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Poet Laureate

Sacramento Poet Laureate 2020-2024

Poet Laureate

Sacramento Poet Laureate 2020-2024

Whether sharing stages with legendary beat poets or your favorite Hip Hop emcees, Andrew Bell, aka Andru Defeye’s unorthodox writing and performance style has made him a fixture behind microphones around the country. 2020 saw the release of his critically acclaimed Frequency album followed shortly after by his crowning as the youngest Poet Laureate in California capitol history. From Sacramento to Staten Island and SXSW, Andru Defeye served as the Director of Communications for Sol Collective from 2009-2020. In 2014 Defeye founded Zero Forbidden Goals, a support system for creatives dedicated to innovating arts equity, experiences, and education. ZFG’s guerrilla art activations including National Guerrilla Poetry Month, Chainlink Poetry, and The Intersection have been covered and recreated around the globe.

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A Message from Andru Defeye

"Serving as Sacramento Poet Laureate from 2020 to 2024 has been the greatest honor of my life. I came into this role in February 2020 and quickly became "The Lockdown Laureate,” working to navigate and keep people inspired, and honestly, just trying to keep the mental health of the community up during the pandemi lovato. I created Young Laureates, a livestream series that highlighted the next generation of Poet Laureates across the country—folks like Tongo Eisen-Martin in San Francisco, Sacramento’s Youth Poet Laureates Cloudy and Alexandra Huynh (who went on to become National Youth Poet Laureate after Amanda Gorman). I also hosted Masked Up and The Great Joy Hunt livestreams that featured poets and artists talking about everything from lockdown creativity to sharing their personal mental health practices.

When the pandemic let up and we were allowed back outside Diamond Key and I started the First Church of Poetry, an activation every spring in Sacramento that brings inspiring community members’ stories with Motown, an open mic, fresh snacks, and yoga at the park. The mission of FCOP was to create a safe space for community to connect and re-connect; find and share joy together via the arts, cultural exchange, self-expression, and shared experience.

One of my proudest collaborations was helping draft the Sacramento Poetry Center’s Code of Conduct with Coon the Poet and Jeanette Rowe aka J. Rowe. That document has become a model for other poetry collectives in Sacramento and beyond to help ensure that poetry spaces and events are safe from gatekeeping, isms, phobias, misogyny, and the exploitation of power.

In 2022 I was named an Academy of American Poetry Fellow. My civic project as part of this fellowship was to breathe a new life into Sacramento Poetry Day. I used the $15,000 grant to pay poets to license their work for a free curriculum we created. That project underscored what I’ve always believed: poetry is a powerful tool for social-emotional learning, especially for young people dealing with trauma. In the years since, Sacramento Poetry Day has grown exponentially, eventually leading to the expansion and declaration of Sacramento Poetry Week in 2024, a legacy that I am incredibly proud of for myself, the poetry community, and my city.

Along the way I got to have some incredible experiences and work with some very inspiring people, from kindergarteners to seniors at Ethel MacLeod Hart Senior Center. I got to give flowers to some of my heroes and watch the smiles on their faces when the impact of their own dedication and hard work hit them. I got to hand young people the literal key to the city and see how things shifted once they saw how it fit in their hands. I got to speak truth to power in places they wouldn’t have let me in without this title and I am forever grateful to Sacramento for believing in me and supporting my visions, even when they’re bigger than life, like putting poetry on billboards and getting the capital of California to declare a whole week to celebrate poets.

I love you Sacramento. From the bottom of my heart. I don’t know what comes next, but make sure that you’re following historic poetry staples like The Sacramento Poetry Center (@SacramentoPoetryCenter) and Mahogany Urban Poetry Series (@MahoganyUrban) as well as the new gen poetic voices at Sac Poets Society (@SacPoets)."

- Andru Defeye

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