Want to participate in Truckee's project to develop our Art and Culture identity? Write a poem

 

As Truckee considers how to build on its identity as a Cultural and Historical District, I've found guidance in California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick's statewide poetry project. In his project, he asks all Californians to explore their relationship to place as a door into seeing themselves in new ways with the world around us. He invites us to write a poem that describes about the communities we live within. This project empowers the variety of voices in California through writing. 

In Lee Herrick’s words:

“Each of us has a unique experience and relationship with California. It is a place of bounty and innovation, opportunity and progress, as well as difficulty and violence, challenges and areas of need. Poetry can be a bridge to personal and societal change. It can show us new ways of seeing ourselves and the world around us. Poetry can illuminate and inspire. Poetry is a way of expressing and imagining the ideas inside of us. I believe there is poetry in everyone. I believe poetry is everywhere in this great state.

With this in mind, in partnership with the California Arts Council, I am pleased to launch a statewide poetry writing project, Our California. Our California invites all Californians to write a poem about their town, city, or "their" state. What do you love about it? What joys does it bring? What would you change about it? How could it be improved?

I hope you will consider joining the chorus of Californians writing about our state. Our California is open to all Californians: all ages, all poetry experience levels, documented or not, free or not. We want to hear your unique voice.”

The statewide project invites all Californians to write a poem about their state and share it on the Poet Laureate’s website. No matter the writer’s age, origin, gender, or background, all are invited to submit their work to the project. The goals of Our California are:

• To encourage Californians to write poetry, to think about their communities, and to realize that their voice is important.
• To inspire Californians to write poetry that uplifts all people through awareness of social justice or civic engagement.
• To elevate poetry writing as a way to explore one's creativity and relationship to place.
  

Here is how to participate:

Write a poem (any form, up to 50 lines) about your town, city, or state. Consider these prompts (or write something completely different!):

Prompt 1: Write a poem about your town, your city, or “your” California. What do you love about it? What joy do you find there? You may also include what you don't love about it and what you would change. What do you envision or hope for?

Prompt 2: Write a poem about a memory or experience rooted in your town, city, or state. What makes the experience unique to the location?

Tips from Lee:

1. Avoid clichés or aphorisms.

2. Use unique, specific details and imagery.

3. Be true to yourself and your ideas.

4. Have fun!

This project is inspired by LeeHerrick’s poem “My California.” 

My California by Lee Herrick

 

Here, an olive votive keeps the sunset lit,

the Korean twenty-somethings talk about hyphens,

 

graduate school and good pot. A group of four at a window

table in Carpinteria discuss the quality of wines in Napa Valley versus Lodi.

 

Here, in my California, the streets remember the Chicano

poet whose songs still bank off Fresno's beer soaked gutters

 

and almond trees in partial blossom. Here, in my California

we fish out long noodles from the pho with such accuracy

 

you'd know we'd done this before. In Fresno, the bullets

tire of themselves and begin to pray five times a day.

 

In Fresno, we hope for less of the police state and more of a state of grace.

In my California, you can watch the sun go down

 

like in your California, on the ledge of the pregnant

twenty-second century, the one with a bounty of peaches and grapes,

 

red onions and the good salsa, wine and chapchae.

Here, in my California, paperbacks are free,

 

farmer's markets are twenty four hours a day and

always packed, the trees and water have no nails in them,

 

the priests eat well, the homeless eat well.

Here, in my California, everywhere is Chinatown,

 

everywhere is K-Town, everywhere is Armeniatown,

everywhere a Little Italy. Less confederacy.

 

No internment in the Valley.

Better history texts for the juniors.

 

In my California, free sounds and free touch.

      Free questions, free answers.

Free songs from parents and poets, those hopeful bodies of light.

Lee Herrick, "My California" from Gardening Secrets of the Dead. Copyright © 2012 by Lee Herrick, published by WordTech Communications LLC.  Reprinted by permission of Lee Herrick.