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What does it mean to live in Los Angeles? Is it fake tans, celebrities and lattes on Sunset Blvd? Is it bumper-to-bumper traffic and smog on the 405 freeway? Is it urban sprawl and high rises and population density? Sure, it’s all of those things, but to Mike Sonksen, AKA Mike the Poet, it’s so much more. Mike loves LA. He loves it so much, in fact, that his recently published collection of poems and his debut spoken-word album both bear the title, I Am Alive in Los Angeles. And as he guides me through downtown LA on one of his urban walking tours, spitting rhymes filled with little-known tidbits and historical anecdotes about our fair city, I realize there’s a big difference between living in LA and being alive in LA, in all of its hot, crowded, gritty glory.

Sonksen went to school at UCLA for urban planning, but today considers himself an “underground urban planner” instead. His poems about Los Angeles capture its grace and beauty as well as its grimy underbelly, and he delivers them with a cadence and confident swagger that’s part 1970s beat poet and part 1990s hip-hop MC. Poet, journalist, historian and teacher, Mike’s been giving walking tours of the city for over 12 years, as well as performing his pieces at schools, on the radio and for events such as the L.A. Times Book Prizes Awards. He’s also a mentor to young writers, four of whom join us on the tour and who form a self-proclaimed “traveling troupe” of slam poets.

Seeing the city through poets’ eyes is like seeing it for the first time. We visit the LA Library, with its high ceilings and floors upon floors of books, we marvel at the old Hollywood glamour of the Biltmore hotel and the 1920s ironwork in the Bradbury building on 3rd and Broadway. We weave our way through Grand Central Market, where chop suey and pizza and fresh produce glisten in the near century-old neon lights. We stop to appreciate the Edison building’s art deco style and the white pyramid on top of City Hall, glinting in the California sun like Tom Cruise’s teeth in paparazzi flash.

We end at Pershing Square, and each poet recites an original piece without an ounce of self-consciousness, LA natives praising their city while standing in the heart of it. As we stroll back to our cars, I tell Mike that instead of urban planner, he’s an underground urban restorer, breathing life back into the art of poetry, and civic pride back into Los Angelinos of all ages.

Words by Christine Spehar, photos by Parts Department

 

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