Nina Serrano

Nina Serrano (born 1934) is a poet, writer, storyteller, and independent media producer who lives in Oakland, California. She is the author of Heartsongs: The Collected Poems of Nina Serrano (1980) and Pass it on!:How to start your own senior storytelling program in the schools (Stagebridge). Her poems are widely anthologized, appearing most recently in the literary anthology, Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Writers from California (Heyday Books), and three anthologies of peace poems from Estuary Press.

Serrano has won international film awards, including the XXXIII Mostra internazionale D'Arte Cinematografica award for Que Hacer: What is to Be Done?; and the Krakow, Poland International Short Film Festival award for After the Earthquake: Despues del terremoto.

Serrano served as an Alameda County Arts Commissioner, and is a former director of San Francisco's Poetry in the Schools program. She was a co-founder of the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco's Mission District, where she is still actively involved. In addition, she is a long-time producer of radio programs on Pacifica Radio station KPFA (94.1 FM) in Berkeley, California, currently hosting La Raza Chronicles on Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m.

Serrano was formerly married to author and filmmaker Saul Landau, and is the mother of two adult children, Valery and Greg Landau.

"Poets in San Francisco"

(A legend about Anais Nin and Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

by Nina Serrano

It feels good to write poems in San Francisco

But it would be better if someone

wanted to read listen and talk about poems

in San Francisco.

There is a place where poets meet and love each other

Once I thought it was San Francisco

but when I got there their coffee houses turned into dress stores.

I think the place where poets meet

lies in an inner space between

The ribs the lungs and hurting loneliness.

A poet fills his bags with rose petals

and empties it on the head

of another poet.

Her hair is full of petals.

There love poems rhymed and metered bloom

and in that moment of raining flowers

is the place I want to be.