Writer, teacher named California poet laureate

Al YOUNG, a Mississippi-born writer living in the Bay Area since the early 1960s, is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pick to serve as California’s second formally recognized poet laureate -- a job that pays $10,000 over two years and requires a minimum of six public appearances to bolster poetry’s public profile.

Young figures to put in a little more time on the job than that.

“I go around doing this kind of thing anyway,” Young said this week in a telephone interview after returning to his Berkeley home by train from Seattle, where he read some of his poetry backed by jazz to raise money for the Seattle Review. “My philosophy many years ago changed from getting to giving, and that shift has brought about just a lot of wonderful things. It just feels good bringing poetry into people’s lives.”

Young, 66, has written several books of poetry as well as novels, essays and screenplays, and has edited anthologies. He also has taught at UC Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Davis and at Stanford University, and has won numerous awards, including Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. He has lectured on African American literature and culture in Kuwait, Bahrain and India under programs run by the U.S. Department of State.

As poet laureate, Young is to work with the California Arts Council as an ambassador for poetry. He said he also hopes to establish an Internet forum through the California State Library “where young and old, formally educated and informally educated people from just about every California background can not only present poetry textually but also discuss it.”

If Young, a Democrat, is approved by the state Legislature, he would succeed La Jolla poet Quincy Troupe, a 2002 Gray Davis appointee who resigned after four months when it was discovered he had falsely claimed to have earned an undergraduate degree. Troupe, who also quit his teaching job at UC San Diego, was the state’s first poet laureate after the position was formalized in 2001. Previously, five poet laureates had received informal lifetime appointments by the Legislature, beginning in 1915.

“Al Young is incredibly distinguished, both in his career as a university professor and through his travels around the world as a lecturer on poetry,” California Arts Council Director Muriel Johnson said in a prepared statement. “Like jazz, Al Young is an original American voice.”

Young believes he is stepping into the role at a time when poetry’s star is ascending, as evidenced by the continued strength of public readings, poetry slams and the pervasiveness of hip-hop -- a musical form based as much on rhyme as rhythm -- in popular culture.

When the going gets tough, he believes, the tough get poetic.

“In today’s world, with all the tumult and darkness and fear going on, I’ve noticed that there’s more poetic activity going on than maybe at any other time,” Young said. “People turn to poetry in times of crisis.”