Albany's First Poet Laureate Builds Lyrical Bridge Between City, Community

Since 2008, Christina Hutchins has crafted poems about Albany's major events, from a community-wide dinner on Solano Avenue to a music festival and various environmental endeavors. As the city's first poet laureate, Hutchins' readings begin each occasion, providing ceremony and transforming the informal to the formal.

Part of her job includes writing at least four poems a year to mark important moments. Her poems belong to the city, and are kept in an archive as part of its history. Hutchins also has represented Albany to the world as a place that values the arts, in an interview on CNN's "Newsmakers," where she talked about the poet laureate selection process.

According to the city's website, Hutchins has worked as a biochemist and a minister. She's lived in Albany since 1995 and "loves being able to walk everywhere a poet needs to go: post office, copy store, grocer, pool, and coffee shop."

Most of her Albany poems have commemorated outdoor celebrations, which makes sense, given that she loves nature. She began with a 2008 dinner to celebrate Albany's 100th birthday, where 3,000 people shared a meal together at tables set up on Solano. Hutchins described the dinner as "like a little town in Europe."

At last year's Spring Arts & Music Festival, she wrote about spring (excerpt):

"Rank grass
& new-leaf rattle, last year's path is gone,
& poetry's grown me up. I'm a song of the turning

wheel, says a California poppy, bowing & nodding,
Admire me! A late winter rain still cached
in the soil, the old oak drinks, & my stride lengthens.
We hold yesterday & tomorrow in the same embrace.
Hello strawberry scent rising, here in my arms."

For the Nielson Street tree planting party, she gave sonnets about dreaming trees the Latin names for different kinds of trees that were planted. Of the red horse chestnut, she wrote this (excerpt):

"Decades hence, on a fog-gifted afternoon,
a child will skate off the sidewalk alongside me,
& there I'll be to receive her veering speed,
her hands like leaves on my light-ridden bark.
She'll come to me on a great wave, momentum
of a lost glacier, rushing the rising of the seas."

For the Five Creeks Restoration anniversary, organized by the Friends of Five Creeks, she wrote a poem called "Creek," in honor of the group. Here's one piece of it:

"When I was a child down by a creek
I wandered off the trail
upstream,

        leaping rocks with trusted feet
& with the feet my body
                over water

    traveling under me, 
            its confident voice
telling every shaft & socket

under the rocks."

Another part of the poet laureate's job is to teach two poetry workshops each year, so Hutchins will work with the schools' "Reading Buddies" program, where fifth graders help second graders dive into books. Hutchins will compile an anthology of reading assignments that will include Bay Area and other well known poets. She'll then lead the children in writing workshops.

Peter Goodman, long-time member of the Arts Committee, said the group chose Hutchins after an intensive process that looked to the public for thoughts and feedback.

"We took inspiration from the public process that the arts committee had developed for selecting public art, that is, giving lots of input to the community by making poet candidates' work available for review in the library foyer, soliciting written comments, and holding public meetings at which the candidates could showcase their work," he said. "The final selection was made by a committee that comprised a teacher, several poets, and a member of the community."

Hutchins sometimes steps in to help with the open mic series at the Albany Library on the second Tuesday of each month. The event follows the Reading Series, led by Catherine Taylor. The two events have always co-existed on the same night. People often are drawn into the reading series and open mic from meeting Hutchins at laureate events, she said.

Unlike many open poetry readings, this one, because it meets at the library, "tends to bring people who know how to listen," Hutchins said. People are there for poetry, not coffee or food or the bar. The series takes place in the library's Edith Stone Room, which is quiet and comfortable, in the heart of the community center. Hutchins describes the experience as "communal human." The next reading occurs Sept. 14, and will feature poetry from The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed.

Hutchins will participate in this year's "Dinner with Albany" on Sept. 25 with a magnetic poetry project. Some lines from her first reading to the city still ring true, though others have become monuments to the city's past:

"In Albany there are no parking meters;
sometimes we tell time by the ocean breeze
or by one quick swing of a child's dangling
foot. This afternoon at the High School pool,
a swimmer gliding between strokes heard it:

time. Water pushed past her ears.
A bearded man on a rusting bicycle crossed
Solano Avenue. A groom brushed the shining
flank of a highstrung horse. Two grandmothers
stopped at the corner for coffee. Oh, and early

this morning in one of the stucco houses,
a child stood and took the first, magnificent
steps and left his infancy behind.
These moments are not only our own..."

Click here to hear Hutchins read her poem "Interregnum." Read the poems she's written for Albany by clicking here.

The Poet Laureate Program is administered by the Albany Arts Committee and funded by generous donations from the community. The Arts Committee intends to build a substantial fund that eventually will enable the Albany Poet Program to become self-sustaining. The fund will cover the costs of honoraria, publicity, publications and other related expenses.You can become a patron of the program by making a donation of any amount to the Poet Laureate Fund, Albany Poet Laureate Program, c/o Albany Arts Committee, 1249 Marin Ave., Albany, CA, 94706.