By Brian Dunlap

Last week the American Academy of Poets announced its 2021 Poet Laureate Fellows, including West Hollywood Poet Laureate, Brian Sonia-Wallace. Sonia-Wallace, along with 22 other individual awardees “serve as Poets Laureate of states and cities across the U. S. and will be leading public poetry programs in their respective communities in the year ahead,” the Academy said in a press release. The Fellows will each receive $50,000 (or $25,000 each in the case of the shared Poet Laureate position in Montana) for a combined total of $1.1 million. In addition, the Academy will provide $100,000+ total to 14 local 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations that have agreed to support the Fellows’ proposed projects. 

On Facebook Sonia-Wallace said of being picked as one of the Fellows, that he was “WTF’d and OMG’d” to be chosen, “which basically means I’ve won .5 RuPaul’s Drag Races but for poetry!”

He went on to say the award “will support my writing and LGBTQ+ literary organizing work over the next year with the City of West Hollywood & WeHo Arts, plus and additional $10k for my community partners at APLA Health where I’ll be working with folks in the HIV+ community to share their stories through writing.”

As a social practice poet whose work straddles the line between literature and community engagement, it’s been an unexpected journey for Sonia-Wallace to reach this point in his his career. “7 years ago when I got laid off from my job and became a street poet (for what I thought was going to be a month) I never dreamed of this level of institutional support.”

And the Fellowship comes at an especially difficult time in his life, as Sonia-Wallace continues to process the loss of his father, who he was extremely close to. “I’ve been working on taking over my dad’s car, my dad’s phone. It hurts lots.” To help himself cope, Sonia-Wallace “went to MMA class and practiced hitting things and sitting on people and also being hit and sat on.”

Stay tuned for more info about the digital writing workshops, community events, advocacy work, and youth projects Brian Sonia-Wallace is organizing as Poet Laurate of West Hollywood.