City of Eureka Poet Laureate ‘25/26
Meet the Poets!
The City of Eureka & the Ink People Center for Arts & Culture are excited to announce the 2025 - 2026 Eureka Poet Laureates! Congratulations to Sarai Bordeaux, Eureka Poet Laureate & Olivia Gibson, Youth Poet Laureate. These poets will serve as poetry ambassadors to the city of Eureka for a two-year period & engage with the community through poetry projects.
The 2025 - 2026 Poet Laureates will be organizing community projects that uplift creative voices, provide opportunities for poets of all ages, & that celebrate the literary arts in Eureka & beyond. Stay tuned with updates by following @eurekapoetlaureate & @inkpeoplecenterforthearts on Instagram.
The Eureka Poet Laureate Program is a project of the City of Eureka.
The Ink People staffs & manages this program as a contribution to the arts & culture community.
Sarai Bordeaux, Eureka Poet Laureate
Sarai Bordeaux is an educator and poet from across California. They have been apart of many communities in Humboldt County starting in 2005 when they attended what was then called Humboldt State University. There with the Black Student Union Sarai helped put on Poetry is not a Luxury, a space created for poets of color named for the work of Audre Lorde.
Since finishing with a bachelors degree in psychology and minors in philosophy and Spanish, Sarai received her Masters Degree in Education with emphasis on equity and Social Justice from San Francisco State and has worked throughout many areas in education with the goal of empowering students toward agency in their learning and self determination in our communities. All of her work in education has been fortified by a deep love for poems and the practice of creating poetry.
At the start of the global pandemic while living in Jackson, Mississippi, Sarai was invited into a writing group honoring Patrice Lamumba and it was there that she accepted herself fully as a poet and writer. With that new understanding, Sarai reimmersed herself educating, organizing, arts and healing efforts in Oakland, the San Joaquin Valley, Los Angeles, and Joshua Tree but home in Humboldt, Eureka specifically is where she is getting to combine the many facets of her experience to help create space for herself and others in community to live fulfilled lives.
As the Eureka’s Poet Laureate Sarai’s goal is to learn more and more about Eureka, its many communities and herself through the lens of poetry, to connect with my Youth Counterpart and support their ideas and the ideas of other youth and to be a light that shines onto what it means in all aspects to live here. Sarai is sooooo excited about this opportunity and hopes there has been something beautiful about your day.
Olivia Gibson, Youth Poet Laureate
Olivia Jacqueline Gibson is an 18 year old musician, drag queen, & poet. She was born & raised in Humboldt county & has spent her youth going to punk shows, writing poetry books such as What Did You Expect?, & pushing the letter in the local school system to better the lives of her fellow members of the Queer community. She is a proud 2-Spirit member of the Tolowa tribe, & her work largely relates to her experiences as a Queer, Native member of a counterculture movement who continually finds herself under fire from all angles.