Performance: Kim Shuck's Poem Jam

San Francisco Poet Laureate emerita Kim Shuck invites Paul Corman-Roberts, Alexandra Kostoulas, Elana Aoyama and Kelliane Parker to SFPL’s monthly poetry reading. These acclaimed poets explore the theme of "Hysteria" in the infinite negotiation for stable mental terrain in all of our lives. 

Kim Shuck was San Francisco’s seventh Poet Laureate. Her poetry draws on her multiethnic background which includes Polish and Cherokee heritage, and her experiences as a lifelong resident of San Francisco. Her most recent book of poetry, Exile Heart, was published in 2021 by That Painted Horse Press. In her term as Poet Laureate, she hosted scores of free poetry and art workshops for all ages at neighborhood libraries and schools and worked closely with San Francisco Public Library and the San Francisco Arts Commission to launch major citywide initiatives to honor Native American Indigenous People’s heritage.

Paul Corman-Roberts is the author of the full-length poetry collection Bone Moon Palace from Nomadic Press (2021.) An original founder and organizer of the Beast Crawl, he currently teaches workshops for the Older Writer’s Lab in conjunction with SFPL, the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute and the Oakland Unified School District. He sometimes fills in as a drummer for the U.S. Ghostal Service, but mostly he is just exhausted.

Connect: Bone Moon Palace – Website | We Shoot Typewriters – Website

Alexandra Kostoulas is a Greek-American writer of poetry, fiction and journalism and the founder and executive director of the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute. She has read and performed her work at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York, the Melbourne Fringe Festival in Australia, Litquake, Beyond Baroque and Beastcrawl. Her blog turned performance series Dispatches from Quarantine won the 2022-23 California Arts Council Local Impact Award. Her poetry collection Becoming Athena is forthcoming, as is her novel Persephone Stolen, which weaves together mythology, immigrant stories and stolen artifacts. Alexandra Kostoulas writes articles on creativity and the creative process in the SF Creative Writing Institute newsletter and on Medium.

Connect: Alexandra Kostoulas – Website | Alexandra Kostoulas on Medium – Website | SF Creative Writing Institute Newsletter – Website

Elana Aoyama began writing poetry in high school and continued at UC Santa Cruz. After college, she worked at memoir writing until she joined the Older Writers Lab and worked closely with the poet Genevieve Yuen. Elana Aoyama’s poem “Arid,” set in the Bay Area, was read by San Francisco’s 4th Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman at the Poet’s 11 Series, and her poem “Ladders” was selected by San Francisco’s 7th Poet Laureate Kim Shuck for SFPL’s Poem of the Day exhibit. Elana Aoyama’s poems focus on coping and living with severe fibromyalgia, anxiety and connective tissue disease, as well as with shifting relationships. Notice the Lines (Redwood Curtain Publications, 2022) is her first full-length collection of poems. The author lives in Cole Valley in San Francisco near her mother and daughter.

Kelliane Parker is a queer, Latinx poet living with dissociative identity disorder. She is the author of Down the Foggy Streets of my Mind (Nomadic Press), which chronicles her healing journey as a survivor of sexual and physical violence. She is a regular Bay Area presenter and has been published in numerous anthologies including, Light on the Walls of Life: A Tribute Anthology to Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Colossus: Home.

Connect: Kelliane Parker – Facebook | Kelliane Parker – Website