Poetry at Kearny Street Workshop
Poetry is an integral and important part of Kearny Street Workshop’s mission. Since our inception, poetry has imagined a stronger future for Asian Pacific American communities in the SF Bay Area. We are the premiere home for Asian Pacific American poets on the West Coast. As an organization focusing on APA communities and supporting the diverse tapestry of voices in the SF Bay Area, we understand the unique position poetry holds in activism, community-building, creating meaning, and transforming society. As an organization, our programming is led by poetry vis-a-vis our Co-Executive Directors and dedicated Program staff: all poets who uplift poetry as a key means to how art gets us free.
Title
Asian American poetry reading
Creator
Loo, Jack, creator
Contributor
Loo, Jack, creator
Date Created and/or Issued
1976
Contributing Institution:
UC Santa Barbara, Special Research Collections
KSW Origins
Kearny Street Workshop was one of several community arts workshops which formed in the wake of the 1968 Third World Liberation Strike for ethnic studies at SF State. During the strike, spontaneous silkscreen workshops flooded the campus with posters; when the strike was won, they took root in the community. Poster workshop participants Jim Dong and Mike Chin joined with photographer and garment worker Lora Jo Foo to open Kearny Street Workshop in Chinatown in 1972. Initially a graphics workshop teaching silkscreen and printing community posters, KSW rapidly grew into a multidisciplinary arts center with a gallery, a poetry workshop, and a diverse program of classes. As activists and workers engaged in the immediate struggles of their community, KSW artists defined the political, proletarian aesthetic of the Asian American Movement.
Poetry programming
KSW’s programming provides Asian Pacific American (APA) poets opportunities to grow throughout the trajectory of their careers by:
-hosting workshops to hone skills and learn from award-winning poets of color;
-creating retreats and safe spaces for poets to build community and heal;
-integrating poetry with activism, performance, visual art, new media and other genres through our multidisciplinary programs and intergenerational influences;
-and by offering APA poets opportunities to connect with mentorship and new and growing audiences through public showcases, readings, and presentations.
Recent poetry events include:
KSW Presents “We Gathered the Heat: Asian American and Pacific Islander Poetry, Performance, and Spoken Word” Edited by Franny Choi, Bao Phi, Noʻu Revilla, and Terisa Siagatonu
Title:
Angel Island, an exhibition of the Chinese experience at the immigration station
Creator/Contributor:
Wong, Leland, creator
Date:
1976
Contributing Institution:
UC Santa Barbara, Special Research Collections
Angel Island
From 1910 to 1940, the United States detained Asian immigrants at the Angel Island Immigration Station to enforce the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which was not repealed until 1943. In 1970, Chinese and Japanese writing was discovered carved into the walls under layers of paint: poems written by detainees during periods of incarceration often spanning months. Asian Americans suddenly had a bridge to a lost history, a history of poets no less. Angel Island and its poetry inspired numerous exhibitions, books, art installations, and other projects. Kearny Street Workshop mounted an exhibition of the Chinese experience at Angel Island Immigration Station in 1976 which drew large crowds and inspired testimonies from former detainees. Their recorded stories, collected in books like Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940, rescued this chapter of people’s history from oblivion.