By Brian Dunlap

The first annual Sims Library of Poetry Bookfair took place on November 20. Authors and presses set up shop in the library’s courtyard selling books, selling poetry, making connections and building community. Promoting the most important aspects of literature: what makes us human; telling our own truths, our own narratives; bluntly speaking truth to power.

World Stage Press, Vagabond, FlowerSong, Tia Chucha’s and Nomadic Press, promoted their authors and the work they do. World Stage promoted the creation and proliferation of African American Literature. FlowerSong promoted “essential verse from, about, and through the borderlands,” as their website says, with a Latinx bent. Tia Chucha focuses on socially engaged poetry and literature, highlighting the marginalized. Vagabond publishes the political. And Bay Area publisher Nomadic Press, believes in supporting local, emerging and established authors, while building community among artists across disciplines.

Authors promoted themselves and their books. Nurse and author Alex Petunia typed poems on demand, the tick of typewriter keys ever present. My computer displayed my website, showing a venue where people can receive the news, information and history of L.Á.’s literary community. Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl shared her story, her voice, despite her speech impediment, spasmodic dysphonia, that is characterized by a spasming of the vocal chords when a person attempts to speak and results in a voice that can be described as shaky, hoarse, groaning, tight, or jittery.

Importantly, everyone was masked up.

The Bookfair began slow, authors and presses both introducing and reintroducing themselves. Some people had not seen each other since before the pandemic. Once such writer I had not seen since 2019 was Mark Lipman, founder and publisher of Vagabond, an activist and writer publishing work that questions and pushes back against the societal and political status quo. Lipman asks, what are the possibilities to create a system that places the needs and interests of people over those of the corporations? Another poet promoting themselves was Jean-Pierre Rueda who had recently published the poetry collection Herencias. Most of the poems are written in Spanish, a decision he made after he had completed the manuscript, feeling guilty he hadn’t used more of his mother tongue, so the poems would be more authentic and so these poems about family and identity, could be read by his immigrant family, such as his grandmother.

Attendees began to arrive in earnest once the featured poets took the mic. Alex Petunia read self-care poems. Writing such poems and working on her book over the last year, she said, helped her survive work during the worst of the pandemic. Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl read a powerful, empowering poem about the struggles she faces with her speech impediment and how she won’t let it hold her back. Another poet, Lizbeth Coiman, read moving personal-political poems about her native country of Venezuela, written from a place of honest love.

Then, the Bookfair’s special guest threw down stark, brutal truths about the racist United States, from his reality as a Black man, saying the United States was never meant for people like himself. Reading last, San Francisco Poet Laureate, Tongo Eisen-Martin, blew everyone away into a brief heavy, contemplative silence of agreement, after he spit four poems into one, like the best spoken word artists.

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The Bookfair was not yet over. The day’s musical entertainment Latiniti, had yet to perform, featuring poet and musician, Juan Cardenas on flute. Open mic readers were still waiting for their turn at the mic. Library founder and Executive Director, poet and professor, Hiram Sims, still awaited his turn to read a poem and relaunch the library’s The 44 Campaign on Patreon. This fundraising membership campaign is aimed to provide funds to support the maintenance of and to pay the bills for, the library, as well as fund events, pay and hire more library staff and extend the library’s reach in the community.

It was Karo Ska, the Bookfair’s host and the library’s manager, that kept the Bookfair well structured, even if a bit behind schedule. She MC’d the readers, speakers and musical entertainment, among other duties that Hiram Sims deferred to her on.

However, no one cared that the event was running long. Writers and the public alike were too busy connecting on a human level. Too full of joy for in-person connections.