With two new poetry projects in mind, Cupertino's second poet laureate, Jennifer Swanton Brown, was crowned at Cupertino Community Hall Sunday.
At the crowning ceremony, Brown said she knew she would need to do a lot more than her own poetry writing to inspire community members' creativity.
"Poetry cheerleading can be a lonely thing in the high-tech-oriented suburbs, but I'm committed to it whole-heartedly," she said.
Brown told the audience that she is posting a poem prompt on Facebook every Thursday as an ongoing project to promote poetry writing in the community.
Given the ethnic diversity of Cupertino, Brown said her next project is an International Cupertino Poetry Festival, which will include residents' poetry readings in languages other than English.
A Cupertino resident since 1973, Brown has taught in schools in both Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties, covering poetry instruction, lesson development, evaluation of student work and production of student anthologies.
Her term as Cupertino's second poet laureate began Oct 1 and will run through Sept 30, 2015.
Before crowning Brown the next poet laureate, Cupertino's first poet laureate David Denny received a proclamation from Mayor Orrin Mahoney and souvenirs from chairperson of the Cupertino Library Commission, Adrian Kolb.
Denny also substituted for Santa Clara County poet laureate emeritus Sally Ashton as the keynote speaker. While Ashton was absent for the flu, Denny smilingly asked audience members to poetically imagine him as her.
At the end of his speech, Denny read his own poem "5 pm Cupertino" but cleverly changed its last line "I’ll leave the foothills to my friend Cézanne" to "I'll leave the foothills to my friend Jennifer."
