(Second Tuesdays)

Sharing works that delight, provoke, inspire and rouse, the monthly Poetic Tuesdays series runs from May through October, turning lunchtime into an oasis of creative expression. Lighting up Jessie Square with a fabulously curated line-up of poets and musicians, Poetic Tuesdays offer a vivifying midday breather for neighborhood groups, students, office workers on break and out-of-towners looking for respite from The City’s hustle and bustle.

Curator Nia McAllister is an award-winning poet, writer, and environmental justice advocate working at the intersection of art, activism, and public engagement. As Senior Public Programs Manager at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco, Nia creates participatory spaces for creative expression and literary dialogue. Nia’s writing and poetry have been featured on Poets of Color Podcast, Bay Poets | KALW Public Media, and published in Doek! Literary Magazine, Radicle Magazine, Meridians Journal and Painting the Streets: Oakland Uprising in the Time of Rebellion (Nomadic Press, 2022). She is a recipient of the 2023 San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Awards.

About the Artists

Isaiah Mostafa is a Bay Area native and Brooklyn-based musician who calls his sultry, heavenly, and haunting approach to contemporary R&B “Music to stretch to”. In 2021, Mostafa’s production skills lead him to score Disney Pixar’s, Twenty Something. This year, Isaiah’s focused on releasing a new song every week for 37 weeks in a row as part of his original series, “The 37 Week Challenge (Vol. 2)” Isaiah’s rapid cadences and lyrical wit concrete his role as a master MC, yet his vocal range and production classify him as a genre-agnostic force to be reckoned with.

Sylvia L. Blalock is the author of Uprising: A book of Poetry and the founder of Queendom.Network. She has been featured on open mics both online and in person around the Bay Area. She was the commissioned artist for the UC Berkeley 39th Annual Empowering Womxn Of Color Conference in March 2024. She has been a featured poet at the Pi Day celebration at the Exploratorium from 2022-2024. She designed the graphics for “The SquareRoot of ARTivism” project with KyleeliseTHT in memory of her dear friend, the late John Sims. Sylvia is also a public speaker and mentor. Sylvia Blalock is extending the reach of the  poetry, art and fellowship through collaboration with local organizations as well as through promotion on her websites, www.queendom.network, www.voicesthatcarry.org , www.sblalock.com and on Facebook. Her vision is to use poetry and art to counterprogram negative rhetoric.

LadiRevolutionary (LadiRev) is an educator/spoken word artist from Bayview Hunters Point. Her poetry is a reflection of personal growth along with values learned from family and community. LadiRev is passionate about community, education and healing. She is the host of Talkn Owt Da Side of Da Necc Podcast, which focuses on individual healing practices. She is set to release her first book, Heal, in 2023. “It only takes one person to make a stand but it takes a community to make a change.”

Niambi Walker is a black, queer, writer from Atlanta, Georgia. She is the author of “Accidentally Ordered and Espresso”, has featured and championed several poetry spaces and was a member of the 2023 Berkeley Poetry Slam Team. You can find them loud in the back cheering on all the poets at your local slams, or grooving on any dancefloor she can find.

Dāshaun Washington is a poet living in San Francisco and a 2023-2025 Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. His work has been supported by Yaddo, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Lighthouse Works, Ucross Foundation, The Watering Hole and beyond. His poems have appeared in New England Review, Poetry, The Nation, Poem-a-Day, American Poetry Review and elsewhere.

Co-Presented by: