Ronit Das is currently in 7th grade and was the youngest finalist in the 2020 Housing Leadership Council Youth Poetry Competition. His work is published in the anthology, I Have a Dream: Inaugural Poems for a New Generation (2021). He is also featured in the program, “Celebrating Young Poets,” produced by The Midpen Media Center and in “Breathe,” a Youth & Ecopoetry Project funded by The Academy of American Poets and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Poem on Belonging
ANCESTRY
We stand here the present day
Thanks to those here long before
We changed a lot from back all the way
When we didn’t have smartphones and more
The people then shaped us now
More than we could ever know
The ones before us who would plow
Through the trouble for us to grow
Their work for us
Our work for the next
We can give a food surplus
Make their lives less complex
And we will continue to grow
As we join together, connect
And we will together know
Or find out at least, what's next?
A sanctuary for healing and building connections for all people, Filoliboasts “654 acres of beauty nestled along the slopes of California’s coastal range… which includes a nature preserve with 5 distinct ecosystems.” In acknowledging Filoli’s role in ecology and conservation and as an arts and cultural hub, it is important to also highlight how the staff addresses climate change and sustainability while retaining historic viewsheds. Filoli’s Kara Newport outlines the process and challenges of adapting a timeless garden in this article in the Forum Journal, vol. 32 no. 3, 2018, p. 61-69. Project MUSE.
In 2020, Filoli’s Annual Haiku Contest was launched as a way to share stories and memories across cultures, and help create a sense of place and belonging. Along with First and Second Prize, it includes a special category for poets below 18. On average, Filoli receives over 1,000 haiku submissions each year inspired by its landscapes, and the top 10 poems chosen by San Mateo County Poet Laureate Aileen Cassinetto are displayed as poetry installations in the Spring Garden in the month of May. In 2022, along with the Annual Haiku Competition, the Filoli Ecopoetry Award was launched to encourage submissions that highlight the connection between humans and the environment.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Speak Poetry in San Mateo County 