UC Santa Cruz Poetry Series: Filipino American Poets!!

UC Santa Cruz

POETRY SERIES
Humanities Lecture Hall
7:30 PM

April 9

Al Robles
Tony Robles
Jaime Jacinto

April 16

Shirley Ancheta
Jeff Tagami
Barbara Jane Reyes

The Critical Filipina/o Studies Research Cluster of the UCSC Center for Cultural Studies wishes to extend a special thanks to the Living Writers Series of the UCSC Creative Writing Program and the Asian American/ Pacific Islander Resource Center.

We also wish to thank Oakes College, Merrill College, Stevenson College, Cowell College, Kresge College, Colleges 9 and 10, and the departments of Sociology, Literature, HAVC, and History of Consciousness and the Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community for their generous sponsorship.

For parking information or directions, see our website at www.criticalfilipinas.org. For more information, email sherwin at ucsc dot edu.

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Addendum: Many, many years ago, I did a reading with Shirley Ancheta, Jaime Jacinto, Jeff Tagami, and I don’t remember who else, but I do remember it took place in the Chinese Cultural Center in the Hilton Hotel on the edge of San Francisco Chinatown, overlooking the then hole in the ground which is now the Manilatown Center.

An elder poet named Stanley Garibay, who was in his 90’s at the time, was supposed to read as the feature poet. This reading was supposed to be a “bridge” between generations reading, with me as the emerging young unpublished poet in the group, and I think this old Kearny Street Workshop newsletter from 1999 (pdf) has that poetry reading info in it. For some reason it feels like the reading I am thinking of took place before 1999, but who knows. I am getting old in the local Filipino American poetry scene.

The newsletter also contains some biographical info on Manong Stanley, including some of his own words on his friendship with Carlos Bulosan, whom Manong Stanley called “Carl.”

Manong Stanley ended up not able to make it to the reading. He was so excited about the reading that his heart went crazy; he experienced palpitations which sent him to the ER, and we ended up doing the reading without him. I never did hear his work or meet him.