Aileen Cassinetto

Aileen Cassinetto is a Filipino American poet and co-founder of Paloma Press. Her work has been honored by the Academy of American Poets, America Media, Brilliant Poetry, Metro Film and Arts Foundation, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She is the author of three full-length poetry collections, most recently An Immigrant’s Guide to Navigating Borders and Bodies of Water.

With Luisa A. Igloria and Jeremy S. Hoffman, she co-edited the award-winning anthology, Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States (2023), a companion to the congressionally mandated Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5), and collaborated with Poets for Science/Wick Poetry Center in developing the interactive microsite Dear Human. In 2024, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) released an Earth Day video based on the Dear Human project. In 2025, she co-edited with Luisa A. Igloria and David Hassler the anthology The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders, a companion to United By Nature: A Knowledge Assessment of Nature and Nature’s Benefits in the U.S. (formerly First U.S. National Nature Assessment or NNA1).

Frequently collaborating with other artists, she wrote the lyrics to Saunder Choi’s “Meet Me for Noche Buena” which premiered at Our Lady Queen of Angels-Newport Beach in 2022, “Wide American Earth” which premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2023, and “Balikbayan” which premiered at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music in 2024. She also collaborated with San Mateo County Chief Deputy Attorney and mixed media artist Rebecca Archer in producing new ekphrastic works that were included in Archer’s 2023 solo art show, “Taking Up Space: A Love Letter to Blackness.” In partnership with Filoli, she helped launch the annual Filoli haiku contest in 2020 and the Filoli Ecopoetry Award in 2022 with the top 10 poems displayed as poetry installations in the garden to create a sense of place and belonging.

Her poem, “There are no kings in America,” has been featured in Vox Populi (2020), the Academy of American Poets (2022), the Poetry Foundation (2023), and Poetry Out Loud (2023), and included in public events at the County of San Mateo (2019) and the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution in Concord, Massachusetts (2025). It was also the U.S. Consulate General in Shanghai’s official 4th of July poem in 2022. Her community poem project, “Love in the Time of Covid-19,” raised funds for the San Mateo County Health Foundation, and was used as a resource by the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project in Minnesota and the Montgomery Independent School District in Texas. It was also featured in Mystic Seaport Museum’s 2020 Memorial Day observance in Connecticut, the New Orleans Poetry Festival in Louisiana, Taiji Terasaki’s Transcendients Exhibitions at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles and the Maui Arts and Cultural Center in Hawaii, and the San Mateo County Community & Covid Town Hall.

As San Mateo County poet laureate (2019-2022), she launched several initiatives that amplified the role of poetry in the context of larger social movements, and mentored many young people who went on to serve as youth poets laureate and social impact innovators. She was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow in 2021, and a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100 awardee in 2023 for cultural leadership. She has received commendations from the United States Congress, California State Senate, California State Assembly, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, the Philippine Embassy in Washington DC, and the Philippine Consulate General in San Francisco, as well as recognition from President Joe Biden for the anthology, Dear Human at the Edge of Time. Press highlights include ABS-CBN, Coastside News, KTVU, NBC Bay Area, Peninsula TV, Philippine Inquirer, Positively Filipino, San Francisco Chronicle, San Mateo Daily Journal, and The Six Fifty.

What is not being mentioned here is the power that poetry can wield. That because poetry is a way to make, it is also a way to witness; that because it is a way to advocate, it is also a way to resist… It’s our way of saying we are here, with the power to bend language, to call forth action, to be unbreakable, and always, to be true.