Donté Clark is a poet, actor, and community activist from unincorporated North Richmond, California who works with youth organizations throughout the Richmond area.

As a student in high school, Clark was recruited by his English teacher Molly Raynor who was founding a youth arts program, RAW Talent. Clark became the artistic lead of the program's first play, Té's Harmony, which examined local issues through the structure of Romeo and Juliet. The performance was introduced by poet Luis J. Rodriguez. The 2015 documentary Romeo Is Bleeding follows Clark in the process of writing and performing Té's Harmony.[1]

In July 2014, Donté Clark and two others, Lincoln Bergman and Brenda Quintanilla,[2] were made poets laureate of Richmond for a two year period.[3] They were preceded as poet laureate by Dwayne Parish,[2] and succeeded by Daniel Ari, Ciera-Jevai Gordon and Rob Lipton.[2]

Clark's mentoring of the community's youth has led to some becoming mentors and teachers themselves, including poet and actor DeAndre Evans who appeared with Clark and Will Hartfield reciting poetry for a PBS story about housing in Richmond.[4]

Clark has a supporting role in the 2016 film Kicks, the 2018 film Code Switch, and stars in the web series The North Pole.[5][6]

Collections

See also

References

  1. ↑ Love in the Time of Turf Wars by Edgardo Cervano-Soto, Richmond Pulse. February 12, 2013. Accessed April 30, 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 "Richmond selects three poets laureate for 2017-2019". Richmond Standard. 27 May 2017. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  3. ↑ Three poets laureate selected to represent Richmond over next two years Archived 2016-05-13 at the Wayback Machine. The Richmond Standard. July 14, 2014. Accessed April 30, 2015.
  4. ↑ Poetry exposes truth about public housing in the Bay Area by Victoria Fleischer. February 24, 2014. Accessed April 30, 2015.
  5. ↑ "New Oakland-Based Web Comedy 'The North Pole' Drops Next Week". SFist. Archived from the original on 15 October 2019. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  6. ↑ "Donte Clark". IMDB. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
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