The Laureate Fellows’ Collaborative Poem
A cross-country, exquisite corpse by thirteen regional poet laureate fellows from our 2021-2022 cohort examining the role of a laureate in community.
Always a shift in definitions:
auteur author into community worker,
not we are here to hear your voice
but are here to give us voice
(we seem to have mislaid it on the way
to society, did you bring a flashlight?)
Call it impropriety — we aim to misbehave.
To remind you all your money is no remedy
for the grave.
Preface — Brian Sonia-Wallace
West Hollywood, CA
A Poet Laureate is
a servant's heart
on a stark canvas
of parchment. The role
is honey in the mouth and bitter
in the belly. We are an unfolding
scroll of judgment
pronounced
in sacred tones.
Andrea Sanderson
San Antonio, TX
Laureate of faith found her—
ancient stone under the moon
without breath — wind abandoned
in her core fossilized poems recall
words hemorrhaging forests
Semaj Brown
Flint City, MI
I was taught: heart
with mind speaks truth. Dark-
bright, bright-dark,
& the infinite sheen
of the in-between. Who
am I, are you, to lift
our voice?
With calloused hands
& histories we carry each
other. We honor our dead. We gather
& plant the seeds, hoping to bend
time to a softer curve.
Luisa A. Igloria
Virginia
copper leaves sit upon a neighboring tin roof
and I can’t help but believe these too
are a lesson in speaking of sooth
creation to nature
to observation
to writing it down
to a poem it becomes
the writer's blood filling with warmth
to have created and continued
to have lived with bronze sights
on a frozen morning
Georgina Marie
Lake County, CA
Or in populous cities:
The varied carols—where in poems,
Singing voices speak,
Speaking voices sing.
Lloyd Schwartz
Somerville, MA
I was taught to gather
Only what belonged to me
To never pick wildflowers
But instead commit
To memory the shape
And sound of what they
Shelter, painted lady
Bumblebee, when I say
Speak poetry—
I mean know the language
Of wild and fragile things
Speak of flight and firelight
How to measure a wingspan
A lifespan, a split second
That changes everything
Carry each other
The poet says, this matters
More than anything
Aileen Cassinetto
San Mateo County, CA
To not be
wind wear, but to let
the air guide you...
Marcus Amaker
Charleston, SC
To make sacred our sadness
Unveiled into triumphs of story
Magdalena Gomez
Springfield, MA
This unfolding
This cultural conjuring
This exercise in ritual
The poet does not write, the poet sings
Bobby LeFebre
Colorado
The poet whose right to song
under-rings and overhears,
conjures covens, translates, conjugation,
folds into the public soil,
rocks out again
Melissa Kwasny
Montana
Smooth and jagged crumbs of earth
Planted and strewn, surprising the toes of giants
Leveling giants to ground-level truths
Poets, reclined into the landscape
clapping dirt and ink from their hands
Dasha Kelly Hamilton
Wisconsin and Milwaukee
ridding themselves of illusions and excess
Red clay makes fertile soil
for growing imaginations and generations.
Poets tend society’s gardens.
Nurturing seeds, plucking weeds.
Chasity Gunn
Elgin, IL
Copyright © 2022 by the poets. Used with permission of the poets.
Brian Sonia-Wallace
Brian Sonia-Wallace is the author of the memoir The Poetry of Strangers (Harper Collins, 2020). He is the 4th Poet Laureate of the City of West Hollywood. In 2021, Sonia-Wallace received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.
Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson
Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson is a poet, singer, and hip hop artist. She is the poet laureate of San Antonio, Texas. In 2021, Sanderson was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow.
Semaj Brown
Semaj Brown was born in Detroit, Michigan. A poet, author, playwright, and educator, she was named the first poet laureate of Flint, Michigan, in 2019. In 2021, she received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.
Luisa A. Igloria
Luisa A. Igloria is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Southern Illinois University Press, 2020). She was appointed as the Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia in 2020. In 2021, she received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.
Georgina Marie Guardado
Georgina Marie Guardado was raised in Lakeport, California. She was named the Lake County Poet Laureate in 2020, the first Mexican-American to serve in this role. In 2021, Guardado received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.
Lloyd Schwartz
Aileen Cassinetto
Aileen Cassinetto was born and raised in Manila, Philippines. She is the Poet Laureate of San Mateo County, California. In 2021, she was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow.
Marcus Amaker
Marcus Amaker is a poet, recording artist, and mentor. He is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently The Birth of All Things (Free Verse Press, 2020). In 2021, Amaker received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship
Magdalena Gómez
Magdalena Gómez was born and raised in the Bronx, New York. The Poet Laureate of Springfield, Massachusetts from 2019 to 2021, Gómez received an Academy of American Poets Fellowship in 2021.
Bobby LeFebre
Bobby LeFebre is an award-winning writer, performer and cultural worker. He was named Colorado’s eighth Poet Laureate in 2019. In 2021, LeFebre received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.
Melissa Kwasny
Dasha Kelly Hamilton
Dasha Kelly Hamilton is a writer and performance artist. She is a national Rubinger Fellow and, concurrently, Poet Laureate for the City of Milwaukee and the State of Wisconsin. In 2021, she received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.
Chasity Gunn
Chasity Gunn is the inaugural poet laureate of Elgin, Illinois. In 2021, she received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.