California Poets Confront Urgent Challenges Through ‘Poets on the Beat’ Project

What do poets have to say about the grim parade of challenges that we face?

Climate change. Racial and economic inequality. Democratic decline.

The abstract language that describes them can leave us cold. The human stories that make them all too vivid can leave us feeling overwhelmed — or wanting to tune out. A growing number of people avoid the news often or sometimes, according to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

The poet Adrienne Rich wrote that poetry can reach “into us for what’s still passionate, still unintimidated, still unquenched.” Poets can build connections and offer a fresh perspective by speaking to us in a language that is new and surprising.

This year, Capital & Main, working in collaboration with Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, asked California poets to tackle some of the most pressing issues we face in a series of essays. The poets selected to write the essays are former L.A. poet laureates Lynne Thompson and Luis Rodriguez; poets Shonda Buchanan, Suzanne Lummis and Sesshu Foster; and California poet laureate Lee Herrick.

I sat down with Hilda Weiss, curator of Poetry.LA. She asked me what poets bring to the table that’s different from journalism. “Poets come at things a little bit slant,” I told her.

Poets on the Beat blends reporting with poetry — and in some cases memoir. But above all, the pieces affirm the power of poetry in the face of difficulty. “Even as poets grieve, we affirm our connection to the world that sustains us,” Thompson writes in an essay that highlights how students respond to climate change.

The discussion about poetry’s connection to contemporary events will continue on Oct. 12 at Beyond Baroque, when I moderate a panel with three of the poets featured in the “Poets on the Beat” project, Thompson, Lummis and Buchanan.

In the meantime, you can explore the expanding list of essays at Capital & Main’s website. You’ll read about Rodriguez’s journey from factory worker to poet. Buchanan describes the poetic response to the murder of George Floyd and the long history of poetry that confronts the dehumanization of Black bodies. Lummis reflects on a summer like no other, noting that we can never look at how fire appears in literature the same way after so many devastating blazes.

All these poets, in their own way, assert the enduring strength of poetry to shape our understanding of the world’s challenges and our place within it.

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