Poetry as Revolution: San Francisco Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin

San Francisco native son Tongo Eisen-Martin is a frontline educator and activist who uses his voice to explode the status quo, resist, organize and raise consciousness. In dreamy, mystic jazz-like poetry, both piercing and uplifting, he confronts gentrification, urban decay, mass incarceration and violence against black people by the state. An essential voice of our time, he has taught in prisons across the United States as well as the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University. His work has received the American Book Award, California Book Award, and the National California Booksellers Association Poetry Book of the Year.