Youth Poet Laurate Amanda Gorman Offers Words of Hope Amind Coronavirous Pandemic
By Brian Dunlap
Los Ángeles native Amanda Gorman, the U.S.’s inaugural youth poet laureate, is offering Americans some words of inspiration to help get through this stressful time. Her words, like all poetry, helps people understand the world around them, to help contextualize and organize discordant aspects of our lives. Former Poet Laureate of Los Ángeles Luis J. Rodriguez says, “Her poetry draws on deep ideas, images, stories and concerns. She exudes confidence in her voice, her presentation and in the social issues she considers paramount.”
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For the next installation in our interview series with contemporary poets, Peter Mishler corresponded with Victoria Chang. Victoria Chang’s books include OBIT (April 2020), Barbie Chang, The Boss, Salvinia Molesta, and Circle. Her children’s picture book, Is Mommy?, was illustrated by Marla Frazee and published by Beach Lane Books/Simon & Schuster. It was named a New York Times Notable Book. Her middle grade novel Love, Love will be published by Sterling Publishing in 2020. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, a Pushcart Prize, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and a Lannan Residency Fellowship. She lives in Los Angeles and is the program chair of Antioch’s Low-Residency MFA Program.
Matt, thanks for your time I know you’re a busy dude. I’ve never done one before but congratulations on being my first interview. I’ve known you for about 5 years now maybe. I feel I know you pretty well. How would you summarize yourself and your artistry for those that don’t know you?
Earlier this month, Compton poet Jenise Miller hosted the release party for her debut chapbook The Blvd. (DSTL Arts, 2019) at a packed Patria Coffee. The audience connected with her poems that depicted and celebrated the vibrant Compton community she grew up in. The book centers around the apartment complex she lived in called The Blvd. and depicts in part, her black Panamanian heritage.
On March 16, 1991, 15-year-old Latasha Harlins went to a local convenience store in South Los Angeles to buy a bottle of orange juice. Owner Soon Ja Du accused the teenage girl of shoplifting, an altercation ensued, and in a split-second captured on video, Du shot Harlins in the back of the head. She died with two dollars in her hand. A jury found Du guilty of voluntary manslaughter, but against their recommendation, the judge sentenced the Korean-born woman to a $500 fine, probation, and community service.
Loyola Marymount University writing instructor and rhetorical arts fellow Shonda Buchanan understands how abuse and self-hatred — the kind that ripples through families for generations — can set the tone for interpersonal relationships for decades, if not centuries.
The Poetry Salon has released the six episode of its Poetry Saloncast. This episode’s interview is with local poet Alexis Rhone Fancher, whose work has been described as blazing and frank and her submissions regimen ambitious. Fancher discusses her work-ethic and her ability to detach herself from her writing, even when writing about very personal subjects.
Set against two distinct epochs in the history of Pasadena, California, Arroyo tells the parallel stories of a young man and his dog in 1913 and 1993. In both lives, they are drawn to the landmark Colorado Street Bridge, or “Suicide Bridge,” as the locals call it, which suffered a lethal collapse during construction but still opened to fanfare in the early twentieth century automobile age. When the refurbished structure commemorates its 80th birthday, one of the planet’s best known small towns is virtually unrecognizable from its romanticized, and somewhat invented, past.
Los Angeles Literature 