PODCAST: Poet Tongo Eisen-Martin

San Francisco’s newest poet laureate talks about his revolutionary upbringing and making a difference through poetry.

Photography by Michelle Kilfeather

Welcome to our monthly podcast, produced in Partnership with Storied: San Francisco and hosted by Jeff Hunt.

Poet Tongo Eisen-Martin was born into a revolutionary home.

Tongo's parents met in Chicago but moved to San Francisco soon after. He was born and raised in an apartment at 25th and Valencia, part of a communal environment that taught him to question and analyze institutions from a young age.

He got started with poetry in elementary school doing a rap for Jesse Jackson when Jackson ran for president in 1988 (Tongo was 8 at the time).

Tongo started seeing poetry all around The City and the Bay Area before heading to New York City for college, where he soon discovered Nuyorican Poets Cafe. He ended up working in arts-based education with imprisoned youth at Rikers Island before returning to San Francisco to teach chronically truant kids through a YMCA program.

To end the podcast, we asked Tongo to read one of his poems for us. He recited (not read) "The Course of Meal." For the words to the poem, please see our website.