Elm City Names Its Inaugural Poet Laureate

Poet Sharmont Influence-Little at Elm City LIT Fest on Saturday. Lucy Gellman Photo. 

Sharmont Influence-Little can draw a map of New Haven with his eyes closed, and point out the spots that are hallowed ground. There are the Farnam Courts, where he spent his childhood in the old Franklin Street Projects. There’s the ghost of the old Q House, where his grandmother earned her GED just steps from Dixwell Avenue. There are the rooms in homes and hospitals where he’s provided family care, sometimes before rolling up to a reading still in his scrubs. 

Then there are the stages he’s blessed with his poetry, from the Peabody Museum to the corner of Edgewood Avenue and Hotchkiss Street. Wherever he is, a benediction rolls through the space. So perhaps it is fitting that for the next two years, he will be the city’s voice. 

Saturday, Little was named New Haven’s first-ever poet laureate at Elm City LIT Fest, in a new collaboration between Kulturally LIT and the city’s Department of Arts, Culture & Tourism. In a tear-flecked acceptance and spoken word performance, Little said he is humbled and excited to accept the position, for which he will serve a two-year term. 

“The ground you’re standing on right now—I’m from this city,” he said, fighting back tears that ultimately came. “I love this city with everything God gave me. This ground that you’re standing on right now is the same ground in the same city that my grandmother went at 50 years old to the old Q House to get her GED. This city is where I raised my kids. This city is where I choose to give back. This city means everything to me. So I do not take this responsibility lightly at all.” 

Andrew Aaron Valdez.

The award, which mirrors poet laureate positions in several towns and cities across the state, has been months in the making. Earlier this year, LIT Fest Founder IfeMichelle Gardin and organizer Shamain McAllister approached the Department of Arts, Culture & Tourism asking if they could add New Haven to a list that already included Hartford, Manchester, New London, West Haven, and North Haven—as well as tiny towns like Pomfret, Bolton and Ashford.

They’d come to the right place: Cultural Affairs Director Adriane Jefferson started her career in the arts after falling in love with poetry and spoken word as a kid in New London. Before she ever worked for the Connecticut Office of the Arts or City of New Haven, she was a co-founder of the Writer's Block InK, which teaches creative empowerment to youth through poetry and spoken word. The department offered a $1,000 annual stipend for the position, which includes two commissioned pieces and the poet laureate’s appearance at two official city events over two years.

"We really just wanted to support, trust and empower Ife and Sha and the rest of the team to execute their idea and to make it official through the city,” she said in a phone call Tuesday morning, adding that she sees the appointment as part of the city’s Cultural Equity Plan. “I was 10 when I first started really writing and performing and it changed my life. So to see this art form elevated in this moment is very, very special.” 

She also knew—like Gardin—that New Haven has long been a hub for spoken word and creative writing. For almost three decades, the Yale Peabody Museum’s Z Experience Poetry Slam has been a staple of New Haven’s literary fabric, as have monthly readings that stretch from the Institute Library to New Haven People’s Center to the city’s public middle and high schools.   

Finalist Yex Diaz. 

With support from the department, Gardin and McAllister assembled a panel of judges including Last Poets Founder Abiodun Oyewole, Hartford Poet Laureate Frederick-Douglass Knowles II, New London Poet Laureate Josh “AnUrbanNerd” Brown, and Inner-City News Editor and WNHH Community Radio Host Babz Rawls-Ivy. Working together, the four selected five finalists, all of whom submitted two poems and performed Saturday. 

They included Yexandra “Yex” Diaz, Naomi Jones, Andrew Aaron Valdez, Sun Queen and Little. Together, they represent artists, educators, organizers, and playwrights who have all used spoken word as a vehicle for social change in the city. As each took the stage, they became a case study in sheer narrative skill, fiery storytelling and the economy of language. Or as Gardin later said, a testament to New Haven’s place as the cultural capital of Connecticut.  

Before he ever took the stage, Little was listening intently to his peers. He listened as Diaz took on America’s long legacy of racism, laying it bare as she brought neighborhoods and histories into sharp focus with each word. He let Jones’ fear of mothering a Black boy wash over him, letting out hums of affirmation as she read. He sank into the lines as Valdez nimbly knitted together basketball, fatherhood, and the sheer horror and cruelty of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

Watch the full lineup of performances here or in the video below. Sun Queen was unable to read due to a concurrent performance at CT Folk Fest in Edgerton Park.  

Naomi Jones.

When he took the stage himself, Little paused for a moment, as if he was holding the weight of every word that had been spoken. Then, he looked back up at the audience, and began. Within seconds—I had a conversation with a Black boy the other day/Gunshot victim/He asked, what makes a Black man be a nurse?—he had transported the audience from Dixwell Avenue to a hospital room somewhere in New Haven, where he was working to save a young man’s life. 

I’m from a city that knocks down projects/Cause the rubble makes better battlegrounds, he read, and snaps and murmurs filled the air. Turning Black boys into Green Berets/Playing in concrete jungles/Moving like renegade soldiers/Fighting for their big piece of poverty. 

By the time he finished, with the wish that he could heal through his profession, the crowd was cheering, applause flowing over the expanse of white concrete and hanging low in the hot afternoon air.

As Gardin took the stage to make a final announcement, they fell quiet, and the rumble of cars and buses on Dixwell Avenue set an unexpected soundtrack. Curator Juanita Sunday, who works with Gardin and the Kulturally LIT team, drummed her hands on the stage.

“I am so glad that I was not on the nominating committee,” Gardin said. When she started the process months ago, she had no idea how hard the final decision would be. She thanked the judges, taking a beat as the five poets waited to hear who would be representing the city.

When she finally did welcome Little up to the stage, he accepted the position with tears in his eyes. By the time he performed, they had made a path down his cheeks. 

As a teaching artist, father, nurse and founder of Influence A Life, LLC., Little said that he was humbled to represent New Haven in the new role. Before leaving the stage, he graced it one last time with a poem, dedicated to his daughter and the gentle art of styling a Black girl’s hair. 

He added that he’s proud “To push forth literature, to push forth poetry in all its different forms to the youth, to understand the expression of what poetry is supposed to be about,” he said. "It's about a release. It's about healing. It's about being who you are unapologetically." 

Watch all of the performances in the video above.