Sacramento is home to an evolving poetry community, one that has been emerging over decades from the quiet corners of the city’s cafes to now occupy public street corners and established venues.
With an entire week now dedicated to poetry in Sacramento each October, it’s no surprise that the heartbeat of the city is a community of word-slingers and literary artists, with multiple spaces furthering the art, including the long-standing Sacramento Poetry Center and Mahogany Urban Poetry Series. Newer spaces like Out the Way on J, Tea & Poetry Open Mic, and Sac Poets flesh out the scene, with opportunities to share and experience poetry in community.
Sacramento wasn’t always the hub of literary creativity it is now. Recent Sacramento Poet Laureate Andru Defeye, who brought the inaugural Sacramento Poetry Week to the city last year, said that while poetry has always existed here, in the last several years, he witnessed these spaces “really wake up to Sacramento’s poetry potential.”
Spaces like Sacramento Poetry Center, established in 1979, have “really blossomed in the last five or six years,” according to Defeye, with innovative programming that crosses generational boundaries. With a historical focus on print publishing, the center is now expanding its reach to the digital realm with the 2025-26 release of its annual literary journal, Tule Review, in digital format. The new format allows for virtual performances, including spoken word poetry, a form with increasing popularity among newer generations of poets.
Defye acknowledged that during his time as Laureate, he worked to welcome these younger poets into the scene. “I think the city is just becoming more well-rounded … that the elders had so much to teach the youth and the youth had so much energy to give the elders, and I think you’re actually seeing that come to life now in the city,” Defy says.
One of the ways this is happening is through events like poetry book clubs, writing workshops and even poetry group therapy, which Sac Poets hosts at the Sacramento Poetry Center in the Midtown neighborhood.
Poetry may be healing itself, but for 33-year-old Ashlyn Haskins, more commonly known as Shenay, combining her custommade tea blends with poetry was a natural way to encourage community and health.
Haskins would pour her teas — initially developed to help her mother through lung cancer — while hosting poetry events, and eventually, Tea & Poetry Open Mic was born. For Haskins, it was a way to reconnect with her community after dealing with a barrage of personal pain, including grief over her mother’s passing and the ending of an abusive relationship while becoming a mother herself.
Her signature “soulshine” tea blend, which she says “calms the mind, body and soul,” welcomes performers to the mic with raspberry leaf, butterfly pea flowers and spearmint.
It works like magic, encouraging poets to share more freely, according to Haskins. The open mic takes place at Mother Natives plant nursery on 24th Street.
“They come up with their cup of soulshine and they’re like, ‘I wasn’t going to speak, but I really feel like this is the perfect opportunity.’ So I really love giving that space an opportunity for people to come and speak, for people to come and sell their goods, for people to just come and be amongst community,” Haskins says,
For Khiry Malik Moore, founder of Mahogany Urban Poetry Series, curating a space where poets can not only practice and grow their craft but also share their experiences is paramount, and part of what makes Mahogany a staple in the community after 26 years. What started as an open mic at the Jamaica House restaurant, formerly located at 1704 Broadway, has evolved into a multi-location showcase of some of Sacramento’s brightest poetic talent. Mahogany’s curated features also bring talent from outside of Sacramento, interspersing established and renowned poets with local up-and-comers.
Not exclusive to traditional poetry, however, the community is open to other forms of creative expression, often incorporating singing, rap and music.
“Mahogany is a place where it’s not just poetry,” Moore says. “We’ve had comedians that got their start by coming to work the crowd. We’ve got musicians, we’ve got all types of entertainers who have come, and some of them have gotten their start. Some of them have gotten better from being on that open mic.”While the creative atmosphere might inspire young artists to share, not everyone has what it takes to take the mic at Mahogany. Moore’s late friend, slam poet and Mahogany co-founder Cleo Cartel, was known for being a fiercely attentive listener — who was also hard to impress.
“If Cleo clapped for you, you were good,” Moore jokes, saying she challenged performers to “bring it.” Cartel’s legacy is hard to miss at Mahogany, and that is by design.
“Mahogany is about legacy,” Moore says, explaining that it has stood on its original purpose, to grow the scene, by giving so many poets a place to start. Former Mahogany performers now work in spaces that are bringing up the next generation of young poets. Like the strong-rooted tree Mahogany is named after, Moore sees Sacramento’s poetry scene rich with seeds that are “replanting themselves and growing.”
Defeye says that while Sacramento “has always made spaces for poetry,” what is emerging now in the city is different. “The old rubric and the old process was aimed at published poets, and that’s not the landscape of poetry anymore,” he says.
Sacramento Poetry Week, which takes place Oct 20-26, showcases the new dynamic of the poetry scene, with events centered around poetry therapy, queer poetry, spoken word and a “guerrilla art activation” which Defeye hopes will bring as many as 100 people to the 35th and Broadway intersection in a cathartic, open-air off-mic intersection of poetry, community and healing.
This story was funded by the City of Sacramento’s Arts and Creative Economy Journalism Grant to Solving Sacramento. Following our journalism code of ethics and protocols, the city had no editorial influence over this story and no city official reviewed this story before it was published. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, CapRadio, Hmong Daily News, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review and Sacramento Observer. Sign up for our “Sac Art Pulse” newsletter here.
By Marie-Elena Schembri
