta Villamil is a bilingual Colombian-American poet. Author of +50 books of poetry in Spanish, her first book entirely written in English, ON THE RAPIDS IRRESISTIBLE, will be published in the spring of 2025. The Cervantes Institute of New York and Literacy Now awarded her the ILB AWA “International Latino Book Award Winning Author Best Book of Poetry in Spanish 2012” for SOLUNA EN BOSQUE encantos secretos de invocar el amor / SUNMOON INSIDE FOREST secret incantations to invoke love, and in Madrid Spain she won the “Premio de Poesía Gastón Baquero 2001” for CANTILADOS DEL SUEÑO / SEACLIFFS OF DREAM. Selected alongside Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Walt Whitman, among others, for the documentary "Voices In Wartime" by Andrew Himes and Rick King. Watch on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sxkI9Ix5as. She has been writing poetry in Spanish since 1972 (10 years old) and poetry in English since 1998. She gives us a cross-border intercultural experience of poetry on page and on stage-performance since 1998. She presents what she calls CantoLeo: she reads and sings in a mixture of voices and delights us with her poetry that plays with elements of her own mastery, on topics that also help the voices of those who suffer the most to be heard. Event request for book presentations, performance, poetry festivals, book fairs, write to: E-mail: antonietavillamil@gmail.com. / Blog: http://www.antonietavillamil.blogspot.com.
VIVA PADILLA
Viva Padilla is a first-generation Chicana poet, magazine editor, publisher, translator, writer, and bookstore owner born and raised in Los Angeles. She is the editor-in-chief of sin cesar, a literary magazine established in 2015 amplifying Black and Brown voices from our communities, and has produced the magazine and other titles at her bookstore Re/arte in the heart of Boyle Heights. She has been published in numerous publications including Alta, PANK, SAND (Berlin), and Carrajue de Pajaros (Chiapas). She has a chapbook out titled INSUMISA and lives in a former morgue with her son on the Eastside.
MATT SEDILLO
Matt Sedillo has been described as the "best political poet in America" as well as "the poet laureate of the struggle." His work has drawn comparisons in print to Bertolt Brecht, Roque Dalton, Amiri Baraka, Allen Ginsberg, Carl Sandburg and various other legends of the past. Sedillo was the recipient of the 2017 Joe Hill Labor Poetry award, a panelist at the 2020 Texas book festival, a participant in the 2012 San Francisco International Poetry Festival, the 2022 Elba Poetry Festival, and the recipient of the 2022 Dante's Laurel. Sedillo has appeared on CSPAN and has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Axios, the Associated Press among other publications. Sedillo has spoken at Casa de las Americas in Havana, Cuba, at numerous conferences and forums such as the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, the National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in American Higher Education, the National Association of Chicana/Chicano Studies, the Left Forum, the US Social Forum, and at over a hundred universities and colleges, including the University of Cambridge, among many others. Matt Sedillo is the author of Mowing Leaves of Grass (FlowerSong Press, 2019) and City on the Second Floor (FlowerSong Press, 2022). Both of which are taught at universities throughout the country. Sedillo is the current literary director of The Mexican Cultural Institute of Los Angeles.
