What does it look like when poetry stops living on the page and starts shaping a city?
Our latest short documentary follows @andrudefeye — poet, organizer, and former Sacramento Poet Laureate — whose work has brought poetry, public art, and community storytelling into everyday life across Sacramento.
This is more than a story about writing. It’s about creative purpose, cultural impact, and the power of making art accessible.
📺 Watch the full episode now on our YouTube | YouTube.com/@portraitsofanotherlife (link in bio)
Do yourself a favor and hit PLAY ▶️ on this - it may be the best few minutes of your day! 🌟 Andru Defeye is the first of 16 @tedxfolsom 2024 contributors to be published on YouTube. 📹 He is a gifted communicator and poet with a poignant message; his body of work is heart-led. ❤️ Thank you Katie McCleary and 916 Ink for connecting us! 🙏
New @thegreatjoyhunt article just dropped on @abridged_pbskvie all about the power of poetry to rewrite our self narratives and trigger our dopamine, oxytocin, seratonin, and endorphins like not many other human practices can. Link in bio.
Poetry saved my life. No exaggeration. No hyperbole. You can read the story in magazines or listen to it on podcasts. I’ve told it dozens if not hundreds of times.
I spend so much of my time enveloped and submerged in poetry, activating it, and the community that comes together around it that I can sometimes forget exactly how potent and powerful a thing that it is.
And then every six months comes a beautiful, albeit hard-earned reminder. National poetry month in April and Sacramento Poetry Week in October.
In the last month I got to watch new poets be born as writers stepped out of their notebooks and shared their most intimate feelings for the first time. I got to feel some of the most prolific poets of our time and place perform life changing poems. I got to create with strangers in the name of having fun with literature and not taking ourselves so seriously. And I was reminded just how important this thing called poetry is.
Not everyone wants to win a slam or be published. Some of us are just trying to parse through our own complex emotions or find a container for them. Some of us are documenting memories for the future. Some of us are speaking ourselves into existence. All of this is ceremony. All of this is holy.
Thank you from my soul to everyone who supported Sac Poetry Week this National Poetry Month. I appreciate you. Little Andru appreciates you. And the kids around the city who will learn a new tool for survival appreciate you.
If you’d like to still donate you can make a tax deductible donation to Sacramento Poetry Center and earmark it for Sac Poetry Week or Venmo @Andru -Defeye.
My poetry month is over. Today I’m cleaning the chaos my house has turned into with my ratchet ass music obnoxiously loud and being thankful for you.
I love you and you can’t do $%!? about it.
(Minimal pics because presentness is a practice).
(Actual DM received and posted with permission) 💜💜💜 Will we see you there for this extra special lineup? Sunday 12-4pm. All ages welcome. Ticket link in bio.
