Santa Barbara Youth Poets Honored

County Youth Poet Laureate Program Recognizes Madeline Miller and Kundai Chikowero

Appointment of 2022 Youth Poet Ambassador Kundai Chikowero and 2022 Youth Poet Laureate Madeline Miller at the Santa Barbara City Hall in Santa Barbara, California on July 19, 2022. Santa Barbara City Mayor Randy Rowse presented the proclamations. Credit: Rod Rolle

Santa Barbara County inducts Madeline Miller, the first-ever Youth Poet Laureate, and Kundai Chikowero, the first-ever Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador, this week.

Born in Mexico City, Mexico and raised in Santa Barbara by her father, a pastor, and mother, an educator, Youth Poet Laureate Madeline Miller has always valued language arts and education. A recent graduate of San Marcos High School, she was the president of the San Marcos Writer’s Society and Vice President of the San Marcos Gender and Sexuality Alliance. She was also the Vice President of her school’s advanced women’s choir, Enchanté.

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Miller has competed in a number of poetry slams, including two first-place titles at the 2021 San Marcos High School Poetry Slam and the 2021 Santa Barbara County Poetry Slam. She worked as an assistant at a local law firm, completed an internship with the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and currently works at Chaucer’s Books. She is involved in the Way Collective and other community activism and will continue to be involved in the community during her gap year.

Youth Poet Laureate Madeline Miller | Credit: Rod Rolle

There are trees in the Hallway by Madeline Miller

there are trees in the hallway.

that’s not a metaphor, there are manzanitas between the e wing and the f wing,

i stepped outside for a drink of water and there they were,

with strange red-orange fruits blossoming in between the buildings.

there is grass growing in the gutter,

over mr. oftedal’s room.

it’s taking root and taking back the d-wing rooftops.

i was driving through the desert

in a rainstorm with my mother

and she was rattling off ravines of worries

and speaking skid marks of worst case scenarios

as we raced through the canyon

but I was thinking “look how much nature doesn’t need us”

so much has been said about “save the wilderness”

and “protect the polar ice caps”

but we are not her rescuer

That smokestack-oil-rig-mineshaft-polluted-water-turning-black

is the way we poke the bear

We insist on biting the hand that feeds,

but our Goldilocks planet is turning her paw against us

we cannot keep choosing the losing side.

There are fruit trees in the hallways

and grass in the gutter

and there will be life on earth with or without us

She crawls in under the back door and colonizes countertops

and clambers up through cracks in the pavement

and despite treating Nature like a guest in her own home, She is here.

She will always be here.

I’m standing in the doorway looking at a manzanita tree

And I’m thinking grim thoughts and writing sad things

but when I look at those red-orange berries I am not sad

The earth is a good and wonderful thing.

Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador Kundai Chikowero is a student at California Lutheran University in the University Honors Program, double majoring in Psychology and Philosophy. She is a proactive activist for social justice, community empowerment of underserved populations, and anti-racism. Chikowero was awarded the City of Santa Barbara Outstanding Youth Leader in 2018. She is a published poet who has won the Martin Luther King Jr. Essay and Poetry competition six times since 7th grade. Her two volumes of published poetry are grounded in equality, peace, and determination, among other themes. Her poems were featured in a 2021 collection of poetry, While You Wait: A Collection by Santa Barbara County Poets (Gunpowder Press), edited by the former Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Laure-Anne Bosselaar. She has read her poems at various venues in Santa Barbara. With an understanding that racism is a taught social ill, Chikowero tackles this rampant problem in the Santa Barbara and California school systems by actively communicating with school administrations whenever she notices such cases by students in daily practice, particularly on social media. She plans to continue her social justice work by studying law in college through poetry and creating platforms for youths to use poetry as an avenue to promote peace and equality in society.