South San Francisco, CA  January 22, 2021 by Aileen Cassinetto, San Mateo County Poet Laureate 2019/2021

The San Mateo County Arts Commission is pleased to announce the release of the anthology, I Have a Dream: Inaugural Poems for a New Generation, by San Mateo County Youth, edited by San Mateo County Poet Laureate Aileen Cassinetto and local teacher Jim Ward, with foreword written by San Mateo County Arts Commission Director Emerita Robin Rodricks.

The idea for the anthology came about after more than 100 of San Mateo County’s high school students spent the last month of 2020 attending poetry workshops and crafting inaugural poems. Partly inspired by the Academy of American Poets’ 2021 Inaugural Poem Contest, Cassinetto and Ward challenged the students to write about their views, their experiences and their hopes for America. A poem from the book inspired by the words of Joseph R. Biden, John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama and Martin Luther King, Jr., reads: “At my kitchen table sit the doers and makers of things, / picking themselves up then marching ahead / as far as their dreams will take them.”

The anthology features the work of 115 youth, ages 6 to 16, and is sponsored by the San Mateo County Arts Commission.

For more information, please email [email protected] .

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UPDATE GAME ON ANNOUNCED!

Everything South City will be hosting a GAME ON, with Aileen Cassinetto gifting a copy of this wonderful book, to a winner randomly chosen on February 2nd, who responds to our GAME ON question:

What is YOUR favorite poem?

Respond here or reply by email to [email protected]

Thank you to Aileen for this generous offer.