Playwright Dr. Kim McMillon.
Poet Laureate Lee Herrick.
The Merced Multicultural Arts Center (MAC) continues its efforts to support local artists and expand the community’s access to fine arts with its coming event titled: “The Poetry of Community,” which is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 15, at 1 p.m.
This free public event will feature both California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick & Playwright Dr. Kim McMillon, who will personally share their work and discuss their art form.
California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick is a writer as well as professor who currently teaches at Fresno City College and the University of Nevada, Reno. Notably, Herrick served as Poet Laureate of the City of Fresno from 2015 to 2017. He passionately served the community through creating connections and engaging the youth in expressing themselves through writing. Currently, he has written four books: Scar and Flower, Gardening Secrets of the Dead, This Many Miles from Desire, and Praise of Late Wonder: New and Selected Poem.
Lee Herrick’s poetry explores California’s diversity and vitality and the American experiment’s exhilarating success. Born in Daejeon, South Korea, and adopted as an infant, he grew up in Modesto, immersed in literature, art, and various cultural influences. Herrick writes eloquently on the immigrant experience, bringing to life the smell of chapchae, the sound of mariachi trumpets, and the farmers market at midnight. Herrick’s work celebrates our state, the vibrancy of the Central Valley, and ourselves.
Dr. Kim McMillon is a Merced-based producer, playwright, and contributor to the anthology Some Other Blues: New Perspectives on Amiri Baraka (Ohio University Press, 2021). McMillon is the editor of Willow Books’ anthology Black Fire —This Time. She produced the Dillard University-Harvard Hutchins Center Black Arts Movement 2016 Conference in New Orleans. Along with UC Merced’s Center for the Humanities, ASUCM, and the Office of Student Life, Dr. McMillon created the 2014 UC Merced Black Arts Movement Conference, Fifty Years On. McMillon contributed a chapter on the Black Arts Movement to the Black Power Encyclopedia (1965-1975). Notably, McMillon’s children’s book, The Healing Book of Me, will be published in late April 2025.
“As early as nine, I remember gathering around the kitchen table and my mother reading poetry after dinner from Alfred Lloyd Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott to Alfred Noye’s The Highwayman,” McMillon recalls. “We listened with bated breath, never tiring of hearing her read poetry. I wrote my first poem at the age of nine and have never stopped writing since. I discovered this beautiful method of opening to my inner truth and those parts of me often hidden. Words can be healing. I would suggest to parents the importance of exposing their children to poetry events as an opportunity to open them up to their own creativity. From being at events where Lee Herrick has read his poetry, I consider it an honor to read with this amazing poet laureate of California.”
The Merced Multicultural Arts Center is located at 645 W. Main Street in downtown Merced. For more information about this event, please contact Kim McMillon at [email protected].