News at Eleven: [Juan Felipe] Herrera recounts meeting

the farmworker legend Dolores Huerta, 83, at a dinner before an event in Bakersfield. She told him she loved to write poetry as a child. In her family, she was known as "la siete lenguas," the seven tongues, for her ability with language."But when I was in elementary school, I showed my teachers my poetry, and they said I couldn't write," Huerta told Herrera. "So I stopped writing."

At the event that followed, Herrera informally pronounced Huerta "the poet laureate of Kern County."

from The Los Angeles Times: California's poet laureate likes to turn the tables

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