Poetry Reading featuring Kim Shuck and Lourdes Figueroa

Hosted by Livermore Poet Laureate Peggy Schimmelman, this Verse on the Vine program at the Civic Center Library featured poets Kim Shuck and Lourdes Figueroa. An open mic followed the formal presentations by the featured poets.
About the featured poets:
Kim Shuck was born in San Francisco and is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She is a poet, weaver and beadwork artist who draws from Southeastern Native American culture and tradition as well as contemporary urban Indian life. She served for over three years as the seventh Poet Laureate of San Francisco and has been a major poet and poetry organizer in the Bay Area since the early 2000s. Her work is published in major journals and in eight solo poetry books.
Lourdes Figueroa is an oral Chicanx queer poet. Her poems are a dialogue of her lived experience when her family worked in el azadón in Yolo County (the work of tilling the soil under the blistering sun.) She is the author of the chapbooks Ruidos = To Learn Speak and Vuelta. Lourdes is a recipient of the Nomadic Press Literary award in Poetry. Her poem Pieces was nominated for a Pushcart prize 2022 by Quiet Lightning.