“Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundation for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.” -Audre Lorde
In 1995, Street Poets founder Chris Henrikson began teaching a poetry workshop in an L.A. County Juvenile Probation Camp as a volunteer through the Writers Guild of America. In 1997, he and the alumni of that workshop, known collectively as Street Poets, joined forces with the NYC-based DreamYard Project to form DreamYard/LA. Street Poets worked under that fiscal umbrella from 1997 to 2005 when they made the decision to reclaim their original name and become Street Poets Inc., an independent CA non-profit corporation 501(c)3.