California State Poet Laureate, Dana Gioia, will bring his 58-county “On the Road” tour to San Bernardino County for a very special free community performance. The event will be held at the Garcia Center for the Arts in the city of San Bernardino on December 8th at 7pm.
Mr. Gioia (pronounced JOY-uh) was appointed as California’s Poet Laureate by Governor Jerry Brown in December, 2015, and serves as the state advocate for poetry and literature in libraries, classrooms and boardrooms across California. An award-winning poet, Gioia is the author of “Can Poetry Matter?”, which is credited for helping revive poetry’s role in American public life. He is also the former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts where he championed arts education. As state laureate, Gioia will work to inspire a new generation of writers and celebrate California’s great literary legacy.
“We’re so excited to have our state Poet Laureate, Dana Gioia, visit San Bernardino County! It will be an inspiration to all who attend—mark your calendars! He’ll be joined by poet and Cal State San Bernardino Professor, Juan Delgado, and San Bernardino County high school students who will be competing in Poetry Out Loud.” Said Arts Connection’s Executive Director, Danielle Giudici Wallis.
Dana Gioia is Poet Laureate of California. An internationally recognized poet and critic, he is the author of five collections of poetry, including Interrogations at Noon (2001), which won the American Book Award, and 99 Poems: New & Selected (2016). His critical collections include Can Poetry Matter? (1992), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. He has written three opera libretti and edited twenty literary anthologies. He served as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 to 2009. He has been awarded 11 honorary doctorates. He is the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California where he teaches each fall semester. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Sonoma County, California. His statewide tour as poet laureate became the subject of the BBC Radio 3 documentary, “Every County in the State of California.”