Small Press Traffic

Small Press Traffic is a Bay Area seedbed for poets who push boundaries in the arts. We present programs, publications, and curatorial opportunities with an ethos of radical inclusivity. Committed to this mission since 1974, we highlight diverse, multidisciplinary, and intergenerational practitioners in our public programs, and prioritize equity, accessibility, and collaboration in our working model. SPT also stewards an archive of small press material produced and circulated in the Bay Area over the last half century.

VALUES

Small Press Traffic is committed to self-determination, accountability, accessibility, and racial equity. We defend movements on the ground in resistance to violences inflicted upon those, nationally and globally, who face historic and ongoing oppression. We stand in solidarity with movements led by and for these groups.

We prioritize people over production, appreciating the slow work of ground-setting, and movement building in collaborative efforts with partnering organizations, community groups, and individuals. We resist functioning in the hamster wheel of business with no time, space, or capacity for engaging in conversation, having time to think, strategize, and process. In our exchanges and general practices we emphasize a commitment to alternative conflict-resolution, empathy, and care.

As an arts nonprofit, we have no illusion that the system in which we operate is perfect or emancipatory. We look for the places of possibility within it, thinking experimentally about what we do and how we work. We encourage others to imagine new ways of working and living that both get their needs met and offer something other than total dependence on validation and support from these systems.

We value interpersonal connection, interrogate our own internalized biases, and empower poets to flourish as artists in their practice, as people in the world, and as participants in a network of reciprocity with others.

Small Press Traffic is proudly a W.A.G.E. certified organization.

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Small Press Traffic is based in the Bay Area, on the unceded land of the Ohlone people. The majority of our programs take place in Yelamu, San Francisco, land of the Ramaytush Ohlone people, as well as Huichin, the East Bay, of the Chochenyo-speaking Lisjan Ohlone people. We acknowledge those who have stewarded this land for thousands of years — in the face of systemic violence and forced displacement — who continue to resist and protect their traditions today.

Association of Ramaytush Ohlone

American Indian Cultural District

American Indian Cultural Center

Sogorea Te’ Land Trust