i never considered myself a real poet

REAL po­ets wore berets
and ar­gued about whether
Keats or Whit­man
wrote a bet­ter poem about Au­tumn.

I just wrote.

To keep my­self alive.
To help slay demons whose names I couldn’t say out loud.
To process the feel­ings too big to get from my heart to my throat.

Be­ing a lau­re­ate wasn’t even a thought for a rap­per-slash-slam kid who came up spit­ting on street cor­ners for din­ner mon­ey.

… and when I ap­plied ear­li­er this year it felt like the same kind of far away dream …
but …… y’all ……

I WAS AWARD­ED A 2022 FEL­LOW­SHIP FROM THE ACAD­E­MY OF AMER­I­CAN PO­ETS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

like … THEEEEEEEEEEEE ACAD­E­MY.

 

One of the things this means is that from now un­til Sacra­men­to Po­et­ry Day on 26 Oc­to­ber 2022 (de­tails will be post­ed here), I will be work­ing with Sacra­men­to po­ets to cre­ate an in­ter­ac­tive po­et­ry cur­ricu­lum and ex­pe­ri­ences that will be avail­able to ed­u­ca­tors through­out the city that day, as well as a cash prize po­et­ry con­test for the youth across the city.

In ad­di­tion, six of my po­ems were se­lect­ed to be PUB­LISHED BY THEEEE ACAD­E­MY and on Poets.org.

 

I am still pro­cess­ing all the feel­ings too big to get from my heart to my throat.

Me and that lit­tle boy who start­ed writ­ing so he wouldn’t have to car­ry the dark clouds around in­side of him are go­ing to cel­e­brate.

Shoutout to every­one who ever helped me find my words,
es­pe­cial­ly those who I can’t pick up the phone and call any­more. 333

But most of all –   ::cue Snoop Dogg video::

 

I guess that makes me an aca­d­e­m­ic now.

Wel­come to the re­nais­sance.

(cor­rec­tion to the AP ar­ti­cle – the po­et­ry con­test I’m spon­sor­ing is not the first cash prize po­et­ry con­test in the city … Shoutout SAYS and VOY and every­body who’s been out here for years. It’s just the first Sacra­men­to Po­et­ry Day con­test ever. 💜)

 

—an­dru de­f­eye

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

PLEASE   SUPPORT   FLOMM
TIPS  +  DONATIONS  DISCREETLY  ACCEPTED

FLOMM
promotes learning  +  education worldwide
drawing attention to works by nü  +  upcoming artists,
designers, writers, musicians  +  MOR

OUR INVOLVEMENT
– however –
is mostly paid for out of pocket or in trade

IF YOU ENJOY
wat  FLOMM  is doing here, please consider


1.   LEAVE US A TIP  :
use our tip jar whenever the mood hits



2.   BUY OUR SWAG  :
our approach is semi-green —
                all our  FLOMMHAUS  merch is made to order



3.   HELP US OUT  :
use our hashtags  #flomm  #flommus  #whereisflomm  #nüflommart  #flommist
when posting on ur socials —
or drop us a note and offer to help in some way
everything we do is on a volunteer basis —
             when we say  YOU CAN BE A FLOMMIST TOO  this is wat we mean

THANK YOU
your support helps our continued efforts
to create content across numerous platforms

clic 「 HIER   」 to return to the DER TUNG front page