Abridged by PBS KVIE partners with Sac Poetry Week to highlight local writers

The Abridged version:

• One of the main principles of Sac Poetry Week is to find poetry wherever it is —and bring it to life.
• An April 2025 study by the Sacramento Literacy Foundation found that only 38% of third graders in Sacramento County are reading at grade level. Exposure to poetry could help.
• Select Sac Poetry Week student and adult contest winners will have their work published on Abridged.

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Editor’s note: Abridged by PBS KVIE has partnered with Sac Poetry Week for its writing contest. The author of this piece, Andru Defeye, is an organizer of the event which runs Oct. 19-26. He is also a regular contributor for abridged.org. Defeye is a former poet laureate.

Poetry. 

For so many of us it was a quick unit in a grade school curriculum. Its place is in children’s books and on greeting cards. Most of us don’t think about or come into contact with poetry in our everyday lives. 

Or do we? 

You can’t drive the width of Sacramento without seeing couplets on billboards reminding us all who to call when something is wrong (Hi Anh!). “Light the Beam” is metonymy. “City of Trees” is an epithet. These are all poetry. Reminders that poetry doesn’t belong to old, dust-covered books but to the laughing still in our lungs. 

This year the city is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Sacramento Poetry Day on Oct. 26. This city has always breathed poetry in its own way. From the light rail’s hum to the bridges’ reflections in the river, poetry comes pouring out of our streets, churches, classrooms and clubs. You just have to look for it to find it. 

Years ago, I was teaching poetry in an after-school program. I had crafted a lesson that juxtaposed Tupac and Dylan Thomas’ work. I felt like I was on the cutting edge of education, and the kids were going to be blown away. When I stepped to the classroom to teach the lesson the kids were completely disinterested. I was another teacher boring them with poetry. 

I got frustrated that my lesson plan hadn’t been the “Dangerous Minds” remake I had pictured in my head and I ended up making the beautiful mistake of assigning the kids to write me a paragraph about why they had chosen to walk lines on the basketball court rather than participate in my poetry lesson. 

They answered honestly. It was devastating. 

Most of them wrote that they felt like I didn’t care about their poetry or the literature they were interested in. They wrote that they didn’t feel like I really cared what they thought. They said I had made them feel like poetry wasn’t for them. 

Part of this was because I had been convinced to discipline in a traditional school system format that I would have hated. The bigger part was that I was talking at them and not with them, and had been trying to show them where poetry was without asking them where they had been finding it. 

After confronting my failure to show up curious and humble with these young people, we had an honest conversation, and an incredible rest of the school year learning poetry and literary devices through the works of contemporary artists like Kendrick Lamar and poets like Sarah Kay. 

That day has guided my educational theory and practice ever since, and led to one of the foundational principles for Sac Poetry Week: Find the poetry where it is, and bring it to life. 

The Ten Twenty Six Curriculum

The heartbeat of Sac Poetry Week is the Ten Twenty Six Curriculum. Free for download and aligned with California educational standards, this K–12 resource features the work of Sacramento poets, including rappers, singers and writers working in English, Spanish and Spanglish. It includes low to no-cost art activations, with new lessons added every year.

According to an April 2025 study by Sacramento Literacy Foundation, only 38% of third graders in Sacramento County are reading at grade level. Districts in unincorporated Sacramento County are even lower at 35%. Researchers behind the study have called it a crisis. Poetry is one resource that could help. 

I have heard many times that teachers don’t teach poetry because they don’t feel equipped or because they are not poets themselves. The lessons in the Sac Poetry Week curriculum put poems from around the city into hands of educators with tools and resources for students including writing prompts, poetry slam videos and soundtracks to write rhymes to. The curriculum looks, feels and sounds like the city. And when you teach local poets you can bring them into your classrooms or educational programs. 

The Ten Twenty Six curriculum is available for free download at SacPoetryWeek.com. 

The contests return! Get published on Abridged.org.

This year, Sac Poetry Week is honored to team up with Abridged by PBS KVIE for a collaboration where select Sac Poetry Week student and adult contest winners will have their work published on the Abridged by PBS KVIE website.

All work must be original, less than one page and submitted by midnight on Monday, Oct. 26. Separate contests for students and adults.

You can find your cateogory and enter your work for consideration here.

Winners will be announced on the Sac Poetry Week website and Instagram page (@SacPoetryWeek) and will be contacted for publishing. 

Sac Poetry Week events

There are also events every night of the week including Thursday night’s guerrilla art pop-up on the corner of 35th and Broadway, an open mic on top of the WAL artist lofts downtown Friday night, and the official 40th anniversary of Sac Poetry Day Monday, Oct. 26. For more information please check out the full event guide available on the website.

Whether you’ve been writing for decades or decide to start after reading this article, Sacramento Poetry Week is for you. Come write, read, and recite, and submit your poem for publishing with us. 

Let’s find the poetry together. Enjoy Sac Poetry Week.