POET LAUREATE PROGRAM

From her unlikely beginnings as a dyslexic child and troubled youth, Julia Connor’s life long exploration of the arts led to an extended colleagueship with renowned potter, poet and educator, M.C. Richards, while raising a son and daughter.  In the early 80’s she undertook an apprenticeship and study of poetics at new College of CA, followed by a position as instructor and assistant director of the MFA Writing Program at Naropa University in Boulder, CO. In her six books and numerous journal appearances her work consistently evokes the sense of an immersion in place, finding there the unique intersection with memory that gives rise to the poem. “Connor allows the countryside to become imagination and, as such, it blooms…” says poet Michael McClure.
She has received several awards including the Commissioner’s Award from SMAC, a Fellowship in Writing from the CAC, as well as Fellowships from Centrum Arts in Port Townsend, WA; The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico and The Hambidge Center for Arts and Sciences in Rabun Gap, Georgia.

During her term, Julia has initiated three projects:

Think Postcard! a mail art project bringing together poetry and the written word with visual arts.  Workshops were held all over the Sacramento area and the Sacramento community produced and mailed to the Arts Commission over 900 postcards.  The final works were displayed via a travelling exhibit that visited selected Sacramento galleries.

Poet Laureate Park will be an installation at the South Natomas Community Center by artist Troy Corliss and will bring together the poetry of current and past Sacramento poet laureates in a public art piece. Construction is slated to begin in late 2008.

Poets on Deck—a deck of playing cards—will feature the work of 52 poets who played instrumental roles in the development of the Sacramento poetry scene in the era leading up to the establishment of the Sacramento Poetry Center, and will be released in the Fall of 2008. (Collapse text)

As his featured project during his tenure as Poet Laureate, Maestro Jose Montoya chose to hold a Festival de Flor y Canto, literally translated “Festival of Flower and Song.” The festival also had the support of over two dozen partners, including local bookstores, writer’s groups, cultural groups and literary organizations.

The two-day festival and its preceding Youth and Elder Workshops brought together people of all cultures in a celebration of poetry, both contemporary and traditional, with an emphasis on performance and the sharing of knowledge down through the generations. The elder poets merged with young poets from the Sacramento community and its schools, sparking a profusion of creative fires throughout the festival that had a lasting effect on audience and participants alike, as well as the larger community.

The term Flor y Canto actually dates back to pre-Columbian times. Among the ancient Nahuats (Aztec Indians), as among the Greeks, it was the poets who first became aware of and enunciated the great problems of human existence. The Aztecs used the metaphor, in Xochitl in Cuicatl, flower and song-or flor y canto-in Spanish, which celebrated poetry, “as the only truth on Earth.” Playwright Luís Váldez and poet Alurísta were among the first to link revolutionary literature to these ancient roots, and the idea of “flower and song” lives on as a poetic expression of reverence for life and justice.
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Sacramento’s first Laureate, a position shared by Dennis Schmitz and Viola Weinberg, produced an anthology of one-hundred poems by Sacramento poets which is not only being sold in bookstores, but is also now used in high school and college classrooms. For three years, the program hosted the Second Monday Favorite Poem Series at the Sacramento Public Library, where ordinary citizens like state and city workers could spend their lunch breaks sharing and spreading their love of poetry. The Mayor and County Board of Supervisors have recognized both former Laureates for these exemplary programs.  (Collapse text)