17-year-old Meera Disgupta of Queens is the 2020 United States Youth Poet Laureate, the youngest ever. She's also a former New York City Youth Poet Laureate with Urban Word NYC.
She spoke with WNYC's Michael Hill about why poetry is a powerful tool to address social issues — especially right now — and why she says "poetry is a revolution."
Here she is reading one of her poems, "Uncle Sam's Alphabet Soup."
She also read a poem submitted from one of our listeners:
In Time of Plague: April 2020-21
(after Thomas Nashe and John Webster)
All the flowers of the spring
adorned our social distancing
as that year's mating mourning-doves
ignored the passing of our loves.
I can't in conscience take offense
at their complete indifference,
knowing how my own joys and sorrows
blind me to others' lost tomorrows.
- Anita Feldman