Poetry and Music in the Garden

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June 3, 12pm-2pm at the Alan Chadwick Garden

Enjoy the beauty of early summer in the historic Alan Chadwick Garden at UC Santa Cruz with poetry and music from some of the region’s most talented artists. The event is free and open to the public (registration required). Featured poets this year are Farnaz Fatemi, Aideed Medina, Jennifer Ruby, Michael Hannon, and Lee Perron. World music by Paul and Emily Rangell.

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Presented by the UC Santa Cruz Center for Agroecology and the Friends of the UCSC Farm & Garden.


    Meet the Poets

  • Farnaz Fatemi

    Farnaz Fatemi

    Farnaz Fatemi, an Iranian American poet and writer, and current Santa Cruz County Poet Laureate, is a founding member of The Hive Poetry Collective. She was formerly a writing instructor at UC Santa Cruz. Her book, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر, was published in September 2022. It won the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith, is a finalist for the Foreword Indies, and received a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly. Some of her poems and lyric essays appear in Poem-a-Day (Poets.org), Tab Journal, Pedestal Review, Nowruz Journal, Grist Journal and Tupelo Quarterly. More at farnazfatemi.com

  • Aideed Medina

    Aideed Medina

    Aideed Medina is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, award winning spoken word artist and a playwright. She is a California Naturalist, and practices “flor y canto" as part of her poetic process and exploration of California’s natural history. Her work has appeared in Fresno State's Club Austral Literary Magazine, Chicano Writers and Artists Association Journal, La Bloga, Poets Responding, Art of the Commune, Split This Rock, Nueva York Poetry Review, Di-Liio Revista Literaria, Artivista Anthology, as part of a collection of original art songs composed for The Opera Remix, Fresno Grand Opera, and co-writer of Eclectic Collective plays: Encounter Intuitive and Artista Invisible. She is the author of 31 Hummingbird by Xingao Press and a forthcoming full-length poetry collection, Segmented Bodies, from Prickly Pear Press.
  • Michael Hannon

    Michael Hannon

    Michael Hannon has been writing and publishing poetry for 61 years. His work has appeared in journals and anthologies here and abroad. Much of his work has been published by California's leading book artists in limited editions. Michael's 30-year collaboration with the artist William T. Wiley has produced books, sculptures and numerous gallery and museum shows. He is the author of 35 poetry titles, including six full-length poetry collections: Three of Michael's books are currently available on Amazon: Imaginary Burden Selected Poems, Who On Earth New Poems, The Muse Turns Her Back.
  • Lee Perron

    Lee Perron

    Lee Perron lives in Santa Rosa where he has hiked and written poems for 40 years. More generally known for his chapbooks, in 2009 after ten years of research he produced his first full-length tome, a scholarly bibliography of the book publications of the great San Francisco poet Kenneth Rexroth. His own book publications may be found on the ABEBooks website under these titles: Celtic Light; Leaves of Hypnos; 14 Poems of Transparence; and The White Bones of the Year Are Scattered Among Jonquils. He'll be reading from Fog Along the Russian River, a work in progress.
  • Jennifer Ruby

    Jennifer Ruby

    Jennifer Ruby is a poet living in the Santa Cruz mountains. She earned her MFA in poetry from San Diego State University, where she taught composition and creative writing. Her poetry has appeared in the Sugar House Review, Porter Gulch Review, the PEN Center USA anthology of post-election poems entitled “Only Light Can Do That,” “A Year In Ink,” published by San Diego Writer’s Ink, and Madwoman, Etc. She serves as a contributing editor for the journal Harpy Hybrid Review and has performed with San Francisco-based poetry organization, Red Light Lit. A long time high school English teacher, she is an enthusiastic novice surfer and an avid hiker. She believes that poetry is a way of moving through the world and her current project is a poetry manuscript about resilience in the face of life's considerable challenges, both personal and global. 

  • Emily Abbink & Paul Rangel

    Emily Abbink & Paul Rangel

    Emily Abbink & Paul Rangell play social music from the old world and new. They perform ballo lascio tunes brought by Italian immigrants to San Francisco, along with the traditional music gleaned from Southwestern fiddlers in New Mexico and the Tohono O’odham Nation. The duo performs weekly on mandolin/violin and guitar in farmers markets, restaurants, cafes, and breweries, in Santa Cruz, CA. They also sharpen their trade with their two sons in the Rhythm Rangellers, a fiddle based band specializing in jigs, stomps, waltzes and bustdowns from New Mexico, Ireland, the American south, Arizona desert, and California. Paul & Emily are founding members of the infamous roots band, Bayou Seco, and have performed in Italy, Canada, France, England, Burma and Hawaii. In 2015 and 2018 they enjoyed residencies in Italy to seek and learn traditional dance music. You can find their recordings, Tuesday Nights and Noche Azul, on their website. www.rhythmrangellers.com