Lauren Lin

Lauren Lin is the Inaugural Burlingame-Hillsborough Youth Poet Laureate and San Mateo County Youth Poetry Ambassador. She is a two-time Youth Speaks poetry slam winner who weaves passions, beliefs, and emotions into her work. Lin’s poetry has received awards from YoungArts, Literary Legacies, and the MLK Step into the Light youth arts contest. Lin founded and leads Words for Change, a coalition of young writers and activists eager to spur social change with written and spoken language. Readers can find her work in The Offing, Entanglements (Hunger Button Books, 2022), Quilted Voices (Poetry Nation, 2023), and the 2023 YoungArts anthology, among other publications.

Ecopoem

MEMORIES OF EARTH

Each drop an orb of glass
Upon beds of rippling mirrors
For the splash to earth
Is a reflection of its past

And so she mourns
Deeply in her soul of clouds
From above her tears pour
Dripping like plummeting stones
Each a splatter of bitter betrayal

For she remembers
Remembers like the kiss of fire
Remembers like the stab of lightning
Remembers like the knot of snapped vines

Her gifts sacrificed to them
Those tiny twigs she’d loved 
Who stood on their twin trunks 
And grew strands of silken web
From heads of bursting fruit

They who had spoken
And wrote
And laughed
And loved her

And killed
And took
And clawed

For more beyond
The presents in her soil

They who had sharpened their tools
Drilled into her belly
For the oil in her veins
And her bones of bark

She remembers
The way their smiles 
Twisted
On her.

Until finally
Her body crumbled 
As the air in her lungs 
Faded. 
And her blood
Extracted. 

Only then might they know
And remember
Her love
And their flesh-filled claws
They’d sunk into her blessings

But will they ever know?
How she’d loved?

So her tears plunge
Hoping to soak them
And remind them

But even she 
Loses her gaze with the stars
And freezes her sorrow

Enough tears, she quells

For she cannot bear 
To see in the mirror they paint
The years she gave 
To they who only chewed
Away.

Read Lauren Lin’s poem, “I am”. Lauren is also a contributor to the collaborative poem, “The Many Voices Word Karaoke”.

Read other poems featured in the Youth & Ecopoetry project.

Lauren Lin

Poem on Belonging

I AM

I am.

From the bloated harvest moon
Peeking behind its silken veil
At the splattered scarlet below
Running in the tears sown

Pooled at the fissure of flesh
And the splinter of hearts
Beating to the rhythm of war
And a family’s scattered shards

From the mirror once intact
Once holding light
And a youth that burned
With the twist of the urn

I am.

From molded chrysalis 
Her wings bent, crumpled
And a childhood missed
Drowned in the abyss

As swords hacked the fields
The glint of the silver eel
Slithering up golden and green
One more life sealed

But she rose again
For meager wages
In the battle waged
Her mother’s life to save

I am.

From her. 
Grandma.

Her footprints in the sand
Leading from China hues
To a New World of old sorrow
Another slap of fate’s backhand

For even in the Land of Dreams
Were the torn seams
Of her ripped hope
In the fingers of all she’d seen

I am.

From more than torn words
And her marriage to misery
And her losses to death
I’m from the seeds she buried.

The life she planted
A garden of promise
Amid storms and mist
And her shriveled chrysalis 

It grows still
With all the memories she poured
And the steel in her will
Her gaze up the windowsill

For I am 
The peeking harvest moon
Holding Grandma in its hands
Beaming harmonies to her hope
As always it stands.

I am.

Read Lauren Lin’s ecopoem, “Memories of Earth”. Lauren is also a contributor to the collaborative poem, “The Many Voices Word Karaoke”.

Read other poems featured in the Youth & Ecopoetry project.

Ideas to Postpone the End of the World

Part cento, part sensory poem, this collaborative poem was crafted during a workshop facilitated by San Mateo County Poet Laureate Aileen Cassinetto as part of the San Mateo County Youth Ecopoetry Project (2021-2022).

Ideas to Postpone the End of the World

Quoted lines from “Generation Climate: How the crisis made young people the adults in the room,” (CNN, November 5, 2021)

“The Earth is speaking, she tells us that we have no more time.”
				
It sounds like cars going by, like a cat chasing her feathered toy, 
a dog barking, a murder of crows cawing, a buzzing. 
						
“It's time to look at the bigger picture.”
		
See the overcast sky and the still unlighted tree, 
watch the bird feeder that lies a few feet from the cat perch.					

“We cannot eat coal, we cannot drink oil.”

But we can feel the curved edge of the table, 
a pen’s pointed nib, how light the empty mug.

“We are not drowning, we are fighting.”	

We can smell the fresh laundry 
but the apple doesn’t smell like an apple at all		
		
“We have ideas to postpone the end of the world.”

We’ve swallowed the bitter fruit.

Read other poems featured in the Youth & Ecopoetry project.

Breathe

This collaborative poem was crafted during a workshop facilitated by San Mateo County Poet Laureate Aileen Cassinetto as part of the San Mateo County Youth Ecopoetry Project (2021-2022).

Breathe

A Community Poem by San Mateo County Youth

There is a pattern we burn
into the night sky, & it will not be of chemical
but compassion for all that is light.

Last year I woke up and
the sky was tangerine,
sick with smoke

because we live in a world where
things are valued more dead than alive
and where we value today so much

we don’t even think about tomorrow,
but in less than twelve years
we’ll be running out of tomorrows.

So tell me,
how do we redefine value?
Humans are warming the planet

Smoke days replace our parents’ snow days
Being told the children are the future
Uncertain if we have one in store

Look around you
Breathe if you can
It’s code red for humanity.

Hazy skylines
the redness of the map
Plumes of black smoke, billowing,

mixing with lavender clouds and orange flame
Yellowed lawns in my neighborhood
The taste of burnt toast in my mouth

Parts of my community lost
As decades of damage, destruction, and hate
Come down like a meteor that never saw space.

We must be united to fight it
We must all take accountability
Reduce CO2 and methane emissions to zero.

We have caused this
We are the only ones who can fix this
We can have a sustainable future.

Sitting in my bedroom staring at the screen
Wondering if this is always what I’ll see
Longing for action, longing for change

Saving the world from climate change
I am learning, struggling, and exploring
Right now I want to make a difference

To know I am safe
I want to live in a world with no pollution
With rainbows in the skies.

Contributors/participants: Cassandra Bousquet, Aileen Cassinetto, Angela Chen, Eva Chen, Chloe Chou, Bellamy Cramer, Ronit Das, Alexandra Huynh, Arda Inegol, Samantha Ishikawa, Maya Kornyeyeva, Iris Li, Caroline Lim, Lauren Lin, Juleen Mallari, Jescent Marcelino, Allen Mata, Hanna Docampo Pham, Emma Roginski , Marissa Teng, Keiki Leni Ward, and Payton Zolck.

In partnership with the San Mateo County Youth Climate Ambassadors, YCA lead Zoe Van Duivenbode, & Environmental Literacy and Sustainability lead (County Office of Education) Andra Yeghoian

Published in Nature & Culture (Copenhagen: Red Press Kulturhuset Islands Brygge & Københavns Kommune, 2021).

Film premiere at Kulturhuset Islands Brygge Cultural Center on November 21st & 28th, 2021.

Read other poems featured in the Youth & Ecopoetry project.

Chloe Chou

Chloe Chou is the 2022-23 Daly City Youth Poet Laureate and the 2022-23 South San Francisco Youth Poet-in-Residence. A South City resident, she is currently a freshman at Westmoor High School in Daly City. Her passions are coding and writing. In her free time, she likes to make mixtapes! In 2020, she published a book called The Phaeton Complex, which is available on Amazon and in the Peninsula Library System.

Poems on Belonging

A PORTRAIT OF MOTHERLAND

Sometimes I can almost feel
Thanaka against my skin.
I can almost feel warm rainfall, tangerine flesh
Dipping under fingers. Bare feet kicking at soft,
Breathing soil and crawling roots under quagmire.
I can almost feel fresh ginseng in my throat,
Like I’m spitting out the syllables of it.
Words made of spilled ink fly off the page like cicadas,
Heavy pockets, burning with moth-light. There’s mohinga
Heavy on my tongue, incense that comes with a prayer and it
Whittles itself into something bronze & beautiful.
Something like unpaved roads, the creased pages of worn piano sheets
It’s in the folds of longyi, sweeping against ankles and dirt.
I can almost feel the movements of it, dancing and patient,
Like the quiet determination of the Burmese python dashing into the glowing sky,
The clash of wind chimes and
The smell of a moonlight symphony through generations.
Myanmar, I can almost feel you.

LIFE AS IT WAS, LIFE AS IT IS

I grew up a few blocks away from the plaza
This house with all of its neon pink walls,
Smother them with cream paint
And dance around the living room
Like it’s home
Because it is.

Sunlight kissing my forehead when I sleep in too late
The smell of wild dandelions on the front lawn, in the backyard
Butterflies disappearing in the smear of green, only to reemerge when
Wandering fingers wade through daisies and I’m
Swallowing mouthfuls of the blue, blue sky
The taste of it sweet on my tongue, forbidden but never muted
Shirt clinging to warm skin, chalk on sidewalk,
The dust of it on palms and fingers
Count the days on glossy calendar pages, and 

Growing up, don’t have to stand on my toes to see my reflection in the mirror 
That’s when
I used to run home in the dark, in the rain
Find comfort in old movies after tests failed, but stronger, faster, getting a little better every day 
Failing sometimes,
Falling too, bruises like berries exploding under skin 
But we rub them away with the promise of tomorrow and we try again. We try every day. 

And now, the paint is 
chipping in this house, the pink is showing by the stairway, 
I’m moving and I’ve got to keep growing up now, 
a fifteen minute drive away from the plaza, 
Life as it was. 

Of course, there’s always life as it is.

Read Chloe’s ecopoem, “Earth“. She is also a contributor to the collaborative poems, “Breathe” and “The Many Voices Word Karaoke”. Read Chloe’s chapbook, The Long Way Home, published by the South San Francisco Public Library.

Youth Poets Laureate

Youth poet laureate programs promote youth voice and leadership. They are an impactful way to encourage civic engagement and celebrate literacy and the literary arts. The National Youth Poet Laureate initiative is a program of Urban Word, an award-winning arts and youth development organization. Over 50 partner cities to date are participating in Urban Word’s national network of Youth Poets Laureate. Below are current and past youth poets laureate in San Mateo County, as well as youth poets laureate who participated in poetry events in San Mateo County between 2019 and 2022.

Programs

The San Mateo County Office of Arts and Culture facilitates arts programs for youth. More info here.

The Youth Poet Laureate represents the City of Burlingame and the Town of Hillsborough and its youth at public events and is a model for other youth through their commitment to artistic excellence, civic engagement and social impact. More info here.

The Daly City Youth Poet Laureate program celebrates teen poets who live or attend school in Daly City and exhibit a commitment to artistic excellence, civic engagement, leadership, and social justice. More info here.

The South San Francisco Youth Poet-in-Residence program celebrates South City’s diverse cultures through artistic expression and encourages dialogue and unity under the leadership of the Youth Poet-in-Residence. More info here.

Ollie Ballard

Ollie Ballard is the 2025-2026 Burlingame-Hillsborough Youth Poet Laureate.

Read Ollie’s Artist Statement.

Lauren Lin

Lauren Lin is the Inaugural Burlingame-Hillsborough Youth Poet Laureate (2023-2024) and Inaugural San Mateo County Youth Poetry Ambassador (2023-2024). She is a two-time Youth Speaks poetry slam winner who weaves passions, beliefs, and emotions into her work.

Read Lauren’s bio and sample poems here.

Eva Chen

Eva Chen is the 2022-23 Youth Poet-in-Residence of the City of Burlingame. She is also the 2022 San Mateo County Young Woman of Excellence Awardee, the first youth poet to be inducted into San Mateo County’s Women’s Hall of Fame.

Read Eva’s bio and sample poems here.

Chloe Chou

Chloe Chou is the 2022-23 Daly City Youth Poet Laureate and the 2022-23 South San Francisco Youth Poet-in-Residence. She was appointed California Youth Poet Laureate in 2024.

Read Chloe’s bio and sample poems here.

Madeleine Hur

Madeleine Hur is the Inaugural Daly City Youth Poet Laureate (2021-2022), and the first Youth Poet Laureate in San Mateo County. Named Daly City Youth of the Year in December 2021, she has represented Daly City and San Mateo County in numerous public events.

Read Madeleine’s poem on belonging.

Alexandra Huynh

Alexandra Huynh of Sacramento is the 2021 National Youth Poet Laureate and a freshman at Stanford University. A second-generation Vietnamese American, she employs poetry as a tool of self-reclamation and social justice for marginalized communities. As part of San Mateo County Poet Laureate Aileen Cassinetto’s Youth & Ecopoetry Project, Alexandra was invited to be the keynote speaker at the 2021 San Mateo County Youth Climate Ambassadors Summer Retreat.

Watch Alexandra’s Keynote Address at the 2021 San Mateo County Youth Climate Ambassadors Summer Retreat.

Meera Dasgupta

Meera Dasgupta is the 2020 National Youth Poet Laureate, the first Asian American and the youngest, appointed to the post. She also served as 2020 United Nations Sustainable Goals Ambassador. She is currently a freshman at the University of Chicago where she majors in Political Science and Economics. Meera has featured in “Power to the Poets” and at RISE 2020 San Mateo County Women’s Leadership Conference, and has also facilitated a youth poetry workshop as part of the San Mateo County Youth & Ecopoetry Project.

Watch Meera’s performance in “Power to the Poets”.

Anouk Yeh

Anouk Yeh is a spoken word poet, journalist and organizer from San Jose, California. She is Santa Clara County’s 2021 Inaugural Youth Poet Laureate and a 2020 National Student Poet Program semifinalist. A firm believer that “the role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible,” Yeh is always actively looking for inventive ways to tackle current events in her poetry. Her poetry has been featured by Stanford University, Planned Parenthood and the Kronos Quartet. Her journalism pieces have been published in Refinery29, the Los Angeles Review of Books and the Education Post, among others.

Watch Anouk Yeh’s performance at the San Mateo County Office of Education’s Arts as LIFE! Conference.

Zoe Dorado

Zoe Dorado, hailing from Castro Valley, CA, is a 16-year-old spoken word poet and musician. She is part of the Bayanihan Youth Group of Filipino Advocates for Justice, SPOKES — the youth advisory board of Youth Speaks, and is the 2021 Inaugural Youth Poet Laureate of Alameda County.

Read Zoe’s poem on belonging.

Greer Nakadegawa-Lee

Greer Nakadegawa-Lee is the 2020 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate. She has written a poem every day for over three years now. Her first chapbook, A Heart Full of Hallways, is published by Nomadic Press. Greer was a featured reader in “Power to the Poets” and at the Burlingame Reads Kickoff Poetry Event in 2021.

Watch Greer’s performance in “Power to the Poets”.

Samuel Getachew

Samuel Getachew is a spoken word poet, writer, and model from Oakland, California. He is the 2019 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate and the 2017, 2018 and 2019 Youth Speaks Teen Poetry Grand Slam Champion. In 2021, he became the youngest ever opinion writer to be published in print in The New York Times. He is a freshman at Yale University.

Watch Samuel’s performance at the Peninsula Virtual Bookfest.

Siara Edmond

Siara Edmond is a 2019 and 2020 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate Finalist. She has performed at the de Young Museum, Laurel Street Fair, and Chapter 510, among others. She was a guest poet at the first Daly City Youth Poet Laureate workshop.

Youth Empowerment

Several poetry projects were launched between 2019 and 2022 to encourage creative expression and civic participation among San Mateo County’s youth. These include:

Burlingame Youth Poet-in-Residence Program

City of Burlingame-Town of Hillsborough Youth Poet Laureate Program

Daly City Youth Poet Laureate Program

South San Francisco Youth Poet-in-Residence Program

Menlo Park Youth Poetry Contest

Redwood City Public Library’s “Poetry Makers,” a makerspace poetry lab

Filoli Best Under 18 Haiku Competition

Housing Leadership Council’s Youth Poetry & Art Competition

I Have a Dream: Inaugural Poems for a New Generation Anthology

Wordslam Youth Poetry Competition, founded by East Palo Alto Poet Laureate Kalamu Chache

Youth & Ecopoetry Project

Kathilynn Lehmer

Kathilynn Lehmer is an educator, writer, artist, and poet who has lived on the Coast for over forty years. Her daughter, her family and friends, her sanctuary—the ocean and the redwoods—are her inspiration for her art and writing.

Poem

The silent scream appeared the day you told me,
but I stilled it 
to live our moments.

It has been with me since,
fighting to replace my heart,
trapped by my fear
that it will become me,
growing, darkening, hardening.

Its boundaries are the things 
I can do nothing about.
It echoes with horror,
      despair,
      rage.

I heard it when you cried
going into the hospital.
when I cleaned you for the first time 
in the shower, your tears merging
with mine and the excrement running down 
the drain.

I heard it when you lay
In ICU,
    burning and shivering,
when they told me there were more decisions 
   to be made
   than ventilator and code blue.

I heard it when I moved with you from floor to floor
   in what became Dante’s Inferno.
I heard it as I held your hand
not knowing whether to give
you strength
to live or die.

I heard it when you held your head
because you couldn’t think.
I heard it when you wanted to drive, but couldn’t walk.
I heard it when you reached beyond your pain and
 held me, letting me know you were there,
   loving me,
   letting me cry.

I heard it as your tears fell all day.
I heard it as we journeyed one last time 
   to the garden,
     to the ocean,
       to our woods.

I heard it as you cried out for me
   in the darkness.
I heard it as your hands turned cold and you took your last breath.

I hear it now as the memories of our life
    flood in.
I hear it now as I try to live 
   without you.
I hear it 
  As well intended people say
      “He’s in a better place.”
I hear it as well intended people say
   “Well you survived.
    You’re looking well
    You’re doing well.”

I am
Life goes on
   without you.
I hear it as I look at your pictures
and feel a familiar pang of love.
I catch my breath
and know I will never see your face again.
I want to cry out to the gods, to life.
I go on.

Some days
I want to live,
to love,
to experience life
for me,
for you.

I hear it now
inside of me,
as I go through the motions of living
in this process called
Grief
that will lead me to acceptance.

I hear it.

You lost so much.
I lost so much.
You didn’t want to die.
I’m here and you are not.
I cry.

I saw its form today:
A shrouded form reaching out,
a black hole where the heart
or is it a mouth
should be.

Perhaps now
I can release it.

Eva Chen

Eva Chen is a 16-year-old poet, photographer and social justice activist. Her writing has been recognized in the Scholastic Arts and Writing Competition and published in The Weight Journal, Catcher Zine, and Cathartic Literary Magazine. She co-founded Footprints on Jupiter, a teen literary magazine, to raise funds for the World Literacy Foundation.

In the summer of 2021, she volunteered at the California State Treasurer’s Office and conducted independent research on current issues and public policy in California. She has authored a four-page analysis paper on The Street Medicine Act (AB 369) and gave presentations on ways to address ongoing state problems through legislation.

As a Burlingame Public Library Teen Advisory Board Member, she helps organize activities catered to youth and teens. Some of her projects include writing workshops and a poetry slam for United Against Hate Week. Through Letters Against Depression, she volunteers online to write letters to those battling mental health issues.

In May 2022, Eva was named the San Mateo County Young Woman of Excellence Awardee, and was the first youth poet to be inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame. The Women’s Hall of Fame was the first of its kind in the State of California, conceived by Congresswoman Anna Eshoo in 1984 to recognize outstanding women for their achievements and contributions to the overall wellbeing of our County.

In September 2022, Eva Chen was appointed Youth Poet-in-Residence of the City of Burlingame.

Poem on Belonging

RETRACING

I am from dusty red envelopes,
from too-sweet tangerines and steaming pork buns,
I am from the backstreets of a Chinatown alleyway,
(Dark, but never unforgotten, and always
reverating against the strums of a pipa violin)
I am from oak woods & minted cedar,
from pine needles so sharp they pull against your skin -
I am from kitchen conversations & too-wide gummy smiles,
from the loudest table across the restaurant,
from the smell of smoked bacon paired with sunny-side eggs.
From “Stand straight!” and “Stop Slouching!”
I’m from praying to full-moons in Mid-Autumn
to wishing good health on every doorstep.
I’m from the golden limbs of California,
to the copper valleys of rice fields, from
sugar rock crystals, and baked cornbread on a
Saturday morning. From the immigration
journey of my parents, to the home we left
in San Francisco, behind the living room
cabinets sits a little time machine, journaling
the remnants of our past on stained yellow
pages — I am from the fadeness of these photos
left behind to develop behind a chalky film,
forever growing, strung to the place where I began,

Read Eva Chen’s ecopoem, “decompose”.

Keiki Leni Ward

“My name is Keiki Leni Ward. I’m a spoken word poet and former student at Ravenswood Middle School. I write about my history and heritage, my environment, my community, and my hopes as a young woman of color. I have entered different poetry contests and have had my work featured by the Ravenswood Education Foundation as part of their Giving Tuesday campaign. My poem, “Mirroring Sea,” about sea level rise and its impact on East Palo Alto, is featured in the San Mateo County Youth Ecopoetry Project.”

Ecopoem

MIRRORING SEA

Please don’t forget us. As the tides rise over our islands and wipe away our emotions and drown our throats.

Please don’t forget us. My ancestors speak in their native language that sounds like water and their sandy voices that engrave themselves into the sand and build the foundation of our land.

Don’t forget us as the stars slowly disappear, leaving us lost at sea looking for our home.

Our ancestors spoke to the sky and blessed the land.

In the sky the sun would open up like a refreshing window for the soul and the stars would open up to us like the eyes of our own spirituality.

Yet the ocean spoke to us in a surrounding crowd of whispers and danced around as many different truths we had to face.

A true reflection of ourselves that we are blind to.

As the water rises and hides my tears, drowning my overlooked throat. I pray that the stars may reach out to me and guide me home.

I pray that my ancestors can teach me.

I pray that my lost language will find me and soften my tongue bearing the language of freedom and the sweet sappy fruit of knowledge.

I pray that I will still be able to go home.

The ocean that brought us here, wishes to take us back now. Slowly the ocean takes her hand over my people and pulls us back, she is taking back what is hers.

The blurring reflection of us all, that we took too much and now the ocean wishes to take back.

The ocean isn’t just a reflection of ourselves but rather the confrontation of human limits and certain moral greed.

She holds us close and the ocean kisses our foreheads as she carries our ancestors away, and our home day by day.

The stars comfort us and the moon carries us into another lifetime, this time where the ocean speaks to us in the voices of our people and allows us to stay.

Come back for me as the stars and the moon.

I wish for my people to come back to me. I wish for my home to come back to me and I pray that the ocean may allow us the chance to understand her and ourselves.