Building community through poetry: SSU alum Erik Manuel Soto’s ambition as Vallejo’s new poet laureate
Erik Manuel Soto believes poetry pulls something raw to the surface, and can be a powerful tool in responding to our contemporary reality – and in building community. As Vallejo’s newly appointed poet laureate, he’s bringing that philosophy into libraries and other cultural spaces in the Bay Area city where he was raised.
Soto published his first volume of poetry, Inside the Umber Iris, in 2025. The Vallejo Center for the Arts announced his appointment as Vallejo’s poet laureate in January of this year.
Soto completed his BA in English at Sonoma State in 2018 and his MA in English in 2020. He said that when he first arrived at SSU, he thought he might want to be a psychologist, but early psychology coursework sent him on a different path.
“I quickly learned I didn't have the stoicism to be a therapist,” he said wryly of his pivot from psychology to literature and poetry.
“I took a class with Gillian Conoley, and fell in love with the whole process … the workshops, the seminars. I loved the close reading and the textual analysis that was part of studying poetry.”
He credits Conoley and other faculty mentors in the SSU English department with emboldening him to write his own poetry, and acknowledges Professor Stefan Kiesbye as someone who instilled an appreciation for the importance of artistic and literary community.
Soto discovered an affinity for teaching through an English composition class he taught during his master’s studies, where he helped undergraduate students develop both writing and critical thinking skills.
After his MA program, Soto continued teaching in various capacities, including as a teacher mentor for younger students and as a peer mentor for high school educators. He went on to complete an MFA at the University of Nevada Reno.
The role of the poet laureate is one well suited to Soto’s education and experience, drawing on his love of poetry and his deep commitment to education and to supporting future generations of poets and artists. While the job description for a laureate is a loose one, it does call for working with youth and convening poets and members of the community for public readings and other events.
The ambitious project he has set for himself for his two-year poet laureate term is to revive and deepen community understanding of the Surrealist movement and Federico Garcia Lorca's concept of "duende" through workshops, craft talks, and readings that highlight and inspire raw emotional expression in poetry. Lorca, a 20th-century Spanish poet, is known for his in-depth meditations on the concept of duende, a Spanish term for a heightened state of emotion and expression, often associated with flamenco.
Lorca’s work was challenging subject matter for Soto during his time at Sonoma State.
“I wasn’t used to reading surrealist work,” he said of his first encounter with Lorca and his vision. “I reencountered him at UNR and kind of read it from a different perspective. I got so much more out of it with more time and life experience; I became fascinated and even a little obsessed with the concept of duende.”
For Soto, there is timeliness and even an urgency to revisiting the Surrealist art and cultural movement in the current moment: 2024 marked the 100th anniversary of the movement founded by Andre Breton and that encompassed Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, and Rene Magritte.
Surrealism, Soto said, offers an opportunity to challenge contemporary political realities and highlight their absurdity.
“Lorca and the surrealists were very anti-fascism,” Soto said. “It seems an appropriate time to bring back this way of thinking.”
“It's been great to see Erik go through our MA program, get accepted into the MFA program in Reno, and publish his first book of poetry,” said Kiesbye, a professor of English and the director of SSU’s creative writing program. “He has shown a lot of confidence, stubbornness (of the best kind), and tenacity. Writing is a marathon, not a dash, and it takes conviction and commitment to survive in the arts.
“Erik has a great sense of the community around him, of family and tradition, and in Lorca he found a guiding star,” Kiesbye continued. “It's important to have such a guiding star — the conversations you have with that poet and writer, very intimate, very private conversations with their work, will shape how you react to the world around you in your writing, and how you will become your own poet and outgrow the initial influence.”
April is national poetry month, and Soto and his poet laureate peers from cities across Solano County have multiple in-person events planned for poets and poetry lovers in Vallejo and slightly farther afield.
On April 9, California’s state Poet Laureate Lee Herrick and poets laureate from across Solano County, including Soto, will participate in a Poet Laureate Open Mic Night at the Vacaville Museum.
On April 11, poetry is on the big screen at the Monologues and Poetry International Film Fest and Open Mic, a free event featuring short poetic films from around the globe. The free 1 p.m. film screening at the Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum will be followed by a community open mic.
And on April 19, Soto will host the Holograph poetry reading at historic Red Men’s Hall in Vallejo, featuring poets including Conoley, Soto’s early SSU mentor.
Learn more about national poetry month programming in Vallejo and beyond here.
Celebrate national poetry month by reading one of Soto’s poems here.