We recognize that the unfolding of those gifts often involves challenges that test both the individual youth, and those around them. We offer the practice of poetry, music and storytelling with the understanding that our gifts often lie beside our wounds within us, and that a youth may experience some of the pain of past wounds in the process of identifying and claiming their gifts. We recognize that our wounds can become doorways to familial, cultural, and ancestral wounds, and that our personal healing can ripple out and be felt on those levels as well.

These themes reflect our methodology, our organizational culture, and our time-tested faith in the healing transformational power of music, poetry and storytelling. Many of our youth and their families struggle daily with the systemic effects of poverty and injustice. Street Poets collaborates with our young artists to make sure they are involved in program design and implementation and that their voices, stories and interests are the driving force behind our programming. 

Our work is to hold the tension between creating deep healing spaces for youth to find their voices, to share their stories and to heal themselves, while also firing the movement to make change in systems that desperately need to be changed. We equip our youth with meaningful life skills and provide a creative community to which our students can connect for mentoring and support. We provide our young people with real skills, while amplifying the strength and beauty of their voices.

Street Poets’ youth create with the knowledge that they carry the seeds of solutions to society’s problems within them. We are continuing to use poetry to tell the stories of our ancestral and cultural histories. We are not just telling our own stories, but we are also telling the stories of those who have come before us, and remembering to carry those stories with us into the present. We use those oral stories and poems as guiding posts for the work that we do in the world. We continue to work with young people who are behind bars, in community, foster care systems, and schools to teach young people how to use the gift of poetry to tell their own stories and as tools for healing. Young people are learning to use their voices, to tell their own personal narratives, to empower themselves, and advocate for themselves, by using the gift of poetry.

At Street Poets we see poetry (and metaphor) as a bridge to both the natural world and to elemental ritual. At Street Poets, we are reimagining the practices that restore our humanity and our intimate relationship to nature and to the healing transformational power of the natural world. This vision is why we’ve drawn so heavily from indigenous traditions over the years.

Our founding ED speaks to the relationship Street Poets creates between poetry and the natural world here: “Poetry and metaphor is the essential language of change in this dynamic time of re-imagination and rebirth for our city, our nation, and the world. Poetry is the language of wounded healers, community-builders, and visionaries. As old systems continue to erode and crumble, poetry has never been more desperately needed than it is today. It is through the power of metaphor and imagery that our next generation will be able to dream a new world into being for us all.”

One of our long term partners and poets, Luis Rodriguez speaks on behalf of our transformative work here: “Street Poets is a major part of a larger conversation in our country – we cannot heal from the ongoing economic, political and spiritual fracturing unless we bring poetry to the center of the culture…Street Poets is proof that poetry is central to any transformation from trauma, trouble and doubt.” 

It is clear that our next generation needs the sacred practice of poetry now more than ever to activate their imaginations. We engage our youth and society during this time of great transformation. Our continued work with youth and our emerging Street Poets Center for Community, Culture and Wellness slated to open early 2026, will inspire and support our next generation of leaders through this transitional and world-changing time.