Pajaro Valley Filipino American Poetry

Shirley Ancheta

Born and raised in the Monterey Bay area, Shirley is an original member of Kearny Street Workshop. She attended SF State in the mid 70s, worked in the Financial district during the day and marched for I-hotel after work and classes. She graduated with a BA in American Literature from UCSC. She co-edited (with Jaime Jacinto and Jeff Tagami) the Filipino American anthology Without Names. Published in numerous journals and anthologies including Liwanag, Babaylan and Bamboo Ridge, her work recently appeared in artist Maia Cruz Palileo’s book Long Kwento. Shirley taught the NVM Gonzalez Writing Program at SF Asian Art Museum in 2022. She retired from Cabrillo College in 2016. She is the widow of poet Jeff Tagami and currently lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Strike: Salinas, 1933 Download Strike: Salinas, 1933

Jeff Tagami

Nationally renowned poet Jeff Tagami was born July 4, 1954, in Watsonville, California, the sixth of eight children, to Robert and Judith Tagami, strawberry sharecroppers. His maternal great grandparents emigrated from the Philippines to Hawaii in 1912, and his father and grandfather arrived in Hawaii in 1930. Jeff attended Cabrillo College before transferring to San Francisco State in 1976. During that time, at the height of the ethnic studies movement, Jeff joined Kearny Street Workshop, an Asian American writers and artists’ collective located in the International Hotel of San Francisco. His book October Light was published by Kearny Street Workshop Press in 1987 and was re-issued in 1990 and 2002. He co-translated This Wanting to Sing (Contact II Press) and co-edited Without Names (Kearny Street Workshop Press, 1985). Jeff was one of fifty American poets featured in the PBS film The United States of Poetry (Washington Square Films), which included “Song of Pajaro,” filmed in Watsonville. His work has been taught at universities, nationally and internationally. Throughout his career, Jeff wrote about the experiences of Filipino Americans and the marginalized working class in the Pajaro Valley and Central California Coast. His work appears in numerous publications and continues to be published posthumously, the most recent in Hanging Loose Journal 114, NY. 

Jeff received his BA in literature, UCSC, and MA in Creative Writing, SFSU. He was a part time lecturer at UCSC and taught at Cabrillo College. Jeff died in 2012 of pancreatic cancer. He was married to poet Shirley Ancheta, and they have two sons, Miles and Travis. 

• Song of Pajaro Download Song of Pajaro
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