sac poetry day: we’re documenting this generation of sacramento voice

The homie said that they didn’t un­der­stand what I was do­ing at first and that I need­ed to break this part down more publicly. 

As long as I’ve been in Sacra­men­to a cer­tain de­mo­graph­ic has been try­ing to keep Hip Hop out of the realm of po­et­ry. They do not see rap as a le­git­i­mate form to be rec­og­nized the same way that a son­net, a haiku, or a cinquain is. 

Lit­er­al­ly when I was nom­i­nat­ed Poet Lau­re­ate there was an al­liance of peo­ple who went as far as mak­ing t‑shirts that said 

“(An­oth­er Poet Lau­re­ate competitor’s name) is my Lau­re­ate.”

They tried to dis­miss and con­de­scend any rap that I post­ed and called some of the most im­por­tant Black artists in this city’s his­to­ry “goofy” on pub­lic platforms. 

It was such stereo­typ­i­cal ba­sic old prob­lem­at­ic white peo­ple shit. 

The re­al­i­ty was that while on the out­side they were act­ing as though they didn’t re­spect the art­form, on the in­side they feared it, and they knew they could nev­er do it. 

So they tried every­thing they could to keep it, and us, and me … out.
 

So … fast for­ward. 26 Oc­to­ber 2022. 

For SACRA­MEN­TO PO­ET­RY DAY 2022 we are in­tro­duc­ing a col­lec­tion and cur­ricu­lum in part­ner­ship with Sacra­men­to school dis­tricts com­posed en­tire­ly of lo­cal po­ets and po­et­ry in­clud­ing song­writ­ers AND rappers. 

It is our goal to make this pack­age avail­able to the 250k stu­dents in Sacra­men­to schools. I would love to in­clude all of you. I’m do­ing this project off my own fel­low­ship award this year with no City, Coun­ty, or oth­er fund­ing, so I can’t do as much as I would like for every­one who sub­mits, but we are giv­ing out three $125 prizes (raf­fle, not con­test) for the col­lec­tion and your work will be hon­ored and used to help ed­u­cate and ex­pose the next gen­er­a­tion to Sacramento’s po­et­ic legacy. 

With your sup­port we can re­al­ly turn this into some­thing, but I need your help. 

Please sub­mit a piece via the web­site at SacramentoPoetryDay.com

All sub­mis­sions must be stu­dent ap­pro­pri­ate. Videos accepted. 

And please share with your networks. 💜💜💜

 

—an­dru defeye

Flom­mist An­dru De­f­eye is the Guer­ril­la Poet Lau­re­ate of Sacra­men­to. Copy­right © 2022 An­dru Defeye.

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