Victoria Bañales was the first in her family to attend college, but like many young people she was unsure where her path would take her.
She changed her major several times before settling on a path. That was after she made a discovery about her life’s passion.
“The only assignment that made me happy was when teachers said, ‘go off and read a novel,’ or ‘go off and read poetry,’” she said. “That was when I was most alive. So I went with that.”
For the next two years, Bañales will serve as Watsonville’s new poet laureate, replacing Bob Gomez in the role.
In his outgoing speech at a ceremony at the Watsonville Pubic Library on Feb. 15, Gomez praised Bañales’s work and the value of poetry.
“A poet is just a conduit for feelings, for ideas, concepts, for principals and values,” Gomez said. “Poetry and song is the way of uniting people.”
He emphasized that poetry and song have been used throughout the ages to convey messages of power and urgency.
Also at the ceremony, two new Youth Poet Laureates were introduced, Rachel Huerta and Eva Sophia Martinez-Rodriguez, whom Bañales will mentor.
Over the next two years, Bañales will participate in and host public poetry reading events to advance the literary arts in Watsonville.
Bañales said she did not plan on applying, but said that many people in the community encouraged her, and Cabrillo College President Matt Wetstein sent a nomination letter to the committee.
Bañales, who holds a master’s degree from San Francisco State University and a joint master’s and Ph.D. from UC Santa Cruz, teaches Chicanx/Latinx literature, fiction writing and English composition at Cabrillo College’s Watsonville campus, which she calls her “dream job.”
“You follow your dreams, you follow your passion and things work out in the long run, and I’m glad I did, because that’s what makes me happy.”
She also coordinates Cabrillo’s Puente program, a statewide program that helps “educationally underrepresented” students obtain four-year college educations. She also serves as the college’s faculty senate president.
“As poet laureate, my vision is to bring poetry to the people,” she said. “Although no one would deny that Santa Cruz County has a thriving poetry culture, the scene continues to be an insular ‘thing’ that ‘those people’ (in Santa Cruz) do.”
Bañales is a member of the Writers of Color–Santa Cruz County, Círculo de Poetas & Writers and founder and editor of Journal X, a social justice literary arts magazine based at Cabrillo’s Watsonville center.
She has a book of poetry waiting in the wings and is working on a novel called Candelaria, which is a blend of memoir, magic realism, and speculative fiction. The daughter of Mexican immigrants, she lives in Watsonville.
County’s Poet Laureate
Santa Cruz County also has a new poet laureate, Nancy Miller Gomez, who took over her duties at the end of January and will serve through 2026.
Gomez is a distinguished poet and writer whose work explores themes of social justice, human connection and the transformative power of poetry. She is the author of Inconsolable Objects and Punishment, and her poetry and essays have been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies.
Gomez has also been actively engaged in community outreach, using poetry as a tool for education and empowerment. She has worked extensively in correctional facilities and co-founded the Poetry in the Jails program to bring poetry workshops to incarcerated women and men in Santa Cruz County.
“Poetry can bring connection to the community even for those who have little experience with poetry,” Gomez said. “If you take it out of the ivory towers and off the academic pedestals, it has the power to unify people and deliver hope, especially for those who have been marginalized. We need poetry now more than ever, and I will use this role to spread poetry throughout the county and into all the places where it is needed most.”
Gomez will appear at Bookshop Santa Cruz on April 14 to share poems and conversation with Farnaz Fatemi, her poet laureate predecessor. She encourages community members to share their ideas and sign up for her newsletter for updates and future poetry events at nancymillergomez.com.
