Poet and educator Jason Magabo Perez will soon conclude his two-year term as the city of San Diego's official poet laureate.
When he was appointed in 2023, he kicked off his tenure by reading from his poem, "We Draft Work Songs for the City," at the mayor's State of the City Address on Jan. 11, 2023.
It was a powerful moment — for poetry, for storytelling and for those street corners throughout San Diego where workers, immigrants, elders and communities come together. Perez's poetry is deeply rooted in place, identity, memory and an indelible appreciation of home.
He sees poetry as an accessible and essential art form. But community expression and growth hinge on planting and nurturing the seeds of creativity — something he has spent his term as poet laureate fostering.
"I'm a community organizer. I know it takes a lot of time to build relationships, to build trust, to build reciprocity, to build cultures of accountability," Perez said.
One of his major initiatives as poet laureate was San Diego Poetry Futures 2024 (SDPF24), a multi-tiered approach to exploring the possibilities for poetry and shared expression throughout the region using education, youth outreach, public projects and literary programming.
SDPF24 Coda, A Poetry Festival
11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 14
UC San Diego Cross-Cultural Center
9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla
Free
Festival schedule
To officially mark the end of his laureateship, Perez is leaning into community building and nurturing by hosting a jam-packed poetry festival at UC San Diego's Cross-Cultural Center. "SDPF24 Coda, A Poetry Festival" will feature discussions, creative writing workshops and readings from more than 30 poets, including Kelsey O. Daniels, former San Diego Poet Laureate Ron Salisbury, California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick, Karla Cordero, Gill Sotu, Manuel Paul López and Ant Black.
The festival will also include a book fair featuring local presses and literary organizations, along with a zine-making lab facilitated by Hello Barkada.
While the festival is a "coda" — a musical term for a finale or concluding stanza — Perez views it more as a beginning.
"The spirit is one of collaboration," he said. "Yes, it's about spotlighting and giving poets love and spotlighting our local artists, but I'm hoping it's another space where we convene and we dream and we plant more seeds and think, ‘Oh, we can do this on this scale, or we can continue to do this.’"
"We Draft Work Songs for the City"
Here is a parable,
a prayer, perhaps,
for those unmapped;
Here are new students
considering new lives,
new interrogations, new
footnotes, but no new
friendships, no news. None.
Still, the problem of loans.
Still, the problem of rent.
Still, the problem of property.
This alley off University is
a gallery of abandoned mattresses
Stacked against limp wire fencing that
leans against wood panels that
shade the driveway where the
unmapped fall asleep.
Ancestral spirits are
no less spectacle than
principled remembrance:
The craft of this tissue
we often call ourselves.
— Jason Magabo Perez, "I ask about what falls away"
