Capitol with an Oh

O, Sacramento

I spy the Capitol. This was a neat drawbridge!

Hello from only my second time in Sacramento. Both trips were facilitated by the California Arts Council. The first was 100% business, at a convening of all current grantees—the first year Inlandia had been a recipient of CAC funding. Fully funded, airfare, hotel, meals. That was 2018. Seven years later, here I am again, but this time it’s a modest honorarium to judge the state Poetry Out Loud finals, a national poetry recitation contest.

Every county has a local contest, and those champions go on to the state level (where I’m at, in California) and further the state-level champs go on to compete for the national title. It’s a wonderful way to get students and teachers interested in poetry. I love their tagline, which really says it all: “Igniting student potential through the power of poetry.” These are not poets. (Okay, some of them are.)

I was happy to see some local folks here like Phil Taggart, who I know from the So Cal Literary Coalition, and David Tellyer, who is very involved in San Bernardino County POL. Our two Inlandia-based county champs from Riverside and San Bernardino, for starters, both county competitions I participated in as judge and program partner through Inlandia. Also Orange and Los Angeles counties, who we overlap with. All of the kids did a stellar job. It was really hard to score them because I knew even one point in either direction could influence the outcome, and you want everyone to win. (Everyone wants to win!) Ultimately, it was the champion from L.A. County who won, but I was equally thrilled and our San Bernardino County champ took runner up! (Yes, that’s Mr. Tellyer in the bright green suit taking a picture of his student and her mom with Lee Herrick!)

It was also wonderful to meet and make friends with my fellow judges Marcello, Donté, and Brooke, and finally meet California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick in person.

Nor Cal doesn’t look as different from So Cal as I had thought it might. The primary differences are the inbetween spaces where agriculture fills up every empty place. Geometric rows of trees (fruit? nuts?) and other produce. It’s quite lovely. But the cities themselves remind me of home. One neighborhood we drove through going to look at Lake Park reminded me a lot of the Victoria Woods/Canyon Crest neighborhoods in Riverside.

Today, with the competition done, we’ve moved (yes, Lloyd drove) to an Airbnb as our launch pad. We’re going to go exploring a bit further north: Lincoln, Roseville, Marysville. (Yes, research for my book. More on that later.)

Yours truly, signing off from Sacto.