Sylvi Kayser recently began their second year as a Finalist with the Santa Cruz County Youth Poet Laureate Program. On May 7th, 2025, we had an afternoon call about evolution, opportunity, and the state of things. Sylvi goes to Aptos High School.
How have you developed as a writer and leader since first entering the Santa Cruz County Youth Poet Laureate program?
I think I've really expanded in the style of my writing. With both hosting workshops and attending them, I've learned a lot of different techniques for actually formatting poems. As a leader, I've grown in communications.
I feel a lot more confident speaking in front of crowds, doing all the poetry readings, and working to get the anthology with Sixteen Rivers Press done. So with the group, I've definitely been able to further my skills.
Can you give me more details on how that anthology is going?
It's still a work in progress.
We have submitted our final edits to the press, so they're working on the actual technical formatting. The last update I got was asking if we had any input for cover art. But, hopefully, it's looking like a launch in the fall. So that's going to be really exciting. Finally getting everything rolling.
Was there anything in particular that you learned from being involved in that process?
Yeah. I think that one thing would be just broadening the collaborative process with a full team of editors who have been doing this for years. It was very cool because they were willing to let us have a lot of free rein over picking which poems go where. Their insights on the technical stuff were cool to see. I learned about how things get published and how to get something out there.
That's the cool part about it: all the effort that goes into it.
Are there any other major opportunities you’ve had since you first entered the Youth Poet Laureate Program?
Getting to be invited to poetry readings. I had never really done that. The reading at Kuumbwa Jazz last year to celebrate the incoming cohort was the second time I had ever done a poetry reading.
With the group, the cohort started getting to be featured guests, and that was really cool. I also got to learn how much I enjoy doing spoken word, and so that's something I definitely want to continue doing now and in the future as well.
What is your writing process looking like these days?
Usually, whenever I think of a line that would sound good in a poem, I just sit down and keep writing until it’s done, pretty much.
I sometimes will put on classical music, or I usually loop a song if I'm writing, because it keeps the momentum going in a way. But, really, I usually think of a word that would be a good starter for a poem and let it all come up until it's reached the end.
What was your favorite reading in 2024?
I think it was at Poetry and Music in the Chadwick Garden.
It was the thirtieth anniversary, and it was just such a pretty setting. You could really be right there because it's a tinier setting, but it was just so beautiful because of all the spring blooms. I really loved the whole atmosphere, and it was one of the first official readings I got to do. So I think it's my favorite at the moment.
I know that many of the crowds who invited you all to read have been an older group. Have you talked about how to bridge that gap a little bit more?
Yeah. We were trying with workshops. We did one for Watsonville High School and for the Youth Leadership Alliance. We're just trying to get more youth awareness by having them in locations that people know. The Open Mic & Clothing Swap was a big hit because younger people know where Subrosa is. We want to figure out, geographically, where would be the best centers for getting youth involvement.
This cohort 100% has the brainstorming power to do that. What are you looking forward to regarding the program or your personal life?
I’m looking forward to having more free time to write, with school ending and the summer between junior and senior year. I have a lot of topics I've been wanting to write about but just haven't had the time, so I think just getting to have that space of time is going to be nice.
I’ve wanted to write about parallels between me now and me in the past because I've been thinking a lot about growing up. There are so many songs about being 17. It feels like there's so much to write about that change. I've been wanting to write more about personal growth. I think that's not really something I've looked into very much in my poetry until now, so I want to push myself to look more inwards and see what's going on as I'm getting older.
I'm looking forward to the anthology coming out. It'll be cool to see all the hard work we put in actually come to fruition and be a tangible object now instead of just an idea.
Have the shifts in our country's sociopolitical climate as of the past year impacted your approach to writing?
Especially with the two poems that I submitted for the anthology, they were both created out of frustration because it feels so grating and repetitive. When I do get the chance to write, it's more of a funnel for the rage side of things, to get it out there as a form of processing it out on the page. But all the outside shifts have contributed a lot to how I think about what I’m writing and what message I’m getting across.
You've always been a politically aware person. Has growing up as a writer in this time influenced how you plan to move forward?
Definitely. I've always wanted to go into literature or English for later areas of study. But, a couple of years ago, I really got interested in political science, and that was shaped by how much was always happening in the world around me. It has definitely contributed to what I want to study and what I write about. In the past couple of years, when I really started writing poetry, there has been a shift in tone, moving away from softer pieces to very blatant political themes, which have been so easy to write about. Because I think poetry in itself is like a rebellion, because it's written word, and there are no real limits to what poetry has to look like.