East Bay Times Fetes Oakland Youth Poet Laureate Azariah Cole-Shephard

"I will write in-your-face poetry," Azariah Cole-Shepherd explained "and if it makes you uncomfortable, it should." After reading at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, she received a standing ovation. Learn more about Cole-Shepherd's exciting voice in the East Bay Times:

There’s a fierce new voice rising out of East Oakland.

It belongs to Oakland’s new youth poet laureate, Azariah Cole-Shephard, 18, an electrical engineering student at San Jose State University who cites Huey P. Newton, Angela Davis and Maya Angelou among her influences and heroes — after her mom.

Appearing at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco this summer, she performed her passionate work, “For the Black Men My Love Cannot Protect.”

“This world is not prepared for your potential to succeed,” it begins. “I rode BART today. As I passed Fruitvale Station, my heart dropped. I thought about Oscar (Grant) and the bonding his baby girl will never experience …” Grant died New Year’s Eve 2009 at the hands of BART police at the station.

After naming more than a dozen other men and women who lost their lives in encounters with police in recent years, and giving voice to her own fears, she continued, “As the bullet penetrates this tissue, I will buy stock in tissue, because these tears won’t stop. And I know your tomorrow ain’t promised, so today, today I tell you that I love you.”

She got a 45-second standing ovation and several job offers after her almost 4-minute performance that night, she said in an interview.

“I write in-your-face poetry, and if it makes you uncomfortable, it should,” she said. “Change will follow.”

“There were less black men in slavery than there are currently in prison,” she wrote in “Modern Recollection” early last year, a poem modeled after Langston Hughes’ “Theme for English B,” she said.

Some of her work can be found at her blog site, http://melaninelevatin.blogspot.com.

Learn more at East Bay Times.