CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misspelled Donato Martinez’s last name.
Poets and students gathered to share an hour of spoken poetry that highlighted the different experiences and identities of the poets present on April 22 in the Social Justice Intercultural Center.
This event is part of LBCC’s Diversity Equity & Inclusion Accessibility Awareness Month of April, with the month’s purpose being to promote diverse voices and inclusivity.
Each of four poets in attendance had 15 minutes to read a couple of their poems alongside a question and answer segment that took place at the end of the presentations
The first poet, Donato Martinez, shared poems that captured his perspective growing up in “el barrio” or in a poor neighborhood and that included identifiable aspects of the latino culture like food and traditions.
“My Chicano Mexican culture is very important because it’s who I am and I like to give tribute and I like to give love to my culture, to the traditions, to the language, to the expressions,” said Martinez.
Martinez’s last poem titled, “I Hope there are Mangos in Heaven” fantasized that heaven could be a place filled with Donato’s favorite aspects of earth like pozole, hip-pop, convertible cars and music.
DEIA Poet Donato Martinez reads his poems to an audience during the “Where Voices Meet: A DEIA Poetry Panel.” Tuesday, April 22. (Kay Pham-Nguyen)
The next poet’s poetry, Oscar Velazquez’s, gave insight to the internal struggles that he faced when he was dealing with addiction, recounting moments when he wanted to quit, but felt frustrated because he could not change.
Velazquez is now six years sober and he ended his session with a poem titled “Today” which shared how he lives free from addiction now and feels more motivated than ever to enjoy his life.
Velazquez expressed his gratitude for the event and the opportunity to share his story.
“We all have our own voice, our own story and our own unique way of telling it, and I do feel that it’s very important for us to be able to do that in person, otherwise you let somebody else do that for you. You have other institutions who want to put labels on us and categorize us and when we leave it up to them, then you know what happens,” Velazquez said.
After Velazquez, Meliza Banales, a slam champion, gave a powerful, theatrical performance of her poems using inflections in her voice and changes in her volume to express each emotion.
Through conveying accounts of her own story and family, Banales advocated for the rights of immigrants in her poems and brought attention to the war in Gaza.
Banales shared her support for DEIA and opened up about her background.
“DEIA is really important, I was the first in my family to go to college, I come from what I would like to consider a traditional Mexican-American family in Los Angeles, we spoke Spanish at home and English at school. I didn’t know anybody that went to college that sounded like rich, white people stuff, it sounded so out of my reach,” Banales said.
Banales is well accomplished in higher education as she has three degrees in total with two being in poetry as she has a bachelor’s in honors in literature with an emphasis in creative writing specifically in poetry and a Master of Fine Arts in poetry.
Banales also helped establish slam poetry as a new form of poetry in the 90’s, as she was involved in numerous slam competitions and constantly around a passionate community of poets who helped popularize slam poetry.
DEIA poet Meliza Banales performs a slam poem to an audience during the “Where Voices Meet: A DEIA Poetry Panel.” Tuesday, April 22. (Kay Pham-Nguyen)
The last poet, Alyesha Wise, brought awareness to the oppression that black communities face in the American justice system.
An instance of injustice that she referenced in her poems was a person getting misaccused of a crime they didn’t commit and them having to spend a long period of their lives in jail because of it, while the real accuser gets to live freely.
Later in the poems, it is learned that Wise’s brother was falsely convicted of a crime and had to endure eight years in prison as a result.
Wise also spoke about the overwhelming fear that she lives with knowing that her family members could be targeted by the police given that she’s witnessed racially motivated police violence first hand in her community.
DEIA poet Alyesha Wise shares a poem to an audience during the “Where Voices Meet: A DEIA Poetry Panel.” Tuesday, April 22. (Kay Pham-Nguyen)
The poetry panel showed to be a safe space for poets to share their own stories and for the audience to receive them as poets were passionate to share their individual experiences, and the audience snapped their fingers and shouted to complement them during their readings.
“These initiatives also force you to get to know other people, not just your barrio or where you’re from, but it actually forces you to realize that someone else’s cause is your cause and that this is actually how we do intersectionality,” Banales said during the panel.
Attendee Jennifer del Rio claps after DEIA poet Donato Martinez shared his poem to an audience. Tuesday, April 22. (Kay Pham-Nguyen)