Georgina Marie is a poet from Lakeport, Northern California. She is the current Lake County Poet Laureate for 2020-2022, the first Mexican-American and youngest to serve in this role for Lake County. She is the new Literary and Poetry Out Loud Coordinator for the Lake County Arts Council and has served as co-editor for the Middletown Art Center’s RESILIENCE and RESTORE collections of written word and visual arts. In 2020 she was an Anne G. Locasio scholar for the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference’s Poetry Workshop. As part of the Broken Nose Collective, an annual chapbook exchange, she created her first poetry chapbook Finding the Roots of Water (2018) and her second chapbook Tree Speak (2019). She is currently working on her full-length poetry manuscript and a series of personal essays. Visit her website at georginamariepoet.com
As anyone reading this may already know: on January 20th, 2021, the role of the inaugural poet returned to the White House for the first time since the Obama Administration. Amanda Gorman, the first Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, read her poem The Hills We Climb for President Elect Joseph Biden and Vice President Elect Kamala Harris’ inauguration. Amanda Gorman wowed us her with poise and eloquence. She inspired us with her spoken word and her message of unity and resilience. In a move most if not all poets would applaud, she offered respect and remembrance to the great Maya Angelou who once was also an inaugural poet. Above all, she motivated an innumerable population of Americans to want to read poetry, to write poetry – the ultimate goal of a poet laureate.
The Lake County Arts Council and Lake County Poet Laureate Georgina Marie invite you to the Lake County Poetry Out Loud VIRTUAL County Level Competition for 2021! The virtual event will be held on Saturday January 9th, 2021 at 2 pm via Zoom.
Join Lake County Poet Laureate Georgina Marie in partnership with the Lake County Arts Council for a bi-weekly virtual writing circle beginning Wednesday Sept 2nd, 2020 from 6-8 pm! The circle will meet every other Wednesday evening during the COVID-19 pandemic. The time and day is subject to change in the future and will be re-evaluated when the Lakeport Writers Circle begins in person meetings again in the future. The writing circle is open to all Lake County writers of any genre and level of experience. New writers are encouraged to attend. All writers are asked to bring work they are currently working on and would like to receive feedback for. We will also do some free writing exercises and/or offer time to continue working on the writing you bring to the circle.
Please join Lake County Poet Laureate Georgina Marie and Lake County Community Advocate Gillian Parrillo on Saturday July 18th, 2020 for Dreaming America: A Reading for Immigrants in Detention Centers. This event is to raise awareness of adult and youth immigrants in detention centers in the United States. Readings will include excerpts from the book Dreaming America: Voices of Undocumented Youth in Maximum-security Detention, original work from featured poets, and stories from local immigrants.
June is PRIDE month! Join Lake County Poet Laureate Georgina Marie for Pride and Prejudice: A Reading for LGBTQ+, People of Color, and Social Justice. As far as we know, this will be the first poetry event in Lake County for Pride! We will share poetry, memoir, stories, song, education and awareness, and more.
As writers we may often experience self-doubt, question the quality of our work, and even question whether we should share our work with others. How do we overcome (or rather, meet with courage) the insecurities that keep us from sharing the most vulnerable parts of ourselves? How can we keep grounded in our poetry/art and learn to speak with confidence, from an authentic, centered place?
Join Lake County Poet Laureate Georgina Marie and poet Charity E. Yoro for a conversation and Q&A on the challenges of being a writer. All are welcome to listen in and/or participate in the conversation. Saturday June 20th, 2020 2:00-4:00 pm PST on Zoom Email georgina.marie@hotmail.com to RSVP and receive Zoom info
This particular time of the coronavirus challenges us to maintain our relationship with our creative lives and it very well could be a time of pause. One may find it hard to write when we’re worried about our health and livelihoods or our families. One of my favorite writers, Nicole Gulotta, recently discussed in her podcast Wild Words how writing is certainly essential but in a way that is different than our basic essential needs. This may very well be a period of time this year where we slow down or even stop writing because we feel exhausted, we don’t have the energy or the motivation, or we just don’t feel like it. All of this is okay and I would even say that it is certainly a part of living a writer’s life.
Lake County Poet Laureate Georgina Marie and The Lake County Bloom invite Lake County writers to submit to our bi-weekly poetry column, Rooted in Poetry. This column is a collaboration to offer a platform for local writers to introduce themselves to the community through their writing. Writers of all backgrounds are welcome regardless of your experience or style. We support established and emerging writers and look forward to reading a wide range of work and perspectives.
Online Poetry Workshop and Discussion Saturday May 23, 2020 from 11 am – 1 pm on Zoom. Poets can bring an original poem(s) they’d like to work on to share and discuss. We’ll also take time to free write from prompts. All are welcome no matter their writing experience. Hosted by Lake County Poet Laureate Georgina Marie.
A total of 22 contest submissions were received from Lake County writers from all around the lake of different ages and writing experience. A reading panel of 5 Lake County residents made the winning poem selections. Submissions were read blind without knowing names of those who wrote the poems until after selections were made. First place winner was Diane Tulley for her poem 65 Year Old Garden. Second place winner was Ariana Weinert for her poem The Market Season. Third place winner was Mia Ruiz for her poem The Golden Peach. Each winner was awarded a monetary amount in market money to use on fresh goods at the market (funds were sponsored by Lake County Bloom and Georgina Marie), had their poems on display for the market’s opening day, and their poems are being published in the Lake County Bloom. The remaining contestants have the opportunity to have their poems posted on the Lake County Farmers’ Finest website.
Opening day of this year’s farmers’ market was previously going to include the first Poetry Pop-Up at the Farmers’ Market of this year where local poets would share their poetry with market-goers, an event by Poet Laureate Georgina Marie that started in 2018. Since this cannot take place on opening day, both Georgina Marie and Cornelia Sieber, Market Manager, still wanted to continue with the goal of bringing the market and poetry together by offering a poetry contest to celebrate opening day of farmers’ market season. Lake County writers are invited to submit a food or farmers’ market related poem. A panel of 6 readers will then decide on three winners: first, second, and third place. The first place winner will receive $80 in market money, second place will receive $40 in market money, and third place will receive $20 in market money to use on fresh goods at the market. All winners will have their poems displayed at the market on opening day published in the Lake County Bloom.
This is a time when we are honoring the new. Every day is different: our routines have been altered, and we are faced with uncertainty, which can be difficult to say the least. But we can still write, we can still create and perhaps even without the pressure to finish a poem or write a new book but simply to help us get through this time; to document a time when we were unsure how our day-to-day will proceed, but when we still stayed connected.
The Lake County Campus Woodland Community College and Middletown Art Center has partnered with Mary Wilson and Georgina Marie to bring a Virtual Open Mic to the community on Friday April 3rd, 2020 from 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm.
Alicia Julia Guardado passed away on July 19, 2018 in San Francisco, CA after complications with various chronic medical conditions. Alicia was 41. She is survived by her children, Victor Guzman and Adrianna Guardado, beloved pets Bella, Jamal and Mistie, mother Ada Fogal, and siblings Laticia Guardado, Ada Guardado, Kenneth Guardado, Vanessa Guardado and Georgina […]
When the rabbits appeared in the tapestry, I knew he had come to visit. I tore their prints and patched themonto paper.Ode to honoring love lost. Before he died he chased a jackrabbit.Not one ounce of care in the world,only concern for sinking his teeth into fresh fur,for running away from me and into the […]
When he found out I fell in love with peach tulips, he sent them to me. Wrapped in burlap with other farm flowers because I asked for them. Don’t ask for love. Ever. You shouldn’t have to. He didn’t know this. I didn’t know this, yet. Because of this they made me sick for years, […]
Something came to me on a frost-chewed winter morning. 15 years I had lived rarely touching my feet to the snow. Now 30 years of living, the snow has melted and returned many times; each time new words, each time a new winter. I don’t know how melon-drenched words come to me in shapes of […]
