Overview

Second edition with a new essay on the late Mike Davis, legendary author of City of Quartz, a new essay on local history of time and space, and a teaching guide to help educators incorporate the book into their curriculum. The poems and essays in Letters to My City combine two decades of field experience, research, personal observations, and stories told to the author, Mike Sonksen, a third-generation Los Angeles native, by his grandfather and other family members, to interrogate all sides of Los Angeles, its streets, its people, its neighborhoods, as a means to examine the postmodern metropolis.

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9781945177187

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Reviews

"""In innumerable essays and performances, frequently in public schools, Mike Sonksen has opened a new generation's eyes to LA's extraordinary history of underground and underdog cultures. What Whitman was to Brooklyn, Poet Mike is to contemporary LA."" - Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz ""Mike the Poet sings the history, people, dreams, and even shadows of LA city. His poems are instant pop-and-crackle chronicles, more news than the 11 PM news hour. What everyone forgets, Mike the Poet remembers."" - Luis J. Rodriguez, author of Always Running ""Mike Sonksen (AKA Mike the Poet) is a civic treasure. He's a many-generation native of Los Angeles and with that he's taken a multilayered interest in the city. All of it is up for exploration and inquiry."" - Lynell George, author of A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler"

Author Information

"Mike Sonksen aka Mike the PoeT is a 3rd-generation Los Angeles native. He is a poet, professor, journalist, historian and also teaches at Woodbury University. Previously he taught at Cal State LA and Southwest College and before that he taught high school for six years. Dating back to 2008, he has published over 300 students in various publications he has edited on both the high school and collegiate level. Sonksen has published over 500 essays and poems with publications like Academy of American Poets, Alta, KCET, Poets & Writers Magazine, PBS, BOOM, Wax Poetics, Southern California Quarterly, LA Weekly, OC Weekly, Lana Turner, Metropolis, The Architect's Newspaper, LA Alternative Press, Los Angeles Review of Books, LA Taco, LAist, LA Parent and more. Sonksen has also been awarded on three separate occasions by the City of Los Angeles, including the Mayors' Office in 2008. Sonksen has been a guest speaker at over 100 universities and high schools. He has also presented his poetry on public radio stations KCRW, KPFK and KPCC and TV stations like Spectrum News. In 2013, the Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center honored Sonksen for ""Distinguished Service to the Los Angeles Poetry Community."""

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