Poets Kim Shuck and Caroline Goodwin -- ONSITE at Mechanics' Institute
A Conversation between two poets

Proof of vaccination and masks are required for this event.

Join us for a lively discussion of poetry, essays, and the roots of creativity in life and in history.

Two poet laureates come together to read poetry and celebrate the spoken word at Mechanics' Institute; Kim Shuck, the Seventh Poet Laureate of San Francisco, and Caroline Goodwin, the First Poet Laureate of San Mateo County. Join us for a lively discussion of poetry, essays, and the roots of creativity in life and in history.

Kim Shuck, the seventh poet laureate of San Francisco, is a fifth-generation resident of the city. She’s also a community activist, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and an accomplished visual artist whose beadwork has been exhibited across the U.S. The author of seven collections of poems, including 2019’s Deer Trails, Shuck is known for spare, accessible lines that reference nature and, often, San Francisco’s indigenous roots.

Kim Shuck's latest book is Noodle, Rant, Tangent, a new collection of never-before-published essays. Old fans and new readers will love this volume which contains thirty essays whose subjects range from everyday life in San Francisco to the concerns of modern Native Americans.

Caroline Goodwin moved to the Bay Area in 1999 to attend Stanford as a Wallace Stegner fellow in poetry. Her recent books are Madrigals (Big Yes Press, 2021), Matanuska (Aquifer Press, Wales, UK, 2022) and Old Snow, White Sun (JackLeg Press, 2021). From 2014 - 16 she served as the first Poet Laureate of San Mateo County; she teaches at Stanford Continuing Studies, UC Berkeley Extension, and California College of the Arts.

“The poems in Madrigals are always lucid, but the experiences are mysterious and complex. Because of this, sometimes the “not understanding” mentioned in “Rules Written After” is what we live with. The speaker does, and the poems come from where she has been, what she has seen and felt. She sounds like herself, only. To read these poems is to be rewarded.” Peter Mladinic, The Coachella Review