By Francisco Letelier
with Venice ARTBLOCK/Venice Community Housing Corp/ Youth Build
Activist Artist and community organizer Francisco Letelier in Collaboration with Youth Build Participants and Venice Community Housing Corporation created this portable mural panel of Wanda Coleman, LA’s unofficial poet laureate and known as La’s Blues Woman.
Coleman died at the age of 67 in 2013, grew up in Watts area of Los Angeles, and left an indelible mark on spoken word and literature influencing subsequent generations.
The mural invites the public to read a Coleman poem or one of their own choosing as they stand before the image of the poet.
The piece will be displayed at ARTBLOCK,a community art event of independent artists who open their studios and show art in an inclusive and participatory art event that makes a stand for a multicultural arts community being displaced by gentrification and development in Venice, California.
American Sonnet
after Lowell
our mothers wrung hell and hardtack from row
and boll. fenced others’
gardens with bones of lovers. embarking
from Africa in chains
reluctant pilgrims stolen by Jehovah’s light
planted here the bitter
seed of blight and here eternal torches mark
the shame of Moloch’s mansions
built in slavery’s name. our hungered eyes
do see/refuse the dark
illuminate the blood-soaked steps of each
historic gain. a yearning
yearning to avenge the raping of the womb
from which we spring
– Wanda Coleman