‘Writing Salon coaches emerging poets

The country’s collective mood is shifting toward hope, and “The Hill We Climb” could be one reason why.

When 23yearold Amanda Gorman took the stage at President Biden’s inauguration, her radiant reading of the poem was what many of us needed: Lines like “And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it” and “With every breath from my bronzepounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one” filled the air with optimism, sweetening the bitter taste left from the Capitol riots ever so slightly.

Gorman’s viral message still resonates, now as vaccines roll out after a year of COVID19. Her spring to fame was also a reminder that poetry can be a force of healing.

But even before Gorman took the stage in January, the art form’s therapeutic qualities had already been working across the country, helping those who read poems — and those who write them — through the confusion, fright and sadness of the pandemic.

In the Bay Area, no one knows that better than Ben Jackson, the executive director of the Writing Salon. Founded by poet Jane Underwood in 1999, the organization has helped new poets and writers hone their craft through classes and workshops in Berkeley and San Francisco.

In 2020, its offerings saw a considerable increase in demand — particularly the multigenre course “Writing for Power and Resiliency.” It was most recently hosted by poet Thea Matthews, a San Francisco native living in New York City.

“We didn’t need to work hard to get students in the door for poetry classes,” Jackson said. These days, the door is virtual, since the Salon migrated to videoconferencing apps like Zoom due to safety restrictions. Matthews’ class on power and resiliency couldn’t have come at a better time — going through a pandemic puts a lot of stress and anxiety on everyone.”

Jackson is a poet himself, and with two young children at home all day because of school closures, he said that having time to write “has been a privilege.” He said he always found writing poems to be therapeutic, and at the Salon, he has witnessed how poetry can be a coping tool for students.

From his poem “Sutra”:

“When Mom taught me to float she said forget your body. I thought of the pine above our lake house, one she never saw me climb. Through branches I’d seen her melting into a statuary repose. How could I have known the weight of her loneliness? One winter, straddling a creek through a blizzard, I lay still awhile on the ice. But then the snowmelt: a boy waving in a riptide, blue eyes like mine.”

“There’s a degree of introspection, a distillation process,” he said, “both when you’re writing and reading a poem, that makes you more prepared for certain realizations.”

In April, the Writing Salon plans to offer a variety of poetry classes. Led by Matthews, “We Real Cool: A Poetry Class on the Voice & Craft of BIPOC Poets” is a fiveweek intensive workshop for beginners and seasoned writers starting Sunday, April 11. Another course titled “Poetry for Life,” led by local writer and poet Katharine Harer and set for April 24, consists of readings, writing exercises and helpful tools for aspiring poets.

The past decade has seen an increase in poetry’s visibility online. From the highly quotable Instagram poems of Rupi Kaur to the #poetry hashtag on TikTok, which has gathered more than 20 billion views, social media has helped make the medium more democratic and diverse.

It also became an important tool for activism after a summer of social justice protests following the killing of George Floyd.

“Writing out your truth and seeing it is cathartic and important,” said Kelechi Ubozoh, an Oakland poet and mental health consultant. “Releasing things that accumulated, and accessing joy, too, is important for mental health.”

Ubozoh participated in a Salon course last summer. During the class, which focused on overcoming trauma, she wrote the powerful poem “Black on Purpose” and thought a lot about poetry’s role in ancestry, resistance and identity:

“I am Black on purpose

Magic in my DNA

There is power in my lineage

Strength and sweat with my ancestors

Dance in my hips and love in my bones

I am Black on purpose”

There’s also something to be said about the act of reading poetry; your own or others’, out loud or silently.

“When we think about energizing ourselves, reading poetry can help us connect with things that we might not have a safe space to talk about,” Ubozoh said.

Letterpress printer and Writing Salon alum James Tucker has always relied on poetry for comfort. He remembers reading fragments of the Greek poet Sappho in 2013 and falling in love with her powerful oneliners.

After writing poems for years, reciting them on Instagram and printing a small book of his work at the Aesthetic Union, his print shop in San Francisco’s Mission District, Tucker took the plunge and signed up for the Writing for Power and Resiliency course. He said he had a transformative experience, reading exclusively work by queer poets and people of color and exposing his own poems to peers over Zoom.

During the pandemic, restaurants and businesses canceled orders to his print shop, and Tucker filled the work void by printing his own poems on broadsides, combining them with his original graphic designs and selling them.

“It was helpful to have a vessel to pour myself into,” Tucker said.

From his poem “The Holy Family”:

“I fell into the Holy Family in autumn.

She was a manger of old books and rotting wood.

An archaic and almost forgotten relic and refuge of the city she was tied to.

The sandpaperdry land I’ve grown to love, but now hated so much, as it pushed me to razor edge, dreaming on creosote docks with pockets full of rocks.”

While working on a new collection of poems, Tucker currently offers discounted print services to emerging poets who want to turn their work into tangible objects.

He believes Gorman’s performance could inspire a younger generation of poets and that it reinvigorated those who have been already relying on the craft to survive, mentally and emotionally.

“She was a magician who broke the spell,” he said. It’s quite possible that Gorman’s performance, and the strengthening presence of poetry in the cultural discourse, is paving the road for an evenbigger poetry renaissance, in the Bay Area and beyond.

“The poetry landscape in the U.S. has become much more expansive and pluralistic over the past decade or so, with greater representation of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ poets,” Jackson said. “I imagine many young poets are inspired to see others succeed who look like them and who identify as they do.”

Poetry for Life: Online workshop. 2-5 p.m. April 24. $79.05 for Writing Salon members, $85 for nonmembers. Registration closes 24 hours before the start date. bit.ly/writingsalonpoetryforlife

Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle People pass a mural of poet Amanda Gorman on Page Street in San Francisco in January. Her reading during President Biden’s inauguration boosted a growing interest in poetry during the pandemic.

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle James Tucker, owner of the Aesthetic Union, shows a print for the cover of his new book.

Courtesy Ben Jackson Ben Jackson is executive director of the Writing Salon, which helps new poets and writers.

L. Harris / 2019 Oakland poet and mental health consultant Kelechi Ubozoh signs a copy of her book in 2019.

The Writing Salon Kathy Garlick’s Creative Writing 101 class meets in the Writing Salon’s Berkeley classroom in 2019.

The Writing Salon Kathleen McClung’s Flash Memoir class gathers at the Writing Salon’s San Francisco location in 2018.