Point Arena Third Thursday Poetry presents a virtual Third Thursday Zoom Poetry reading at 7pm on Thursday, June 17, 2021.

This month features Georgina Maria Guardado.

Georgina Marie is a poet from Lakeport, Northern California. She is the current Lake County Poet Laureate for 2020-2022, the first Mexican-American and youngest to serve in this role for Lake County. She was appointed as the eleventh poet laureate of Lake County in March 2020.

Georgina is the new Volunteer Literary Coordinator and Poetry Out Loud Coordinator for the Lake County Arts Council, has served as co-editor for the Middletown Art Center’s RESILIENCE and RESTORE collections of written word and visual arts, and is an assistant poetry editor for Rivet Journal, an online literary journal from Red Bridge Press.

In 2020 she was an Anne G. Locasio scholar for the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference poetry workshop. She was also a grant recipient of the California Relief Fund for Artists and Cultural Practitioners, funded by the California Arts Council.

In the first eight months into the COVID-19 pandemic and of her poet laureate term, she created a poetry column in collaboration with the Lake County Bloom, a bi-weekly writers circle with the Lake County Arts Council, a farmers’ market poetry contest with Lake County Farmers’ Finest, a radio show with KPFZ, and organized and hosted a number of readings and workshops including readings for the LGBTQ+ community and immigrants in detention centers. She aims to continue this path of making poetry inclusive to all.

In 2020, she was featured in a variety of readings including Eves at the Beat: Womxn Reading at The Beat Museum, Latinx Poetry Night hosted by the City of Madison, Wisconsin Poet Laureate, the Madison Arts Commission, and the Wisconsin Arts Board; the City of Redmond and Beyond reading featured poets laureate from Washington and other states, and the San Francisco Poem Jam hosted by San Francisco Poet Laureate Kim Shuck and the San Francisco Public Library in honor of Native American Heritage Month.

As part of the Broken Nose Collective, an annual chapbook exchange, she created her first poetry chapbook Finding the Roots of Water (2018) and her second chapbook Tree Speak (2019). She is currently working on her full-length poetry manuscript and a series of personal essays. Visit her website at georginamariepoet.com.

Zoom reading starts at 7.

To watch or participate as an open mic reader, please email blake@snakelyone.com.

Third Thursday Poetry Zoom made possible by the Arena Theater and continues to be supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation.