Poet Lynne Thompson closed the opening ceremony of the third annual June Jubilee celebration at the Los Angeles Central Library with a poem inspired by a quote from activist Fannie Lou Hamer: "Nobody's free until everybody's free," sending the crowd into the day's festivities with uplift and purpose.
As we approach the 2022 holidays—and the many ways we all celebrate it—folks are wondering what to gift their poetry-loving family and friends. What follows is a (necessarily incomplete) list of poetry collections that have been published in the second half of this year that you should consider.
In my role as the City’s Poet Laureate, l issued a call to L.A.’s middle schools for students’ poems responding to the following questions: What location or site in the City means the most to you & why? What part of Los Angeles would you want to save forever?
At what age did you begin writing poetry: Were there poets who encouraged or inspired you in the early stages and if so, who and what encouragement or inspiration did they provide?
One of the benefits of literature is that it allows the reader to empathize with the protagonists or—in the case of poets—with the themes and issues that concern them.
