Poetry stage: Incantations to Open Portals + Garden of Possibilities

We begin with invocation—of memory, of resistance, of radical possibility. Incantations to Open Portals is the ceremonial opening of the poetry stage at the Bay Area Book Festival, co-sponsored with the Berkeley Poetry Festival, where poetry becomes spell, speech becomes spellwork, and presence becomes protest.

This opening event features incantatory offerings by Aya de León, Berkeley Poet Laureate, celebrated poet, activist, and author, who will bring her fierce, truth-telling lyricism to this moment of collective gathering. Her work bridges the personal and political, and her incantation sets the stage for a festival rooted in justice, joy, and imagination. MK Chavez, Co-director of the Berkeley Poetry Festival, will introduce the legacy of amplifying the voices of writers who change the world. Together, they will open the portal—with words, intention, and fierce love.

In a world contending with violence and erasure, what does it mean to plant a future? Garden of Possibilities gathers six poets who write toward abundance, resistance, and reimagined ways of being. Through language rooted in care, complexity, and radical imagination, this reading and panel invites us to collectively cultivate what is possible. Audrey T. Williams, a visionary voice in Afrofuturist and Black speculative poetics, crafts worlds where Black liberation blooms beyond the limits of the present. Her work is a call to remember, to dream, and imagine. Gabriel Cortez fuses poetry with movement-building, creating work that uplifts diasporic joy, ecological kinship, and community resilience. Cintia Santana writes into the intersections of language, translation, and exile. Her poetry navigates linguistic borders and personal geographies, tracing beauty through dislocation and cultural memory. Kinsale Drake, a Diné poet and storyteller, brings forth visions rooted in Native sovereignty and survival. Her work speaks of land, lineage, and a future held in Indigenous hands. Maw Shein Win tends the surreal and the sublime, her poetry offering quiet revelations from the edges of reality. Drawing from Burmese heritage and Buddhist philosophy, she brings a meditative force to the page. Bryan Byrdlong blends history, speculation, and Afrosurrealism with craft and fire. His poetry opens portals—honoring memory while daring new futures into being. Together, these poets offer a garden where justice grows, language blooms, and imagination becomes practice.