 Well, good evening everyone I'm Luis Serrera the city librarian here in San Francisco, and it's really my pleasure my honor to welcome you to the fifth inaugural address by our fifth poet laureate Diane de Prima Truly is as I mentioned a pleasure to welcome you here, and I am absolutely delighted that the library is the centerpiece of the mayor's poet laureate program because we have a very strong tradition of literary Programs and from my perspective the poet laureate initiative Enhances and complements what the library does We're also very proud of the fact that we have a lot of partnerships with bookstores and Authors and poets out in our city that really celebrates that amazing legacy that we should be so proud of here in San Francisco in terms of promoting Literary events, but also Books and certainly tonight Poetry, so we're delighted that all of you could join us for this great event As city librarian, it's been also my pleasure to serve on the 12-member selection committee that vets the Nominations and we submit our recommendations to the mayor I'd like to thank the members of the committee, and I know some of them are in the audience So I want to take a moment to acknowledge folks that have joined us Bob Booker, I know is here Robin E. Kiss Bob. Where are you? Thank you for joining us Robin E. Kiss Mike Farah Jewel Gomez, who you'll hear from later Forrest Hammer Jack Hirschman Voice Jenkins voice is also in the audience. I know I saw her earlier James Cass Janice Mirigatani, I know is also here Byron Spooner And especially Marshal Schneider from my shop here at the library. It's done a wonderful job of organizing We have an amazing legacy of poet laureates and so I want to take a moment to sort of walk us past some of the history Beginning with our first poet laureate who was none other than Lawrence Ferlinghetti Pointed by Mayor Willie Brown Served from 1998 through February 2000 and just to give you a sense of the legacy there They're remarkable in what they've done In his role he wrote an ongoing poetry column poetry as news in the San Francisco Chronicle and Through his city lights foundation. He also initiated a series of commemorative books of poems by each successive poet laureates so we look forward to our next series of Wonderful works. Our second poet laureate was Janice Mirigatani who is also in the audience. I'd like to acknowledge her Janice was also appointed by Mayor Willie Brown and served from March 2000 through March 2002 She was she worked extensively with youth and teen programming and produced workshops at the library to bring an appreciation A poetry to young people. She's also very well known for her passion in working with poor people And attention to issues of social justice DeVora major was our third poet laureate She served from April 2002 to April 2004 and she initiated a very important 18 month program entitled city reflections war and peace on our streets Where she engaged the public in writing poems that are meaningful to them on topics of social justice Her selected poems were published in the San Francisco Chronicle as well as the library's publication at the library And last but not least certainly the last poet laureate was Jack Hirschman Was the first poet laureate selected by Mayor Gavin Newsom's administration and he served from January 2006 through January 2008 He partnered with the Friends of the Library and the Mayor's Office of Protocol to initiate an amazing program that still exists today It's the Poets 11 and you've heard about that where he solicited poems and readings from participants in each of the Supervisorial districts so that we could really have people by the community members He was also the visionary behind the very successful International Poetry Festival, so we're delighted to have had his legacy and we know that Diane de Prima in her tenure will be no exception We had a wonderful conversation She perhaps will tell a little bit about some of her ideas, but I know she's already been working in conducting workshops for children on poetry and Appreciation in our neighborhood so we know that this model will hopefully be expanded throughout the city And now it's my pleasure to welcome to the stage our Library Commission president a poet in her own right Jewel Gomez who will do the honors in introducing our poet laureate She has served in the library Commission since 2005 and I'm very proud to say that she is our library Commission president Jewel and welcome to San Francisco Public Library one of the great Democratic institutions in the country The year was 1958 and the world was turning on its axis like normal Except nothing is ever like normal where the world is concerned remember 1958 Fidel Castro declared victory over the Cuban dictator Fulhinso Batista Elvis got drafted into the army 30 million people died in the famine in China Arthur Miller refused to name names at the House on American Activities Commission Iraq ended its monarchy and became a republic and Alaska became a state The first New York City chapter of the lesbian liberation organization daughters of Bilitis was founded remember 1958 Only one year before the Supreme Court declared that women were equal enough to serve on juries and Birth control was still two years in the future to be approved by the FDA President Eisenhower initiated Operation wetback to stem immigration of Mexicans The US government disappeared 60 Native American nations from the government roles Nikita Khrushchev became premier of the Soviet Union 1958 and separate water fountains for blacks and whites were still the norm in many communities and Bethel Baptist Church in Alabama was bombed by the KKK Poet Ezra Pound was released from the lunatic asylum Appointment of the first Chinese American judge on the continental US was still a year away Our favorite songs were by Bobby Darren a rediscovered Woody Guthrie the platters Richie Valens the chipmunks and Frank Sinatra We were watching gunsmoke on TV and reading Lolita Or we were playing with that new invention the hula hoop 1958 Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence for Linguetti were acquitted of obscenity charges because of the production of howl San Francisco was in the movies in Hitchcock's Vertigo and Women were in the movies either as Auntie Mame Gigi or a cat on a hot tin roof remember Remembering is a revolutionary concept a path from here to there a path We cannot afford to ignore She asked us to remember The world I evoke is the one into which came the first collection of poetry published by Diane de Prima This kind of bird flies backward which you could pick up in 1958 for 95 cents and worth every penny 43 books later that Diane de Prima has distinguished herself as a poet and teacher and a bay and in the Bay Area and across the nation best known for affiliation with the beat poets of the 1950s and 60s a Movement of writers that questioned how the world was turning on its axis and a movement that sought a personal relationship with the universe rather than dependence on the mainstream definition of who we are that movement grew out of and set the stage for and Complimented many of the progressive political movements that surrounded it and that followed it Diane survived and thrived being identified with a movement Her reach goes into the future just as that movement would have hoped De Prima's writing has been translated into more than 20 languages She's been the recipient of awards and fellowships from institutions such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Poetry Association and received the Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement The greatest testimonials to her work might come though from her students Who in here is studied with Diane? There you go. There you go There you go. Hi guys She shared her knowledge of writing and spiritual traditions over the past 40 years with students on a broad variety of educational institutions including many of them out here the California California College of Arts and Crafts New college where she helped establish with David Meltzer the masters in poetic program where I got the joy of teaching San Francisco Institute of Magical and Healing she has read her work at more than 300 institutions around the world Her writing grows out of the traditions of activism and personal growth embodied in her study of Zen Tibetan Buddhism and alchemy and She has helped change many things into gold The idea of who a woman poet could be the way that women tell our sexual stories The concept of how the world may be moved Deliberately forward rather than allow to slip backward the sacred quality of everything around us This is knowledge that is gold She's the mother of five children and I'm only mentioning that I'm sure that we didn't mention that with Lawrence or Jack But I Mention it because as we know the raising of children often falls on the mother So to be a mother to raise children and to continue to write is no small Accomplishment, that's another piece of gold that she gave us She's been arrested for obscenity denounced for taking LSD and Celebrated for her work as a visual artist her collections of poetry her Collages autobiographies lectures and theater pieces are the gold. She's created for us And what this position as poet laureate celebrates and her new works will add to that treasure and So many others never tired of celebrating her Adrienne rich called her loba poems a great geography of the female imagination Maxine Hong Kingston calls her work primal magic Peter Coyote called her Bonafide rootstock Alan Ginsberg called her a genius. I Celebrate our newest poet laureate by quoting deprimer herself This then is the gift the world has given us Diane deprimer I Wanted to say of course. Thank you to all the folks that Nominated me and made me poet laureate, but I decided That to name all those folks again after it gets to be like a litany, you know and really finally I have to say Thank you to all sentient beings There isn't a thing that's happened that hasn't helped to put each of us where we are so So thanks everybody and this is what I've written for us When I came to Santa I should put my glasses on I Tend to see right for a while and then this starts to be double or fuzzy or runs backwards or forwards when I came to San Francisco in 1961 to visit I came to a magical place a city of bright air of Bevel glass of jazz of poetry stained glass windows tucked above the front doors and even the poorest neighborhoods Vistas of bay and hills and sailboats that took my breath away while I waited for a bus. I Moved here in 1968 Bringing with me 14 grown-ups so-called and all of their accompanying children and pets horns and typewriters and at least one rifle we moved from the Hotel Albert on University and 10th in New York to a 14 room house on the panhandle of the park and With in-law apartment and garden that I'd rented or sent someone out to rent for us for $300 a month Is this mic making pops should I do something different David? I was make maker of sound. Is it okay? Okay, I Came away. I came away from a city where I'd run the poets theater and poets press Produced the Mimeograph newsletter the floating bear first with my lover Leroy Jones And later when I left him and married someone else alone He resigned he said for personal reasons, but it was a city that had by that time grown too harsh too hard to live in a City in which I'd seen too many deaths. I Came here to new dreams To a choice to be active to actualize What in New York? I'd only been able to write about I came here to work in new ways for change The grace of possibility that had opened up on this coast Because in the New York of the 1950s When I where I came of age as a poet one wrote but one didn't try to bring bring about What could be? And that's I have a note here to read a poem which I didn't Note I didn't mark in my things at a time, but I have here. It's called song for baby. Oh Unborn I can't tell you how many young mothers have written to me about but this is what that New York was like This is what I was looking at when they decided to be a single mom Song for baby. Oh unborn written for Jeannie my oldest probably in early 1957 sweetheart When you break through You'll find a poet here Not quite what one would choose. I Won't promise you'll never go hungry or that you won't be sad on this gutted breaking globe But I can show you baby enough to love To break your heart Forever I grew up in the world of McCarthy of the death of the Rosenbergs and of Wilhelm Reich of Endless witch hunts. I remember to this day where I was sitting It was on the steps of the new school for social research when I got the news that the Rosenbergs had been executed I was still 18 You trusted very few and you trusted them totally you never talked politics or sex in public Or talked about a lot of the literature you were actually reading I Worked for years in a bookstore where you'd better know the customer well if you were to pull out a copy of Jean Genet Or even Henry Miller Where he when he or she asked they were all illegal and I'm going to read a poem from a little later when I had a theater which was also getting busted for Showing a Jean Genet movie among other things It's a silly poem one of five theater poems From the early 1960s actually, how can I be serious when there are so many cops at the door? Threatening me with papers or asking to see my papers like in a more moral Oberon movie But I don't feel glamorous would you if you hadn't washed your hair in a month or combed it in a week for that matter Logan mile smiley says Alan's a genius Jimmy wearing hates everything we do but continues to do it with us They keep stealing Ray Johnson's pictures out of the lobby and changing the front door lock Well, we've been here through a blizzard a raid and a rainstorm. So I guess we're here to stay The same old people keep coming back every weekend to see the same place I had begun writing poetry when I was seven and I never stopped But I was twice that age all of 14 when I gave myself wholeheartedly to the poem I've been reading Keats's letters reading Shelly and Thomas Wolf with my friends while we were going to a high school at Fround on all things romantic When I had a kind of epiphany My mind moved in an instant from hero worship from gazing upward to Peership Gazing straight on I realized there was no reason I couldn't do what these folks had done There was no reason I couldn't at least try at that moment I Made what I knew then would be a lifelong commitment From then on for many years. I didn't let a day go by without writing Poetry became the guiding force in my life It led me a few years later to drop out of college and find an apartment on what was then the Lower East Side Poetry led me to study ancient Greek to visit Ezra Pound in St. Elizabeth's to found the poet's theater with my friends to learn offset printing and raise the money to buy my Fairchild Davidson press. I was very proud of it Poetry gave me a good rich life on the East Coast New York City was my school my university for many years It was where I learned the discipline of daily work at one's craft and learned how to look at painting listen to music Really see dance see Peter and One day poetry let me know for sure that it was time to move west to my real home San Francisco I'm going to read a poem that I wrote rather Not so long ago in the late 80s or 90s, but it occurred to me one day finally that one makes a deal with the art Secretly one expects something back Whatever it is and I was looking at what I felt like expected back and I call this poem Which I might might be what I'd like to call my city lights book the poetry deal I don't want to say I want to say I don't want anything, but the whisper of your scarf as The I'm right directly to poetry. The you is this poetry I want to say that I don't want anything But the whisper of your scarf as you do the dance of the seven veils The soft sound of your satin slippers on the carpet and the raw still bloody meat You toss my way that I chew on all night long. I Don't want anything you don't already bring trips to other worlds Dimensions of light or sound the rides on the back of a leopard on those black rocks High over some sea or gorge But it isn't true. I Want all that the sheet whitening of quasars the way you do that you dance between all those colors Yes, but I want you as mother Sister the stone walls of the cave. I lie in in trance for seven days the mist around the cabin That makes it invisible. I Want the flair and counterpoint of words and I want the non-verbal what can never be spoken as a foundation I'd like my daily bread however you arrange it and I'd also like to be bread or Sustenance for some others Even after I've left a Song they can walk a trail whip. I Don't think we've talked about money or success or fame whatever that is for a long time I Hoped you'd forget that part Now I'll do as you say about all that What seems most useful? I'd like to keep learning how to brew bitter herbs and how to make them translucent edible Almost crystalline What I offered you wasn't much you can always wake me like my closest friend or most loved lover You can burn my favorite snapshot of myself Lead me on paths or non paths anywhere You cannot make sense for years and I'll still believe you Drop husbands tribes and jobs as you wish You mostly aren't jealous have taken your place alongside gardens bread-making children printing presses But when your eyes shoot sparks and you say Choose between me and it It has always gone Except when it was my kids. I Took that risk and we worked it out somehow Now I've come to a place where there are no kids no tribe no bread no garden Only you in your two faces Formed and formless Nothing to hold back now and Nothing to offer. I stand before you a piece of wind with a notebook and pen Which one of us isn't dances And who is the quasar that actually 1993 it says on the end of that poem. I was wrong about the 80s Sanford the San Francisco that I came to in 1968 Was welcoming and sweet as it was tough and scary You're writing help bring all this about Peter Berg had said to me two months earlier I was then in San Francisco on a reading trip staying with Lenore candle Now he said come and enjoy the fruits It was hardly that simple and I knew it But the possibility of actualizing some of the dreams I've absorbed From my anarchist grandfather and hung on to ever since the chance to actually act on what I believed in To take a shot at creating the world as we dreamed it It made me eager to join these amazing folks poets diggers Panthers Zenny's Outriders and rebels of all sorts in the hope-filled and wild experiment that was bubbling away in the city 1968 My way was made easier by many Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Nancy Peters at City Lights Advanced money on the revolutionary letters. I had yet to finish Michael and Joanna McClure Lenore Candell Peter Coyote Kirby Doyle and Dee Dee Morrill Lee Lou Welsh Marilyn Rose the folks of the Oracle many many others made it clear that I and my sprawling and non-descript tribe were welcome here But there was plenty of work to do and plenty of room for all of us Back in New York my friends and I indulged in some creative financing Spurred on by the many assassinations in the news remember Remember 1968 and a general sense of urgency in the air. I Returned from that reading trip to San Francisco I returned from the reading trip from San Francisco to New York in April and by summer solstice We were all ensconced in our newly rented house on Oak Street revolutionary letter number four left to themselves People grow their hair Left to themselves. They take off their shoes Left to themselves. They make love sleep easily Share blankets dope and children They are not lazy or afraid They plant seeds they smile they speak to one another the word Coming into its own Touch of love on the brain the ear We return with the sea the tides we return as often as leaves as numerous as grass Gentle insistent We remember the way Our babes toddled barefoot through the cities of the universe The diggers immediately put us to work My household was sponsoring for delivering free free food to 25 urban communes twice a week and Free fish which was available on Saturday mornings only Friday was fish day in this still Catholic City Meanwhile, I was writing revolutionary letters at a fast clip Mailing them to Liberation News Service from there They went out to over 20. I mean 200 free newspapers all over the US and Canada I also performed them sometimes with a guitar accompaniment by Coyote on the steps of City Hall While my comrades handed out the digger papers and tried to persuade startled office workers on their lunch breaks That they should drop out and join the revolution. I Had a good friend an old friend of will gear would he got three Pete's cigarette and a barefoot potter a Communist millionaire who had a ranch near Mariposa He joyfully supplied us with sides of beef and whole sheep for our larger beans and other shindigs I made a few overnight trips in a pickup truck to bring home the goodies for those occasions I'm gonna skip the next the revolutionary letter that I was gonna read. I'll read the beginning of it Just so you get the sense Otherwise, we didn't have time for it drove across San Joaquin Valley with Kirby Doyle Grooving getting digger free digger meat for free city convention Grooving behind talk of Kirby's family been here a long time Grooving friendship renewed neat pickup truck. We stopped at a gas station man uptight at the site of us Site of Kirby's hair his friendly loose face my hair our dress man surly uptight We drove away. I'll read it brought down across fields of insecticide and migrant workers and man I said that cat so uptight What's he so uptight about? It's not your hair not really It's just what the TV tells him about hippies got him scared what he reads in his magazines got him scared We got to come out from behind the image sit down with him and so on You get the idea It was good times For time the free bank lived on top of my refrigerator It was a shoebox full of money. I never knew how much was in there I didn't really care anyone who needed cash could come by the house and take some Anyone who had extra that they didn't need and there were many rock musicians dealers among others would drop some off The whereabouts of the free bank rotated from one digger house to another But the bank itself was solvent the shoebox was full for at least six months that I know of Which is proof enough for me that such institutions are possible San Francisco was Also that we might as well print our own money and forget about them all Tia San Francisco was then and still is for me the place where you can take your dreams into the street and make them happen Make change happen. I Wrote this next letter. I want to read revolutionary letter. I wrote it on in a truck as I was going from Tassau horror to a A Demonstration read that I had been asked to read at UC Santa Cruz. It was when we had started bombing Cambodia Many of your children don't know what I'm talking about. That's okay. Someone will explain San Francisco note I Think I'll stay on this earthquake fault near this still active volcano in this armed for fortress Facing a dying ocean and covered with dirt while the streets burn up and the rocks fly and pepper gas Lays us out because that's where my friends. Are you bastards? Not that you know what that means Ain't gonna cop to it ain't gonna be scared no more. We all know the same songs Mushrooms butterflies. We all have the same babies dig it the woods are big still pretty big guys Dig well, let's see. Where am I up to here? I Know because I'm told Pages I've gotten mixed up Yes, that's where I'm up to I know because I'm told It's been repeated to me by all kinds of folks on NPR by Michael Krasny is in the paper It's a fact of life for my younger poetry students than that San Francisco Even the mission the western edition and so on is too expensive for young artists the dancers poets Musicians are moving somewhere else and every once in a while I read the paper and realize how much of my city is now run by the unfun party That's about UN hyphen pH UN I Called them the unfun party the surrealists call them the miserable lists They can be Democrats Republicans radicals. It doesn't matter One way you can I've identified them as they don't even know how to distinguish between noise and music or Between vandalism and art. They just wanted out of their neighborhood They are afraid people might be having a good time The unfun party has unfortunately gotten very big in San Francisco It can now be found on many boards and planning commissions selling fear selling puritanical memorials Making rules about arrows Lumping all drugs together. So the one high school kid I met while teaching told me I might as well shoot heroin I vote I'm already evil. I smoke pot But I'm old enough so that most of the time I suffer from the synodity of Stardust in my eyes. I think they call it the beginning of cataracts I read you a recent poem from last this past spring. You'll see about stardust. It's called reality is no obstacle Refused to obey Refused to sleep Refused to turn away Refused to close your eyes Refused to shut your ears Refused silence while you can still sing Refused discourse in lieu of embracement Come to no end that is not a beginning and I let that stardust these cataracts The dust or bus exhaust or whatever it is I let it convince me that I live in the place I dreamed of when I came here the place I knew San Francisco was going to grow into when I moved here over 40 years ago Remember what the imagination seizes as beauty must be true said Keats So a San Francisco where all sexual preferences are good all pleasure and delight is Wonderful as long as there is joy and communication and no one cares about marriage and And no one by the way wants to join the army any army who why would you do that? Where no drug is criminalized though some are more useful than others and Addictions are treated benignly and without judgment Where everyone is taught how to use psychedelics? Even how to use pot just as one is taught both safety and pleasure in sex education And the mass psychology of fascism by Willem Reich is required reading in high school In the fifth grade kids memorized the Declaration of Human Rights a San Francisco where no one is hungry and free meals are festive communal banquets or Delivered and eloquently served to those who can't or don't want to go out or to eat in a crowd Where all folks are housed as and where and with whom they choose because housing is a basic human right? Where health care is free and available to all in all its forms Acupuncture Western medicine Chiropractic organ boxes hypnosis shamans of every sex are your Veta magical ritual the laying on their pants modes I haven't even dreamed of the healers have offices if they wish on huge and greenie campuses Where folks are paid to play flutes or bongos under the trees and make all the patients feel welcome and The schools are full of poetry music painting both building farming Astronomy jazz sculpture studio recording whatever the kids deem useful and want to learn I Have a revolutionary letter I was going to read there, but I think I want to keep going because I want to have time for questions The college is also a free as they were when I was in New York as a youngster and full of excitement Because the people who are there really want to be there and they're studying only what they want to know Where all the empty buildings have been turned into theaters meeting halls performance spaces living quarters Whatever their respective neighborhoods decide Where even the words surveillance Immigrant deportation have never been spoken and Everyone is welcome Everyone shares their music their food their vision with everyone other with everyone else in all of the cultures where the words Juvenile criminal are seen as the oxymoron. They are and Prisons have been abolished Where war is a fading memory a story told by our elders our parents parents and those invasive blue angels Thank You Lawrence for only getting for talking about them have long since gone somewhere Anywhere they're welcome if they're still welcome anywhere at all. Oh Did I mention there's plenty of work? Anyone who needs or wants has a job people are busy fixing streets Restoring and replanting Golden Gate Park that jewel of our city and All the smaller neighborhood parks are rejuvenated their rec centers are open long into the night Every neighborhood park has after-school fun stuff to do free daycare of all kinds is available Parents and kids get to choose what works for them Young people are busy tutoring the young caring for visiting amusing learning from the old The disabled are using their many skills. They have friends. They feel valued a part of our social fabric People are painting murals playing music making art everywhere and being paid for it Muni and Bart are free as are all the museums Fairy boats cinemas theaters opera and jazz concerts all free of course There are jobs on the welcoming committees young musicians and artists and craftspeople when they arrive are Welcomed in given housing and supplies and is stipend for food and clothing They're given a map of the places where they can perform or show their work print their books the communal graphic studios and the art Studios there are some in every neighborhood What happened folks? This is where we were heading How did we allow ourselves to be derailed So badly derailed that I read in last week's Chronicle that if you can't pay your rent in this town and you have school-aged kids You won't be evicted until the school year ends How stupid is that? Schools out goodie. Oh All our stuff is on the street and there's a lock on the door now. Mom is crying What kind of human passes a rule like that? We're even waffling on or have completely dropped by now our long-held policy of sanctuary Used to be a sacred word remember sanctuary asylum for so-called illegals My peeps I'm ashamed to be one of you My friends, I'm ashamed of who we are What we've become Sunday's paper We these is the country is a hole now it's not our town Suspended medical evacuations from Haiti so it's clear who's going to pay for it all Even the Borg as I recall behave better at least to their own species Well, that ain't my San Francisco Not the San Francisco that I am poor poet laureate of that San Francisco city of sunlight Bounced off ocean and pay city of kindness of people Who have time time to look each other in the eye? time to listen Bear witness to each other's lives when I was asked to read at the International Poetry Festival and was my first Act as poet laureate, and I wasn't really officially poet laureate because nobody had announced it yet except I have been told not to announce it by someone who was handling publicity for the mayor So I hadn't told anybody hardly And they were going to handle the publicity and then there wasn't any So when I was asked to read there I wrote a first draft for my oath of office I'm going to first draft poet laureate of the office for all poets everywhere It is the poem I serve Luminous through time that celebration of human breath of mellos It is and always has been the muse Androgynous and ruthless as any angel Scattering words that need no radio frequency no broadband It is the light on the ocean here and the sky and all its moods Luminous fog that wakes me up to write and something I call the imp of the short poem It is the people of San Francisco in their beauty bright luminous eyes looking out from homeless faces looking up from gardening skateboarding singing Playing cards playing ball barbecuing in their backyards the folks in the mission the Excelsior in Bayview Hunter's Point to Pantown North Beach Ingleside folks in the sunset working and idle passionate and angry silent Powerful in their silence My friends and neighbors parked at Ocean Beach at Twin Peaks in their cars watching the sun go down My vow is To remind us all To celebrate There is no time to desperate no season that is not a season of song And then since there was such a long gap between the mayor Newsom's announcement of his choice of me at the Richmond Library And the date when we arrived at for this talk. I let a few friends know That what this was happening what what was happening that I was poet laureate by staging a small silly and surreal Swearing-in ceremony for my 75th birthday. I Had the collected works of John Keats to swear on and this is the oath I wrote and Ron Turner administered So I read the I read the first part and then he began I'll tell you where he began first part is in the name of Tara most bountiful most holy all powerful mother indwelling in every being And then he began do you Diane to premix it? I accept the office of poet laureate of the city of San Francisco and will do all in my power in this magical city to guard and honor and Propagate poetry of all kinds for all people in all walks of life and remind them to Celebrate the world in all its mystery and after he administered that I read the last part every Vision is holy The power of imagination is vast and Poetry poetry guards the old roads and opens new ones Every day the poem cuts trails into the realms of gold The alchemical gold of the mind So I've already taken that oath and keeping with that. I thought I'd share just a few of my Plans what I want to do is poet laureate a little bit of what I Cut out a lot of this because I want to buy seven be talking with you people I want to invite poets and and people all the poets and people of San Francisco and many celebrations We're so rich. We have a diversity of people's languages diversity of poetry is oral and written I'm hoping to bring poets of every school together poets from every walk of life every class a word that we don't say often enough I'd like to have poets read in different languages with and without translation with and without visuals whatever So I'm to start off with I have arranged to have this space on March 9th to celebrate International Women's Day Janice Merrick a tiny the very major for silly Nina Serrano and Michelle T will all read to honor International Women's Day, which I think it's about time to Bay Area noticed Even in the Midwest I went to there were three readings. I was invited to the people were celebrating it in Chicago Detroit Cleveland, but here I guess maybe I don't know what's the matter with us I don't know and I'm in the process of planning a May Day event under the auspices of city lights I want to celebrate May Day as one of the four cross quarter days as you know today is one also Candlemas wing bulk however you say that so on It's the day That really is the day that went that light starts to really come back. So the greeting at the door Bridget The goddess of Ireland is what this cognate would bright by the way, so is bright Cognate with bright And the greeting that people would have at their doors to knock on your friend's door because it was Bridget's day or whatever you were called it in your part of the world There was a cradle with a baby made of corn in it by the door and the greeting was Bridget has come and the answer was Bridget is welcome So Bridget has come The light is returning now this time is that time of the year So I would like to celebrate May Day is a green holiday a holiday of sprouting things of children Of course, we won't not we won't ignore the political thing, but there are other celebrations I want to do that will be more pointing in that direction But and those of us who hail from Europe have lost something big when we lost the standing stones and the May Pole So May Day I want to celebrate that way and I'm also I don't have it set a date yet, but I want to do something right here Maybe in early August that's called What is a poem anyway and invite people of many many many schools of poetry to present what their idea of Poetics is and try to reach out to lots of regular Close regular people, you know who have been maybe have maybe lost track of poetry because maybe it's gotten buried in theoretical Jorgen maybe and have them ask questions. I want most of that event to be Q&A dialogue So those are a couple of the things I'm doing the other thing is I want to I've already started to reach out to the kids by doing two workshops for 70 rolls at the Excelsior branch library They were very very enthusiastic. I wasn't teaching as Jewel thought poetry appreciation I don't know if they appreciate poetry. They wanted to write it. They came in with their pencils We're gonna make poems now. They know what a poem was we're gonna make poems now They had a one we had a wonderful time and we're publishing their little think pamphlet for them so they can have it take it home And they have a loose leaf of all their little original Index cards with their lines. We were doing group poems line with a color or a line with a city street They have those for their school Now I'm gonna write that up as a model and try to go into four different neighborhoods this year and for next I hope We'll see and it's not good to go once you have to go and then wait a month and go again So the kids really get it and remember and if there's any budding writers around it They'll they'll say with it after that. I want to do little ones. I want to do bigger ones all those kids And I plan to keep in touch with any teacher like the one that brought these kids in or a librarian who wants to Go further with it so that by email I can supply them with other exercises to do or general advice if they need that and I just want to say that from 1971 to 78 I worked for the NEA as a poet in the schools all over the West I Taught I started in Wyoming and I taught every level from preschoolers to college students I was a lot in juvenile halls reform schools jails. I was on reservations And my reservation schools and also BIA boarding schools, which were the in the 70s will like to break your heart and I'd like to share the experience I got by doing these kind of workshops here in my hometown So then also to my energy and time permit and my help allows I'm going to like to take poetry also to the older folks in Senior centers and other such facilities, but I have to remember that I myself am an older folk and Sometimes my body has to insist that I remember if all goes well in this year with the young people I hope to also go to some senior centers next year And read an older poem an older folk all that I wrote recently Was to some friend I was teaching some poets who were mostly all dead who used to live in Venice, California and and Denver a Whole bunch. There's a axis from Denver to Venice and I wrote them this then a good day, too It is with my whole heart open No pain in it. I celebrate lost brothers and sisters What joy we lived Riding war ponies straight into the sun So I want to say that even with my even without my limitations what I can do in two years It's very little measured against the dreams. We had of what could happen and what the city could be What it could bring in terms of poetry art and so on into all its people and by extension to the world Jack DeVora Janice Lawrence they brought poetry back into people's lives here in many ways as Louise reminded you I To take just one example. I know we all hope that the International Poetry Festival at Jack started will continue far into the future But Yeah, yeah, I also hope that the after-school poetry workshops will continue and grow Eventually spread to empty park and rec facilities facilities, too I hope then time is going to be a way to employ young poets and so the workshops Will eventually also embrace other arts. It could be workshops in painting jazz You dance the schools aren't doing it. Somebody's got to do it. What are these kids going to know? How are they going to find their way of being of expressing who they are? So I'm hoping that this is something that can continue and I have some reason to hope for my own experience Back in the 50s when I finally hooked up with a few with the few like-minded folks in other cities across America They were all told about 200 of us and we were found each other by way of floating bear which I did with a Mary Baraka and By way of insistent networking on the part of Allen Ginsberg who insisted that you know every other poet in your town when he came through There were about 200 not much more than 200 writers painters dancers Korea all together all Isolated and all totally paranoid and yet I see have seen how the vision and work of those 200 or so eventually changed the world It didn't bring world peace or end poverty alas, but it changed how we as a nation think How we see each other and see the world The 200 of us didn't do it all by any means, but we did something We made something happen. I hope that San Francisco becomes once again a city Where people have time to listen and where we truly know again But none of us are separate a City where we can and do bear witness to each other's joys triumphs and pain a City where we remember community Where we know that each other's children are as all all all as precious as our own children Can poetry do that? Do the arts have that power? It is my belief and my faith that they do and That it starts with the word With each and every painting poem