SAN JOSE CENTER FOR POETRY AND LITERATURE

Poetry Center San José’s mission is to nurture and promote diverse literary expression in the community as a means of exploring, defining, and enriching the human experience. PCSJ is located at Edwin Markham House, a historical San José landmark at History Park San José. Programming includes "San José Poetry Festival" as well as multiple readings every month: "Well-RED Reading Series" at Works/San José, "San José Poetry Slam" at Tabard Theatre, "Beautiful Black Books", "Bauchhaar" and "Third Thursdays" at Willow Glen Public Library.

Beautiful Black Books highlights and celebrates Black authors in our communities in conversation with Santa Clara County Poet Laureate Tshaka Campbell, broadcast via Zoom every third Saturday. Often, artists get the opportunity to present their work, but seldom are allotted the time to share who they are as individuals and what motivates them to produce their work. As such, the aim of the program is to bring black writers to our communities and our communities to these writers to learn about their sources of inspiration and the experiences that were formative in their development as an artist and the factors that informed the book(s) being showcased.

Bauchhaar is a theme based literary reading series in Hindi. Multiple guests are featured together representing various communities in USA, UK and India to discuss a given theme. This program takes place in-person, every other month on the fourth Saturday.

Free monthly creative writing workshops include our outreach program "Veterans of life Write" for veterans and their family members every first Friday at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library and "Poets@Play" every third Sunday at Markham House. Poetry Center San José also sponsors the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize, a collaboration with De Anza College.

PCSJ also supports young talent with its "Santa Clara County Youth Poet Laureate" program
nurturing the exploration of poetry by our high-school age youth. The Laureate and Vice-Laureate serve a one-year term as ambassadors for civic engagement, literary excellence and social justice through literacy, arts and youth expression with opportunities for performances and community collaborations. Both receive scholarships. The program offers four free creative writing workshops for students and also a free public speaking workshop along with one-on-one coaching sessions between January and May.

PCSJ also publishes Cæsura, a literary review for San José and Bay Area poets and visual artists to reach a national audience. This publication project is staffed by PCSJ volunteers who gain hands-on experience in editing, book design, and formatting of a professional-quality publication. Volunteers have leveraged acquired skills to secure professional positions and career advancement.