This week, Orlando will introduce residents to the city’s third Poet Laureate: Camara Gaither, a mental health therapist who has been writing poetry since she was a child and now uses it — to great effect — in her work with victims of sex trafficking, young people fighting to stay away from crime and drugs, LGBTQ adults, and veterans haunted by post-traumatic stress disorder.
Some of you are probably wondering why Orlando needs a poet laureate — particularly after the ugly mockery spouted by Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia during his press conference Tuesday in Jacksonville.
Part of the answer is this: Because of people like Blaise Ingoglia, who think cheap shots laced with deception are a fitting substitute for public discourse. People who are ready to label anything they don’t like, any grace extended to people they don’t care about, as wasteful and unnecessary.
Here’s the more important point, though: Orlando invests in programs like this because it cares. Because the men and women who lead this great city, starting with Mayor Buddy Dyer, care. Though Orlando’s leaders span the ideological spectrum, they are united behind the idea that Orlando’s strength starts with its heart.
The soul of a city
They don’t always get it right. Orlando has its share of political pettiness, to be sure, and there are still parts of town where “the city beautiful” turns dangerous and poverty-stricken.
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These areas need the kind of investment that the hard-eyed men in charge of Florida’s government resist making. Every year, the city wrestles with the horrible toll of addiction, violence, poverty and exploitation that flourishes in those neighborhoods — areas that also house families who dream that their children will break free of the cruel cycle and soar.
Poetry and performance, art and music, cannot magically cure these broken communities. But they can help inspire communities to heal themselves. It’s impossible to put a price on that benefit, but easy to count the cost — and it’s shockingly small. Gaither will receive an annual stipend of $6,000, a $2,000 bump from her predecessor. Some of that will likely go to support programs she initiates, she said this week. The city will pick up other expenses, but the budget for this program and other arts-related endeavors is tiny in light of Orlando’s $1.8 billion budget.
This is Orlando’s investment in hope, an attempt to fight ugliness with beauty. Its loftiest goal is to reach the minds of young people who might not otherwise understand that the power of the spoken word can, at times, overcome the brutal language of bullets and fists. Over its eight years of the program’s existence, Orlando’s previous poet laureates have conducted hundreds of workshops and outreach events, and watched the children they mentored craft tangible expressions of their anger, their fear and their hope.
It doesn’t stop there: Susan Lilley, the city’s first poet laureate and a recently retired educator, started programs that helped isolated adults whose only means of expression was their own writing, find community and support. She also launched a contest that has led to Orlando residents’ poems being displayed in public venues like the airport and City Hall.
Her successor, Shawn Welcome — who is about to hand over the job to Gaither — built on that, hosting spoken-word events in local jails and visiting high schools for twice-yearly programs that saw young people happily competing in poetry slams. His own story demonstrates the power of his message. As the Sentinel’s Scott Maxwell wrote earlier this year, his ability to blend the commonplace and the extraordinary has led to a career as a sought-after public speaker — quite a journey for someone who once struggled with homelessness.
Orlando residents can expect Gaither’s experience in using words as instruments of healing to expand the program, reaching out to survivors of domestic violence to help them regain a sense of power, and to isolated seniors who can fight loneliness by sharing their own words and listening to others.
Ugliness vs. beauty
These are the people Ingoglia chose to mock in a Tuesday press conference in Jacksonville, as Gov. Ron DeSantis stood smirking by his side. The Jacksonville event was one of a series of press conferences the two men have held around the state, using bad math and unsupported innuendo to portray Florida’s cities and counties as wildly overspending. The so-called “governmental efficiency” effort is so hamfisted that it can’t even settle on a name; the current moniker, Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight, was chosen merely for its acronym, an internet shortcut for the phrase “F— around and find out.”
Elegant.
Ingoglia expanded on his deceptive theme with a poetic attempt of his own: “Roses are red, violets are blue, our property taxes are high, because of you,” he chanted, and grinned as if he had said something original. We’d like to turn that around: Mr. Ingoglia, exactly how much state tax money are you wasting, flying around the state to stnd behind podiums decorated with custom-made signs? And if you’re so concerned about government spending money on things it shouldn’t, why not look into the $60,000 DeSantis spent putting his own campaign slogan onto highway signs welcoming visitors to Florida? That money would fund 10 years of Orlando’s poetry program.
Or what about the state and local money wasted by state transportation officials who sand-blasted and painted over colorful artwork on streets and at crosswalks around Florida? That final bill is likely to be in the millions.
There is a stark contrast here. DeSantis, Ingoglia and other state leaders are using taxpayer dollars to feed their own egos and burnish their political credentials — and to tear down the efforts of city and county officials who see hope, kindness and community as worthy investments.
Orlando isn’t the only community that has made this kind of investment — and with its track record, it’s entirely possible that city officials could raise enough private-donation money to cover the cost of the poet laureate program and then some. But it’s important that this is a public investment, even if it amounts to less than two pennies per year for every man, woman and child who lives in this city. These pennies are a sign that all of Orlando values all of its residents. There is no way to put a dollars-and-cents valuation on that, but the return is boundless.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Executive Editor Roger Simmons and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com