Friday, November 8

Passing Through: an evening of poems and music inspired by, loved by, and left behind by Leonard Cohen

Featuring: Genny Lim, Alejandro Murguia, Tess Taylor, Gregory Pond, Conspiracy of Venus, Ruby Lee Hill, Middle Harbor Songbirds, Slow Yoda

Genny Lim

Genny Lim is the 9 th San Francisco Poet Laureate and former San Francisco Jazz Poet Laureate. She was also a former SF Arts Commissioner and a recipient of the Spirit of Angel Island Award given by the Angel Island Immigration Foundation for translating the poems of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island in the American Book Award winning work, Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, co-authored with Him Mark Lai and Judy Yung. Her play, Paper Angels, was the first Asian American play to air on PBS’s American Playhouse in 1985. Lim has received the PEN Oakland Reginald Lockett and Berkeley Poetry Lifetime Achievement Awards. She is the author of several poetry collections, Child of War, Paper Gods & Rebels and KRA!

Conspiracy of Venus

Conspiracy of Venus is a vocal ensemble based in San Francisco that sings the words and music of artists we love in arrangements by our director, Joyce Todd McBride.

Since our formation in 2007 as the sister group to Conspiracy of Beards, we have delighted sold-out crowds at many San Francisco venues, including The Great American Music Hall, The Palace of Fine Arts, The Independent, The Swedish American Hall, The Rickshaw Stop, The Make-Out Room, West Coast Live, SF International Arts Festival, Undercover Presents, The Lost Church, Old First Concerts, The Uptown, Doc's Lab, Starry Plough, The Rite Spot, and more. In spring of 2012, we participated in the San Francisco Music Video Race, and we toured to New York City in 2016 and 2018.

Alejandro Murguía

Alejandro Murguía is the author of Southern Front and This War Called Love (both winners of the American Book Award). His non-fiction book The Medicine of Memory highlights the Mission District in the 1970s during the Nicaraguan Solidarity movement. He is a founding member and the first director of The Mission Cultural Center. He was a founder of The Roque Dalton Cultural Brigade, and co-editor of Volcán: Poetry From Central America. Currently he is a professor in Latina Latino Studies at San Francisco State University. He is the author of the short story “The Other Barrio” which first appeared in the anthology San Francisco Noir and recently filmed in the street of the Mission District. In poetry he has published Spare Poems, and this year a new collection Native Tongue. He is the Sixth San Francisco Poet Laureate and the first Latino poet to hold the position.

Ruby Lee Hill

Growing up between the shores of South Carolina and the peaks of North Carolina, Ruby Lee Hill embodies the essence of traditional Americana and the timeless allure of classic country music. With her weathered Martin guitar cradled in her hands and a harmonica resting upon her neck, she effortlessly transitions between folk, swing, and even Spanish tunes, transporting listeners to lands south of the border. Ruby's rich, soulful voice sets her apart, infusing her original songs with raw emotion and undeniable depth. Now rooted in the Bay Area, she recently recorded her debut album at Tiny Telephone Oakland, with her first single already making waves on streaming platforms like Spotify.

https://rubyleehill.com/

Middle Harbor Songbirds

United by a love of heady chords and heartfelt lyrics, Bay Area musicians Brendan Schwarz and Joshua James Jackson present a familiar songbook of intricate compositions from the 60’s, 70’s and beyond. From Yacht Rock to the British Invasion to country classics, the Middle Harbor Songbirds’ creative and often unconventional arrangements bring something for every listener.

Tess Taylor

Tess Taylor’s work deals with place, ecology, memory, and cultural reckoning. She has published five celebrated poetry collections: The Misremembered World, The Forage House, Last West: Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange, and Rift Zone, one of the Boston Globe’s best books of 2020. Her book Work & Days was one of the NY Times' best poetry books of 2016. In the fall of 2023, she published the anthology Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens and the Hands that Tend Them, a collection of contemporary gardening poems for an era of climate change. From 2024 to 2025, she will serve as an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow in her role as Poet Laureate of El Cerrito, California. A former Distinguished US Fulbright Teaching Fellow to the UK, she has received awards from MacDowell, Headlands Center for the Arts and other venues. She has taught at UC Berkeley, Whittier College, Boston University, and Simon’s Rock. The host of Season Two of Intimate Addresses, a Getty Museum Podcast, she now teaches privately and on the faculty of Ashland University’s low-residency MFA creative writing program. She gardens and raises chickens in El Cerrito, California.