Jason Magabo Perez wears many hats: educator, organizer, performer, artist. But before all else, Perez considers himself a member of the community.
“That's sort of always been a through line in my work, whether I'm acting or working as professor at the university, or I'm doing a free poetry writing, poetry making workshop at the local library,” he said.
Perez is the city of San Diego’s second-ever poet laureate, where he currently serves as an ambassador for poetry and the literary arts throughout the region.
As his two-year term nears a close, Perez reflects on his mission of creating space for more poetry and engaging the community in the arts.
Perhaps Perez’s most significant initiative as laureate is San Diego Poetry Futures. Launched in March, it encompasses various programs, including literary events, youth outreach, educational opportunities and public projects — all facilitated by Perez.
Part of the initiative brings poetry into the community in unconventional ways, including a poetry workshop on the trolley. In June, Perez collaborated with student filmmakers from Reel Voices, an eight-week summer program run by the media arts organization Pacific Arts Movement.
It’s one example of how Perez continues to introduce young people to poetry as a tool for self-expression.
“Poetry belongs to no one or no institution. It belongs to no university, no library or anything like that. Poetry is a people's art. It belongs to us,” Perez said.
He has high hopes for the future of literary arts in San Diego, including a brick-and-mortar space dedicated to poetry.
“There is a deep history of the poetry community in San Diego,” Perez said. “And I want to hopefully help in the efforts to build something where we have a center devoted to poetry, where youth can come, seniors can come, adults can come. All ages can come.”
Outside of his poet laureate work, Perez continues to publish his own writing. His latest poetry book, “I ask about what falls away,” was written at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Inspired by Filipino scholar Neferti X. M. Tadiar’s book, “Things Fall Away,” Perez calls his book both “a love letter and grief letter to San Diego.” He unravels his sorrow for family and the realities of living under racial capitalism amid a global health crisis.
Perez describes the writing process as painful, with much of the book drafted in fragments — whether while waiting for a vaccination appointment at CVS or after long phone calls with friends.
“I would sort of piece it together all with this idea that this was the language that I had to make sense of the landscape that I happened to be in,” he said.
Filipino American identity and history are also central themes in Perez’s work.
When asked about the importance of the literary arts to Filipino culture, he emphasizes that literature and poetry helped him understand what it means to be Filipino American.
“I think Filipinos are a people of the story, of storytelling, of language and of music,” Perez said. “It is a natural pairing to think about Filipino American History Month — to celebrate it, to honor our struggles, to honor what we've been able to do in this world — by honoring the very literature that tries to capture that,” Perez said.
As an educator, Perez has taught many students about Filipinos’ resilient history in the United States, including their role in the 1960s farmworkers’ movement.
He recalls a student reading a poem by Filipino American novelist Carlos Bulosan and feeling represented for the first time.
“It starts to help us really understand, really explain and understand our families a little bit better, our communities a little bit better, reasons for why we ended up here in the first place a little bit better, and reasons for why folks have divisions that they have about how we can gather as community,” he said.
Perez will host a poetry reading with other Filipino American writers and creatives on Saturday, Oct. 26, at the University Heights library.
“Perhaps most importantly, it feels incredibly empowering and a sort of collective empowerment that if we know our history and we know these stories of resilience, then we can start to understand our situation with a lot more clarity and plan out what we need to do in order to continue to advocate for each other, for our communities, but also for other communities in need,” Perez said.
Perez read an excerpt from “I ask about what falls away” in an interview with KPBS Midday Edition. The excerpt is printed below with permission.
Excerpt from “I ask about what falls away”
What remains is a temple of internalized
rupture. What remains are scraps of
syntax. What remains is vulnerable to
wage theft. I sing against profit. I sing
lost against return. I sing estimated
antagonisms. I sing an accumulation of need.
For what is blessing but bluff, bluff but confusion, a weight
of need versus a weight of disrepair. All that is different
should madden, should thrill. This dead smell.
This river of dank. This nonserious kinship of isolation. There is something
gentle in rethinking revolution itself, in shrapnel of afterlife,
in the disposability of heartbreak, in vinegar of paranoia.
In workshop, I sing as replaced tenant against hello,
against the march of history, with cranial guitar strings strummed hella hella hella.
