'A Day of Poetry in LA' Celebrates the Diversity and Strength of L.A.'s Poetry Community
On Saturday August 13th, three generations comprising over 100 Los Angeles poets gathered together at Central Library for "A Day of Poetry in LA." Organized by Los Angeles Poet Laureate Lynne Thompson and Inaugural Poet Laureate of Anaheim Grant Hier, the day included a reading of 60 poets and two group pictures, one before the reading and one after outside in the garden on the Westside of the library. In addition to celebrating Los Angeles Poetry, the reading also partnered with the "CORE Humanitarian Relief for Ukraine" campaign in order to provide aid for victims of the war between Ukraine and Russia.
"A Day of Poetry in Los Angeles was the brainchild of Grant Hier, inaugural Poet Laureate for the City of Anaheim, and myself," said Lynne Thompson, "We both thought it would be a great idea to memorialize as many of the poets of L.A. as possible in a photograph that would imitate the historic photograph 'A Great Day in Harlem.' More discussion led to the idea that we also wanted to find a way to aid the victims of the war in Ukraine and thus, the partnership with Piero Giunti and his 'amazing drone' photograph was born."
The reading began with City Librarian John Szabo introducing hosts Thompson and Hier while talking about how much he and the library love the poets in Los Angeles. Lynne Thompson spoke briefly about her intentions with the reading and then promptly introduced former Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodriguez who shared a few poems. Rodriguez spoke about how books saved his life and that the library opened up his imagination when he was homeless as a teen before he shared one of his first published poems, "Watts Bleeds." A poem he said he first wrote at Beyond Baroque in the late '70s at a poetry workshop led by Wanda Coleman. Rodriguez also said, "Los Angeles is one of the best poetry cities in the world."
The readers at the library that Saturday supported his assertion. Poet after poet stepped up to share their distinctive poetic voice. There were National Book Award winners, poets from institutions like the World Stage and Beyond Baroque, some were teacher-poets, a few were even from the Inland Empire and Orange County. The reading was split into two halves of 30 readers each with a short intermission between. Each speaker had two minutes and this rapid fire delivery kept it interesting.
A City of Poets
There's an incredible geographic, cultural and even philosophical diversity in the Los Angeles poetry community. Though most outsiders would think all poets are alike, there are subtle differences between academic poets, spoken word poets, punk rock poets, LGBTQ poets, Chicano poets, African American poets, Asian American poets and a dozen other specific variations. What's more, most poets fall into several of these categories simultaneously.
Considering that Los Angeles is one of the world's biggest, most diverse cities it makes sense that our poetry community would include every group noted above. Poet Rick Lupert captured the geographic diversity in a poem that made everyone laugh. Here's one of the stanzas:
When they told all the L.A. poets to come down to the library
I thought I'll go, those are my people.
I've sat through the open mic trenches with them.
In Venice, and Leimert Park, In Los Feliz and Studio City.
In Sylmar and Hollywood, Long Beach, Does Orange County count?
I was never sure.
In freaking Canoga Park!
The second half of the reading began withSalome Agbaroji, the current Los Angeles Youth Poet Laureate. Salome read two poems. Only a senior in high school, there's wisdom to her work beyond her years. Salome was featured on KCET's Artbound and one of the poems she read at the library, "Pretty Places of LA," was featured on KCRW. The poem reflects on L.A.'s opposites and the widening divide between different groups. The audience was in awe of her innate understanding of the city. The poem combined sarcasm and prescient insight:
This is the heart of L.A. that beats and weeps all the same.
But investors bleach its arteries with
Beige colors and Caramel fraps.
See street markets where black women sell
Incense and Head wraps
And mark it: "perfect location to reinvent hot yoga!"
Or to build a bank that will deny those same black women loans.
Agbaroji wants to use her voice to educate, inform and above all to help her community. She's ecstatic to be in the position to do so. "Being Los Angeles County Youth Poet Laureate is very surreal for me," Agbaroji said. "I have spent years developing my craft and I am honored to be given this platform. Representing the youth and expressing the needs of my community is a large task that I am embracing with excitement and ambition." I met Agbaroji almost four years ago in a workshop at the Cerritos Millennium Library when she was only 14, and she was phenomenal then. She's following in the footsteps of Amanda Gorman and carrying the torch beautifully.
Though the event was organized by Thompson and Hier, neither of them read any poems, they just hosted and introduced everyone else. This speaks to their selflessness and desire to uplift other poets and the overall poetry community. Poet Laureates are ambassadors with a mission to promote poetry and both Thompson and Hier demonstrated this with the way the reading unfolded.
Poetry as a Lever
In 2018, Hier did a similar poetry event at the Anaheim Central Library that was standing room only. He's also a professor at the Laguna College of Art & Design where he uses poetry to inspire his students. "I considered my title as Poet Laureate," Hier states, "as a lever to be able to move bigger things into place, and to facilitate new ways to bring more of the community's own voices directly to the microphone so they can be more easily heard and considered." This is exactly what happened. Thompson and Hier put 60 poets from all over Southern California on one of the biggest stages in the region.
Thompson was recently awarded $50,000 for being named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. She will conduct workshops at Los Angeles Public Library branches and at literary venues across the city that focus on story-telling through poems as a way of codifying Los Angeles's recent history and its diverse population. She's worked with groups like the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities and has an upcoming reading with them at Beyond Baroque. The spirit generated during "A Day of Poetry in LA," aligned perfectly with her upcoming projects. Her weekly podcast "Poems on Air," where she reads a different poem each week from various poets is similarly altruistic and in the spirit of promoting poetry and expression from a variety of poetic styles and voices. On top of all this, she is finishing her next book.
Beyond the frequent workshops, readings and panels Thompson is always doing, she is a magnanimous Los Angeles Poet Laureate because she was not only born in the city, she knows it from a lifetime of living in its districts. She attended Dorsey High School when it was one of the most diverse schools in LAUSD, she graduated from Scripps College in Claremont and now lives in Northeast Los Angeles. Thompson is a lawyer by training and sits on the boards of the Los Angeles Review of Books and Cave Canem. She was also the chair of the Board of Trustees at Scripps College. Her range of professional and local experience explains her large capacity and depth of L.A. knowledge.
"I believe I was fortunate on my educational path to attend institutions that were racially and culturally mixed," Thompson shares, "and as a result, allowed me to interact with students (and faculty) that exposed me to the broad swath of cultural life in the places I've lived. That exposure spurred me to want to engage with and celebrate the diversity of poetic voices that make L.A. such a unique place to practice our art."
In her most recent book "Fretwork" from 2019 there are several poems about growing up in L.A. in the 1960s and her rite of passage. I heard her read one of the poems, "In 1968, My Parents Were Still Negroes---" at the Los Angeles County Fair Grounds last April and the poem offers a powerful sociopolitical reflection on the changing times of the Civil Rights and Vietnam War era. The final five lines show the transition of the times and how she developed her worldview: "my parents didn't feel less Negro because John Carlos // head bowed, raised his fist. But I did. The Rodney Riots / rocked Jamaica. The Queen of Soul won Respect. At Yale, / women enrolled and Miss Chisholm got the votes. In 1968, / my parents were still Negroes. They never would be again."
Ultimately, a good poem like Thompson's above reveals universal truths about life and the speaker. While the poem teaches us about our world, we learn about the poet and also reflect on our own journeys. As "A Day of Poetry in LA," demonstrated poetry is more popular than ever and its reach extends across generations from schoolchildren and teenagers to grandparents and senior citizens. Humanity is hungry for meaning and the illumination that poetry offers. This is why poetry books are now selling better than ever and there are hundreds of public readings going on everyday across America and the world.
"It's important to know that every day," Hier declared, "in cities across the globe, poetry is being read and blooming into existence with every minute. Poets of all ages, from all backgrounds, are constantly crafting new poems at kitchen tables, in school, on buses, on glowing tablets lighting up faces." There was a room full of lit faces on August 13th at the Central Library. "A Day of Poetry in LA," was a smashing success.
Community building is the most important action of our century.Thich Nhat Hanh, poet
One final note, the Venice poet Linda Albertano who read that day passed away at 70 years of age on September 12th. According to Hier, she had been in touch with him every day leading up to the reading, hoping that she would be well enough to read. Albertano was awarded by the LA Weekly in 1989 as the city's best woman performance poet and over the years she had read in venues like Lollapalooza, the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas and at UCLA's Royce Hall. She was a part of the poetry troupe "Nearly Fatal Women," with Suzanne Lummis and Laurel Ann Bogen. Albertano was a compelling poet that electrified a room every time she shared a poem. She will be missed. The fact that her last public reading was in one of LA's most iconic spaces is fitting.
The great Vietnamese poet and spiritual leader Thich Nhat Hanh once said, "Community building is the most important action of our century." "A Day of Poetry in LA," accomplished this with flying colors.
