About
Alice Elizabeth Rogoff grew up in New Rochelle, New York. Her family’s roots were in Russia, Hungary, and Poland. Her mother was a teacher and her father was an engineer. One grandmother lived with her family, and one grandfather was a writer in Yiddish.
After Grinnell College and working with Appalachian children in Chicago at Hull House, Alice came to San Francisco in 1971. She worked in downtown San Francisco doing clerical work, and did volunteer work for peace and environmental groups. She discovered a poetry open reading at a bookstore, which led to her being published in an anthology of Bay Area poets. She later joined Noe Valley Poets Workshop in the 1970s and co-edited two of its anthologies. She received MAs in Creative Writing and Drama from San Francisco State University and a Certificate in Labor Studies from City College, San Francisco.
She has been one of the editors of the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal since 1984 and has performed in and directed Readers Theater for Seniors and the San Francisco Living Wage Coalition. She was a member of the LaborFest Organizing Committee for many years and worked as the Internal Organizer for a Writers’ Union.
She has been published in the small press, including Blue Collar Review and an anthology on the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, and won a Blue Light Book Award for her poetry book Mural. Her most recent poetry book is City Canyons, about living in San Francisco. The LaborFest Writing Workshop has helped her to hone poetry and stories, some of which have been published online in the magazines Caveat Lector and So to Speak, as well as on broadsides for a project about San Francisco women labor organizers sponsored by the San Francisco Arts Commission. When she’s not writing, she likes to sing.
Writing
Why A Workers’ Mural Hangs On · from Mural
At Rincon Annex, with paintings of labor,
the building’s new owners
have made a post office into a mall
and don’t want the murals there.
Paintings don’t have souls.
They don’t bleed when cut
or cry when they are painted over
but maybe, at Rincon Annex
the Chinese workers’ ghosts would have
come downtown and then
hollered and shouted at the passing
tourists and Christmas shoppers.
The ghosts may materialize as one scurries away
with packages.
Maybe the Native Americans’ drums
would be heard for miles,
and Tom Mooney’s
ghost would sing
prison songs with Joe Hill’s and Harry Bridges’,
the voices noisy, loud, and rowdy,
so loud that cars would beep
as they drove by,
the drivers waving their hands
in unity,
so maybe, that’s why the
Rincon Annex murals got to stay.
From Mural, Blue Light Press Book Award winner, 2004
Park 55 Victory · from Mural
Each hotel worker has
circled the hotel entrance
a hundred times;
each waiter and janitor
carries a sign
and shouts at the owner
sheltered far in the building;
their arms hurt a little
from the pickets;
the cooks and cleaners
have been singing
for an hour,
their songs on crumpled
sheets of paper,
folded many times.
They get the intangible things
they want when cars
drive by and honk.
The tourists are
flustered by the
noise and crowd;
they confusedly drive in
being asked by Arlene to leave.
The demonstration
has lasted two hours,
and it is getting to be dusk,
getting to be the
end of lunch hour,
or time to break up.
The circle has held.
When they sign her Union contract.
Arlene hugs Alice, Alice hugs Ricardo,
Ricardo hugs Felix,
Felix hugs Ella, Ella hugs David,
David hugs the next in line.
From Mural, Blue Light Press Book Award winner, 2004
The Day Laborers · from Mural
Day laborers
line Cesar Chavez Street,
a small group of men
on each corner,
workers
waiting
ready to go
or not,
getting by
until the next day;
the on-the-street hiring hall
where the ICE
may show up,
or not;
another day of Spanish-speaking men
looking.
I glide by inside
a car window
looking for
my day to begin.
We are all starting our day.
For the men on the corners,
each day starts
over and over
again.
From Mural, Blue Light Press Book Award winner, 2004
Waldheim · from Barge Wood
We were
looking for Aunt Hannah
without the map
designating each grave,
went east, too far east
along a creek,
the headstones
became thin white crosses,
some leaning rickety,
some straight up,
sticks together in one plot.
No names, or dates,
just the workers who built (what?)
A railroad?
A house?
A group of Irish workers
in a corner of Waldheim,
down along the creek,
with birds flying overhead,
and mud on our shoes.
From Barge Wood, CC Marimbo Press
Potrero/Mission · from Barge Wood
The neighborhood smells like bread.
Passing the bakery, the yeast rising,
Around the corner, the brewery is gone
where the hops bubbled.
The aging Victorians
with crumbling front porches
still line Potrero flatlands
amid the printing and car repair shops.
The rolling presses emanate thick inky odors
across from Indian curry lunch buffets.
You can hear the voices
of the old ball park
next to the Double Play bar.
Further south along the Bay and years before,
Chinese fished in coves,
and pigs were butchered.
Looking up towards the hill,
you can see
General Hospital’s laundry steam,
a constant stream pouring into the clouds,
or a full moon
rising into the night,
or disappearing behind
an eclipse.
From Barge Wood, CC Marimbo Press