Sacramento Poet Laureate Program

Within the poets' bag of magic/madness
There is a poem
For the damaged dream
As beautiful as the one
For the dream fulfilled.
- Jose Montoya, Sacramento Poet Laureate, 2002-04

The Sacramento Poet Laureate Program was established in February 2000 and is designed to extend and bring to life the power and beauty of poetry and the spoken word to our community. The Sacramento Poet Laureate Program strives to encourage literary awareness by the general public. Sacramento's immediate past Poet Laureate is Indigo Moor. Other past Poets Laureate include  Jeff Knorr, Bob Stanley, Julia Connor, Jose Montoya, Dennis Schmitz and Viola Weinberg.

Sacramento Poet Laureate 2020-2024
Andrew Bell aka Andru Defeye

Whether sharing stages with legendary beat poets or your favorite Hip Hop emcees, Andrew Bell, aka Andru Defeye’s unorthodox writing and performance style has made him a fixture behind microphones around the country. 2020 saw the release of his critically acclaimed Frequency album followed shortly after by his crowning as the youngest Poet Laureate in California capitol history.

From Sacramento to Staten Island and SXSW, Andru Defeye served as the Director of Communications for Sol Collective from 2009-2020. In 2014 Defeye founded Zero Forbidden Goals, a support system for creatives dedicated to innovating arts equity, experiences, and education. ZFG’s guerrilla art activations including National Guerrilla Poetry Month, Chainlink Poetry, and The Intersection have been covered and recreated around the globe. Find more of his work at GuerrillaPoet.com.

Poem #333

Does a storm make the sun stop shining?

       I will be scared when the sun is

           Don’t forget we are miracles please

      Don’t forget we are

                creation’s favorite color of chaos

                      carried away with ourselves

                             at 67,000 miles an hour

                            And we

              have gotten pretty good at it.

We decipher our location               on this big rock

by looking at flaming balls of gas

                                     Through lenses we make

by smashing little rocks

and applying fire to them

                                     Which we also make

It’s wild y’all.  

There’s too much

of what we are

to be defined

by what we’re not

        And in our purest moments wont we get that

We are the poems they wrote

We are the fires they danced around

They passed us down

from generation to generation

                And we’re here now

      Isn’t it wild?

How we try and tame it.

                      Obey your heartbeat

Because the other way around doesn’t work

                  Forage the darkness for light

Because that’s the easiest place to find it

                   Pilfer all the joy you can

Stash it in every crevice of this life

                 Alan Kaufman told me

          “Do not let the killers or haters win.”

Jose Montoya told me

       “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

                  The sun is not scared.

                      So neither am I.