sacramento: city of poets

I got $15,000
and gave every cent
to the po­ets in my city.

We got a res­o­lu­tion from City Coun­cil that ac­knowl­edges the pow­er and val­ue of po­ets and of­fi­cial­ly names Sacra­men­to

The Po­et­ry Cap­i­tal of Cal­i­for­nia.

We got a res­o­lu­tion from Sacra­men­to City Uni­fied School Dis­trict that in­states Po­et­ry Day as a tra­di­tion (and rec­og­nizes us as

The Po­et­ry Cap­i­tal of Cal­i­for­nia).

We cre­at­ed a cur­ricu­lum fea­tur­ing lo­cal po­ets and made it avail­able for over 250,000 stu­dents across the city.

Po­ets re­ceived for­mal recog­ni­tions and com­men­da­tions at a State lev­el (that also in­clude Sacra­men­to be­ing named

The Po­et­ry Cap­i­tal of Cal­i­for­nia).

We start­ed col­lect­ing this generation’s lega­cy of po­ems across gen­res, styles, and forms to com­bine with col­lec­tions from pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions.

Rap, Hip Hop, and song were pur­pose­ful­ly, in­ten­tion­al­ly, and lov­ing­ly in­clud­ed in the col­lec­tion and cur­ricu­lum.

Po­ets vis­it­ed class­rooms dis­cussing every­thing from gen­der iden­ti­ty, drug ad­dic­tion, body ac­cep­tance, men­tal health, and self es­teem.

We had over 250 youth sub­mit po­ems from around Sacra­men­to (with 3rd graders and 11th graders tied for most en­tries).

And we were just get­ting the pa­per­work straight this year.

I take this

Po­et­ry Cap­i­tal of Cal­i­for­nia

very se­ri­ous­ly if you couldn’t tell be­cause it’s some­thing i’ve said for years and some­thing that was touched on last night as I gave a bunch of my homies and OGs flow­ers on a rooftop down­town.

Sis Patrice Hill said “There’s some­thing sa­cred about Sacra­men­to.” And she’s right.

This is the birth­place of the guer­ril­la art flash mob and Na­tion­al Guer­ril­la Po­et­ry Month. This is where we dec­o­rate chain­link fences with words and turn it into po­et­ry you can play with.

This is the city Ma­hogany built. Where the book man stands on the cor­ner like the plug be­cause he is.

This is the home of SAYS where the ba­bies hone their voic­es into rev­o­lu­tion­ary in­stru­ments.

Where the po­ets are hand­ed the bull­horn when the crowd gets rest­less at the protests. Where they all­ways have been.

The city of Jose Mon­toya. The City of Vi­o­la Spencer and Den­nis Schmitz. The city of Land­ing Sig­nals.

The city of Doey Rock and Radar. The city of Alexan­dra Huynh.

The city where a com­mu­ni­ty of po­ets came to­geth­er and cre­at­ed a Cen­ter just for po­et­ry so many years ago. The city where po­et­ry is for every­one so it is cel­e­brat­ed by every­one.

The Po­et­ry Cap­i­tal of Cal­i­for­nia.

This is just the be­gin­ning.
This is just the foun­da­tion.

Re­mem­ber the fu­ture.

I love you and you can’t do $%!? about it.

 

—an­dru de­f­eye

Some peo­ple I love have re­mind­ed me through­out this process of my ten­den­cy to do big projects that take a lot out of me with­out re­fill­ing and cel­e­brat­ing and that is a ten­den­cy I am ac­tive­ly work­ing to change. This was a lot of work. And it turned out beau­ti­ful­ly. And I’m very proud of my­self. 🍾

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

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