JASON BAYANI
Poet, Author, Educator + Arts Organizer
Jason Bayani is the author of the Northern California Book Award nominated Locus (Omnidawn Publishing 2019) and Amulet (Write Bloody Publishing 2013), and creator of the solo theater show "Locus of Control". He’s also the co-director of Kearny Street Workshop in San Francisco, the oldest multi-disciplinary Asian Pacific American arts organization in the country.
Projects
Locus
Jason Bayani’s poetry explores the experience of identity that haunts Pilipinx-Americans in the wake of the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act, a critical moment left out of most histories of Asian-American life in the United States.
Locus of Control
The show explores the lives of Filipino immigrants in America, taking you through Bayani’s hip-hop inspired youth, club-going college days, and turbulent adulthood.
Amulet
“Bayani crafts the energy of his spoken word performances into the turns of sonnets and lines grounded by the push of breath in a vowel, and by the place where a word hits within the body.” - Jai Arun Ravine, Lantern Review
“Bayani’s work pushes us to believe in something beyond making space for ourselves in cities, in memory. It pushes us to believe that memory is not something we hold in the past, but something that can inform love and belonging in the future.”
— Kazumi Chin, Hyphen Magazine
“Even as his poems touch on various social and artistic tribulations, they are united by Bayani’s voice. A veteran of international slam poetry competitions, the verses come at the reader as if he’s performing each piece in front of them, his speech resonating through each line of the book. The words permeate with self-doubt, rage, and compassion, yet the poems themselves feel measured and perfected. ”
— Christopher Conner, ZYZZYVA