Poets Go On Road to Coronado: Immigrant Hearts Out Loud

Michael Sedano

Half a decade's work organizing the San Diego Writers Festival culminated this Solar Eclipse weekend with the Fifth Annual one-day tent city and classroom presentations on the beauteous Cornado High School campus across the bay from the eighth-largest city in the United States.

San Diego California Skyline from Coronado Island

I look for next year's Fest to grow. There appears to be an active literary community in the region, and a core group of volunteers put on the event. Together, these factors give the festival prospects of a long career.

foto: Alicia Viguer-Espert

A lively tianguis of libros and plática comprised of thirty-six vendors--writers, consultants, publishers--welcomed hundreds of visitors who thronged through the warren of tents. In a marketing stroke of genius, organizers invited registrants (free) to play a tent city game to win an array of prizes including a weekend stay in a fancy resort. The game ensures every booth an equal opportunity to talk to people wanting a tent city game-card stamp. Vendors selling stuff, and making a sale, double-stamped the card.

Commercial marketing aside, the Festival asks a pair of key questions, which drew La Bloga and a panel of poets to Coronado Island on a perfect Spring day:

At the San Diego Writers Festival, we ask two important questions: What if there was a place where all stories could be nurtured and heard? What if we opened up our community to stories from those who have been under-served, disenfranchised, or neglected?

The panel of poets, organized and moderated by Altadena Poet Laureate Emerita, Thelma T. Reyna, conduct an intimate discussion of circumstances bringing each writer to the table today. Writing from Our Immigrant Hearts offers insight into a broader conception of what it means to be a poet and immigrant.

Moderator Reyna opens the panel disputing a reflexive thought common to many people that "immigrant" means destitute Mexicans. 

Writing from Our Immigrant Hearts panelists whose origins include Italy, Venezuela, and Spain, come from middle-class, professional backgrounds. A December presentation included panelist Teresa Mei Chuc, from Vietnam.

On Saturday, each woman's story shares general outlines. Each followed a man in his career to the United States. Now, each lives independently writing lyric or memoir poetry about nature, emotion, and every subject commonly read in U.S. poetry, including but not principally, identity and the immigrant experience.

A chemistry classroom decorated with the Periodic Table of Elements to emphasize natural diversity, has a small audience. It's the single damper on a joyous enthusiastic hour. 

Clearly, festival organizers need to Up their marketing game, because this eloquent and intimate presentation perfectly answers those two "What ifs?" that are said to be a raison d'etre for the festival. 

Perhaps, being so close to Tijuana, Mexico, BCN, the organizers, like Reyna points out, hear "Immigrant" and think destitute Mexicans. The panel and panelists get no coverage in festival literature. I suggest organizers invite back this panel and next year give it the focus the festival's publicity avers motivates the Festival's existence.

Each panelist responds to the Moderator's provocative questions exploring biography, departure, arrival, adapting to language and custom, finding comfort and poetry as American writers. 

Three key Moderator probes generate energetic discussion that leads to abbreviated readings of their own work. By the time the readings begin, audiences have gleaned intimate details of a poet's journey through marriage, divorce, mental health, membership in one's cultures. The panel's focus is not on the readings per se but more so on the impetus and inspirations that characterize a poet's focus. Immigration informs but a single rhetorical motive in the complexities of these poets' imagination.

Thelma Reyna and the panelists recognize the value and importance of hearing these insights and are working to bring the experience to audiences across the Southern California regions. Writing From Our Immigrant Hearts is an important cultural and artistic event. The panel comes together again in a Burbank presention later this Spring, and subsequent presentations through the Summer months. La Bloga will update the new presentations  as invitations firm up.

You can read samples of the Panelists' work at this link. Mejor, be sure to buy a copy of the In-Press Altadena Poetry Review Anthology 2024 (link), Edited by Altadena Co-Poet Laureate Peter J. Harris. The book will be released in a few weeks. Each of the panel's poets has work in the upcoming magnum opus of Southern California poetry. La Bloga will be reporting on the release, and reviewing the collection.