.....This year the board of the San Luis Obispo Poetry Festival, selected James Cushing from the nominees to be the 11th Annual Poet Laureate for the 25th Annual San Luis Obispo Poetry Festival and the city of San Luis Obispo for the year 2009. James Cushing holds a doctorate in English from the University of California at Irvine, and teaches literature and creative writing at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Formerly the director of the Al's Bar Poetry Series and a host of a live poetry program on KPFK-FM in Los Angeles, Cushing has published poetry and criticism in Antioch Review, Denver Quarterly, Negative Capability, and many other journals; he was the recipient of Renegade magazine's "Warlord of the Subculture" award in1994. Of his first book, You and the Night and the Music (Cahuenga Press, 1991, o.p.), W.S. Merwin praised its "evident intelligence, and depth and maturity of feeling." He has had two other books from Cahuenga Press The Length of an Afternoon (1999) and Undercurrent Blues (2005).
James will be proclaimed Poet Laureate for the 25th Annual San Luis Obispo Poetry Festival and the city of San Luis Obispo for the year 2009, on October 21st at 7:00pm in the City Council Chamber. Please join us.
James will kick off the 25th Annual San Luis Obispo Poetry Festival on Friday, November 7th at 7pm at the San Luis Obispo Art Center, where he will be reading with past Poet Laureate Dian Sousa.
