Meet the Awesome Team Behind the Manifest Differently Project – Kim Shuck, co-curator/organizer, poet, artist

Kim Shuck, Manifest Differently co-curator/poet/artist, embraces the fool and jester qualities of being a modern poet and artist. She is a devotee of San Francisco, whose hills she wanders nearly always on foot. Her maternal grandparents met at the Polish Hall on Shotwell, and she spent many hours with her mother and grandmother wandering the Mission St. Miracle Mile, taking books out of the Mission Branch Library, and watching aquarium fish on the ground floor of what used to be Hale’s. She firmly believes in carrying a bubble wand, keys, pen and notebook, and cat cradle string at all times.

Shuck is widely published in journals, anthologies, and a couple of solo books. She enjoys volunteering in SFUSD elementary school classrooms to share her loves of origami, poetry, and basket making… in other words, the math of various kinds. In 2019 Shuck was awarded an inaugural National Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets and a PEN Oakland Censorship Award. Kim served as the 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco. As a visual artist, apart from receiving an MFA in textiles, Shuck is primarily a regalia maker, which means that while her work is rarely shown in galleries, it is danced in a ceremony at events across the United States. She is particularly proud of the dance regalia she’s created for two-spirit people.

ALMANAC

In the new almanac
Everything can be something else
We remake the rolling pin
The colors of the hours
Bring rosebuds indoors
The hinoki
Smoke of praying
What do we know these days
About the old incantations of this hill?
Scattered as it is with the transplanted and impractical
With the bird sown
And the unfamiliar berries
But there
Along the fence line
A Native grape
Raises a fisted leaf
Then spreads it wide
Can you listen?
Are you listening?

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