Arts & Culture
California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick to headline Morton Marcus Poetry Reading at UC Santa Cruz
Lee Herrick will headline the 17th annual Morton Marcus Poetry Reading at the Cultural Center in Merrill College. The reading, presented by The Humanities Institute, will take place at 6 p.m., November 19.
Often, when people think of poets, their thoughts turn to New York and San Francisco.
But California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick is part of a proud tradition of Fresno poets whose impact extends far beyond their Central Valley community.
Celebrated Fresno poets include Philip Levine, Juan Felipe Herrera, Brynn Saito, Peter Everwine, Christopher Buckley, and Gary Soto, among others.
Herrick will headline the 17th annual Morton Marcus Poetry Reading at the Cultural Center in Merrill College. The reading, presented by The Humanities Institute, will take place at 6 p.m., November 19.
Free and open to the public, the annual reading honors Morton Marcus (1936–2009), a poet, teacher, and film critic who called Santa Cruz home for more than fifty years.
Herrick was appointed as California’s Poet Laureate by Governor Gavin Newsom, who described Herrick’s work as a “Whitmanesque celebration of the best spirit of our state, the vibrancy of the Central Valley, and ourselves.”
He is the author of four books, most recently In Praise of Late Wonder: New and Selected Poems (2024). Herrick also co-edited The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit and the AGNI Portfolio of Adoptee Writing, and his work appears in anthologies including Here: Poems for the Planet, Indivisible: Poems of Social Justice, and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy.
Born in Daejeon, Korea, Herrick was adopted and brought to the United States at ten months old. He lives with his wife and daughter and teaches at Fresno City College. Herrick serves on the advisory board of Terrain.org and Sixteen Rivers Press. He also co-founded LitHop in Fresno.
Herrick has taught in Qingdao, China; at Kundiman in New York City, and for twelve years in the low-residency MFA program at University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe.
Donna Mekis, who is on the organizing committee for the poetry reading, praised Herrick for the way his poems explore questions of identity: “There is a sense of gratitude for being adopted by his new family, but there is also this sense of ‘who am I?’ He has written a lot about questions of identity relating to transnational adoption.”
Santa Cruz poet Gary Young will host the evening, which will also include the announcement of the winner of the Morton Marcus Poetry Prize, who will receive $1,000. This year’s contest was judged by Brynn Saito and is hosted by The Hive Poetry Collective, a group of Santa Cruz poets who produce a weekly radio show and live poetry events.
The reading is part of the fall UC Santa Cruz Living Writers program, which brings poets, novelists, academics, curators, and artists together in conversation, in person, across genre and media. Books by Herrick and Young are available through Bookshop Santa Cruz.
The reading is made possible by campus and community co-sponsors and by donations to the Morton Marcus Poetry Reading Fund.
It is co-sponsored by Ow Family Properties; Donna F. Mekis; Side By Side Studios; Bookshop Santa Cruz; the Cabrillo College English Department; and UCSC’s Special Collections and Archives, Merrill College, Cowell College, and Porter College.
The organizing committee includes Farnaz Fatemi, Donna Mekis, Teresa Mora, Mark Ong, Maggie Paul, Irena Polić, David Sullivan, Jennifer Tseng, and Gary Young.
Parking is free, courtesy of the Morton Marcus Poetry Committee, with attendants on site issuing permits. Drivers entering from the Main Entrance should stay on Coolidge Drive, which becomes McLaughlin Drive, and turn right at the Merrill College sign.
At the top of the hill, veer right for “A,” “B,” and “C” permit parking. Four accessible spaces are available, two on each side at the top of the hill. Those arriving by Metro bus or campus shuttle can take the steep path northeast from the Crown/Merrill bus stop. Attendees with disability-related needs should contact thi@ucsc.edu or 831-459-1274 by November 12.