Welcome to the 2020/21 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate Release!
As we welcome another day of protests and demands for radical change to a system that has long ignored racial injustice in the Black community and communities of color, we also welcome the need for the moments of healing required in order to sustain the Black Lives Matter movement. Not only does the Youth Poet Laureate (YPL) program strive to empower Seattle youth—it also offers a space for Seattle youth to ring loud with their brave voices, in the shape of poems of healing and solidarity.
This video gallery celebrates the achievement of 2019/20 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate, Wei-Wei Lee, and the public release of her first poetry collection, In the Footsteps of a Thousand Griefs (Poetry NW Editions). The gallery opens with Wei-Wei reading from her debut, followed by conversation between Wei-Wei and her YPL mentors, Aaron Counts and Matt Gano.
Following this celebration, we welcome the incoming 2020/21 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate cohort in a series of videos. Click through the galleries below to see and hear select videos from 2020/21 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate Bitaniya Giday; the 2020/21 Seattle Youth Poet Ambassadors Helena Goos, Nathalie M., Victor Xia; and the 2020/21 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate Cohort members Sylvester Gross, Maeve Kenney, Violet Keteyian, Clarissa Perez, Lucia Santos, Connor Simon, and Hazel Windstorm.