Okay, good evening.

I am calling this meeting to order.

But it is today is Monday, May 4th.

St.

Louis Poet Laureate Task Force meeting coming to order at 425 p.m.

Christine, if I could have you do roll call.

Uh Nikki Smith.

Present.

Pam Garvey present.

I don't have my sheet in front of me, so I apologize.

Kyle, could you remind me of your last name?

Sure.

It's Kyle Brandt Lubert.

Okay, Kyle Brant Lubert.

Present.

And Yamani, what is your last name?

Wentz, like the word.

All right, Imani Wentz.

Imani.

Present.

You have a quorum.

You may proceed.

Wonderful.

So we're just going to approve the minutes.

So Kyle and Imani, you have uh received the minutes way back when before we did our onboarding from January 12th.

And Pam, you would have received Christine and Pam Q would have received the minutes.

Um right after our meeting on January 12th.

So hopefully the group has had an opportunity to review those.

And so if there are, are there any corrections to the meeting to the minutes from January 12th?

If there are no corrections, um and the minutes stand as approved.

Then do we need to vote on that, Christine?

Um I guess I would recommend maybe holding off on approval since Kyle and Yamani were not members and wouldn't.

At that point, at that minute.

Yeah.

Fair enough.

Fair enough.

Okay.

So moving along, since we only have a few minutes, um, really the only thing I want to get accomplished today is give Kyle and Imani an opportunity to just introduce themselves, just share a little bit about who they are, what brings them to the task force.

And Pam, for you to just share your passion, who you are, and and any lessons learned on uh because you've been with on the task force we've been on this ride for about a year now.

Um, and any lessons learned that you have that you want to share.

So I'll open the floor for discussion.

Kyle, first, if you want to just tell a little bit about yourself, your business, um, and what brought you to us and what are you looking forward to helping us do?

Yeah, um, so I am Kyle.

Um, they or she pronouns either are fine.

Um describe myself as an integrative mental health provider and community arts organizer, um, as well as a multidisciplinary artist myself.

Um, so in my practice, it's called Tiny Postcards Counseling and Creative Arts.

It's located in Dutchtown.

I do a mix of seeing individual clients, a lot of expressive arts therapy, different types of trauma focused therapy.

Um, and then I also host and curate different community-based, uh, often art space, not always workshops and things of that nature.

Um, so it's meant to be a space that is yeah, used by the community, kind of for the community in different ways, um, whether it's a learning space or a gathering space for meetings or a performance space, um, things like that.

Um, I in my own practice uh do a pretty big mix of poetry, uh, visual art, music, like I love just the intermodal relationship.

So right now I'm working on a lot of uh poetry and experimental music combinations and sort of a performance capacity.

That's one of my passions.

Um been hosting the poetry open mic at the heavy anchor for two and a half years.

Um love that space.

And yeah, have just really kind of deepened my relationship with the poetry practice, especially uh since 2020.

The pandemic times really brought me closer to poetry.

Uh lots of terrible things.

That was one bright spot.

Um, yeah, I am just really excited to um figure out how we can make some of these avenues of support for the poet laureate role more robust so that there can be more of a widespread impact in the community.

Wonderful.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Um, Imani.

I want to be mindful of your hard stop.

You still want me to continue?

Yeah, keep going.

Keep going.

Yeah.

My name is Imani Wentz.

Uh born and raised here in St.

Louis.

I am a lifelong writer, storyteller, and uh memory worker, something I discovered about myself more recently.

I am the owner and founder of the Noir Bookshop, which was a concept bookstore located over on Cherokee Street on the south side.

Brick and mortar stood for about two and a half years, which opened me up to more literacy initiatives.

And really my my guiding light has been eradicating book deserts in St.

Louis and books accessible where people are.

And my goal is to teach people how to use research, how to use media literacy, and how to use everyday everyday um opportunities and institutions in their own backyard that are free to give them their best source of uh possibilities.

And I do that through self-publishing and teaching the history of the Black Press and Zines and chat books and just DIY publishing to get your agenda out there.

And I've really enjoyed uh uplifting authors and uplifting literacy and the concept of just being yourself and being interested in learning, no matter what age you are, but also making educational resources accessible to the community and demystifying the sort of myth between institutions and the public and especially black people's reach to institutions and what's in their archives, and just trying to get people to remember to never forget where they came from, but also that you can create your own opportunities as that's something that has always been the truth for me.

I've always created my own opportunities and it's always worked for me.

So I'm very interested in community storytelling and hopefully connecting our esteemed poet laureate who is someone that has helped me in my journey and just been a great person toward me with no strings attached to help deepen the relationship of how important it is that we have a black woman as a poet laureate of our city and has something very poignant and intentional to say and do.

Beautiful, wonderful.

Thank you for sharing.

And Pam, um feel free to introduce yourself as a member and any best practices or any lessons learned or anything you think we uh need to be digging into uh with now that we have new members.

Hi, well, welcome, Amani and Kyle.

I'm so glad that you're here.

Um and uh I'm um I'm not originally from St.

Louis, but I lived here since 1999.

Um I'm a poet and writer.

Um, I teach at St.

Louis Community College in the English department.

Um I am I think that one of the things like I remember when we created the poet laureate position here, and it was a direct response to what was happening in Ferguson and the idea that the city needed a poetic voice.

Um, you know, and there we've had three poet laureates prior.

And I think one of our goals, um, it's always been, you know, something that's that's been you know uh wonderful and dynamic in this city.

And I think one of our goals with um Patia was to um allow this tax task force or really make the task force a little more involved to support her in that role because what we I think discovered was that prior the poet laureate would be selected by the task force and then kind of out there on their own.

So to sort of like make those connections and to create support um for this position, which doesn't like it doesn't have a budget or anything.

So we're trying to like you know give her some some as much as we can and um you know, and patients are already out in the community a lot.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you, Pam.

So lots to do.

Um, definitely want to make sure you all meet and as well as India, as well as our wonderful poet laureate Patia.

Um, and so we can share more about what the intention is um with your skills and talent joining the task force, but I feel so good that we finally have completed our task of fulfilling the vacant seats um that we had open, and um now we can fully charge ahead on some of the goals that we have.

But I feel so good that we finally have completed our task of fulfilling the vacant seats that we had open, and um now we can fully charge ahead on some of the goals that we have, and as Pam mentioned, some of the support that we want to make sure that we're providing.

So we'll continue to have the discussion um in our next conversation at our next meeting.

And uh there's not anything particular that you know I want to vote on, but I will make sure that we open the floor next time, like I said, for the discussion on just a reality check on where we are today and where I think we need to be going over the next couple of months with the intention of revising the ordinance.

One to your point, Pam, of uh addressing head on the funding need, the the budgeting need and seeing how can we um insert some language in there so we can get um some consideration for budget needs as well as inserting language because we are essentially expanding the scope of what this task force is wanting to accomplish.

Um, and so we want to make sure that the ordinance is in support of that expanded scope.

So we'll uh start to utilize this month as well as uh the next couple of months to start drafting what that language looks like, and um doing that either through small work streams, um, you know, and then coming together collectively, or we'll try to figure out what the working model is going to look like, but that's the goal.

So um, what we can do is we'll go ahead and just adjourn at this moment and then reconvene again.

I want to make sure because we did send a survey out.

Um, and the first, although there was like one person or two people who wanted like a Tuesday or a Thursday, essentially Monday at this time worked for the most people.

Um, and so hopefully that's the case still.

So first Mondays at four o'clock.

Um, so we'll reconvene next month.

Um, in the meantime, I do want to make sure that we touch base individually.

So I'm still gonna reach out to you, Pam, and reach out to Anna, set up some time so we can chat through some of the individual work streams that we have.

I have a question, uh Mick.

Yeah.

Is it um is it still needed to send a picture and bio of myself?

I know that I've seen it.

Yeah, that's for uh Christine.

Um, she needs that for the website.

Okay, wonderful.

Thank you.

Yep.

Yeah, so and your mailing address as well, right, Christine.

Yeah.

Great, thanks.

Nick, I just wanted to let you know I cannot be at next month's meeting.

Okay, thank you for letting me know.

Okay, good.

All righty, so it is 4.38.

Um, and we are going to I'm gonna move to adjourn.

Can I get us uh a second on that?

A second movement to adjourn.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All opposed.

The ayes have it.

The meeting is adjourned at 4 38 p.m.

Thank you, everyone.

See you next time.

I'll send out the minutes afterwards.

Thank you.

Welcome again.

Thanks.