Tuesday, October 03, 2023

9/100,000 Poets For Change At Sims Library of Poetry

La Bloga has lent its virtual support with announcements and contests to mark annual 100,000 Poets for Change events. 

La Bloga-Tuesday was eager to attend this year's event, a poetry marathon combined with a memorial to the founder of the 100K movement, Michael Rothenberg, and artists Yvonne  de la Vega, and Amy Uyematsu.


The full-day event, hosted by Jessica Wilson Cardenas and Angel Miguel Lopez, introduced a number of visitors to the Sims Library of Poetry. 

The Library, a converted residence at 2702 W. Florence Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90043, library@communitylit.org, holds almost 7000 works representing 3400 poets sharing 700,000 poems.

La Bloga-Tuesday asked one of Saturday's featured readers, Thelma Reyna, for her observation on the substance of the day, since fotos show only that something good went down.

Here's Dr. Reyna's keen précis of the wonders of poems read aloud by the poets.

Some of the poems' topics were eradicating war, self-love/affirmation, police brutality/ young Black genocides, hunger, child  poverty, Dreamers, immigrant-animus, racism, [all focused upon] activism. 

I think the poet Ideas Aubrey symbolized the main message: the power and endurance of poetry in facing and examining challenges, setbacks, sufferings that we universally face. Poetry saved him from gangs and energized him, inspired him, kept him hopeful and striving. Poetry does that to all of us who rail against the above iniquities. It focuses our energy and gives a clear, audible voice to our angst and wished-for ameliorations of wrongs. 

Theme: the poetry takes all our disparate disenchantments and binds us together into one collective of visionaries who want to express how society/ civilization can be better. And we DO express. Poetry is the megaphone that puts our dreams out there in words, images, and feelings most human beings can embrace.

"We DO express," Dr. Reyna emphasizes. The fotos surely prove it.

It was a day of superb poetry beautifully performed in as diverse an array of styles as one can expect from contemporary, urban, poets of color: drumming, singing, chanting, marching, call-and-response, hyperbole, battle protreptic, dirge, elegant language, vulgate speech.

None of this is heard in a photograph. All of this is heard, and seen, on the real-time streaming channel 100K Poets ran throughout the event. La Bloga is not aware of an archive of the program, hence, let these photographs serve as a documentation that these poets were here, that these nine artists performed their best change-poems on a day one hundred thousand+ poets express their wishes and visions for Peace, Justice, and Sustainability.

Julio the Conga Poet Rodriguez
Ideas Aubrey
"Ideas Aubrey symbolized the main message: the power and endurance of poetry in facing and examining challenges, setbacks, sufferings that we universally face. Poetry saved him from gangs and energized him, inspired him, kept him hopeful and striving. Poetry does that to all of  us who rail against the above iniquities."
- Thelma Reyna 

Shonda Buchanan
A fully engaged day for Shonda Buchanan who rushes to the reading after the morning's Altadena Poets Laureate Ode to the Land Workshop with Shonda Buchanan.

Sean Hill


Angel Miguel Lopez; Co-Host

Richard Modiano; Tribute & Poem
Richard Modiano shared his Tribute in Memoriam to Amy Uyematsu, whose widower joined today's audience to hear his wife's commemoration. Modiano also read an authored poem relating appearance and identity.
Thelma Reyna
Thelma Reyna's quiet delivery offers subtle contrast to her poem's powerful evocation being trapped in the depths of desperate poverty.

Aiyana Sha'niel
Not yet 21, Aiyana Sha'niel's self affirming call-and-response poet engaged every voice. "I love myself," we answered. And it was true, and if not, let it be true soon.


Antonieta Villamil
Antonieta Villamil writes principally in Spanish and today communicates in Inglés.


Tres Grandes Mujeres y Poetas: Publisher, Chairwoman of the Board, Founder
 
Poet Thelma Reyna is Publisher of Golden Foothills Press
Poet Shonda Buchanan is Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees at Beyond Baroque
Poet Jessica Wilson Cardenas Founded L.A. Poet Society, Organized & Hosted Today's 100,000 Poets For Change Event

1 comment:

  1. Thank goodness for poets who keep us aware of what needs to change and what good changes are needed. Thanks to La Bloga for focusing on this event.

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