The West Hollywood poets’ natural program turns high school students into writers

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The afternoon sun was setting in Coldwater Canyon when the bus arrived. Boyle Heights’ Bravo High students flocked to TreePeople, a conservation and nonprofit organization in Coldwater Canyon Park, and began hiking.

As they looked around the path with sage and monkeyflower, their conversation fell silent, and soon, they were writing poetry.

Alina Sadibekova, a junior at the magnet medical school, sat under the native oak trees, breathing in the earth-rich air with a pen in hand.

“Our city is very busy, especially living in LA where everything is going on and it feels like there’s nowhere to breathe,” Alina said. “Going to the parks helped me humble myself.”

TreePeople, is one of the green spaces he visited with Feng Shui Poetry in the Parks, a program dreamed up by West Hollywood poet Jen Cheng, in collaboration with Bravo High English teacher Steve “Mr. V” Valenzuela. Cheng’s aim is for poetry, nature and Chinese principles to inspire a love of nature in students who are surrounded by concrete.

“I think that as humans, we are part of nature, so connecting better with nature actually brings you more home,” Cheng said. He explains that feng shui, the ancient Chinese practice of arranging space to promote harmony, is based on the five elements of nature: water, wood, fire, earth and metal.

“Feng shui, in poetry, is a lens you can use to process big ideas using your surroundings,” Cheng said. “You can say, ‘Let’s write with the water that flows in the river,’ not literally, but maybe as a metaphor for migration.”

Feng Shui Poetry in the Parks has awarded funding for the spring semester of 2026, but the next school year remains to be seen. Cheng says he wants more grants, but since the Trump administration is cutting funding for people, incl National Endowment for the Arts grantsthe options are limited.

As the oldest of five growing up in Oakland, Cheng first felt recognized when she discovered poetry in elementary school. Inspired by his favorite memories: field trips. At that time, his immigrant family worked until he was often “very busy with nature.” During the trip, it was fun, he said, to get out of the Oakland suburbs and parks that felt rare in his working-class experience.

Decades after his elementary school trip, as a newly appointed poet laureate in West Hollywood, he envisioned a way to recreate this childhood experience.

Honored poets, whose role is to champion and promote poetry in their community, are eligible for a $50,000 grant nationwide through the Academy of American Poets to support “meaningful, impactful and innovative projects,” according to the AAP.

As the recipient of this grant, Cheng brought Feng Shui Poetry in the Parks to life with one final addition – a teacher with a passion for poetry, who could connect him to the classroom.

Everyone he spoke to, he said, pointed to the same person – “Mr. V.”

A ‘life-saving’ creative sanctuary

When you walk into Valenzuela’s classroom, the walls are covered with dozens of CD sleeves, from Deftones to Rage Against the Machine. In the spaces, student artwork, notes and photos by current and former students hang.

Valenzuela leads Bravo High’s poetry club, KEEPERS, and for the past few years, has led students to win awards at the Get Lit international poetry slam.

“Poetry is speaking, poetry changes life, saves life, which sounds amazing, but it’s not. Some of the things the students wrote about are very traumatic,” said Valenzuela. “I have seen them face difficult problems and come out of them using poetry.”

One such student is 17-year-old Paige Thibodeaux. “I thought it was better to be closed, but through all of this, I was able to show my friends and peers who I am,” said Paige. “I didn’t think that was something I could do and I’m here now.”

Paige, who lives with her family in Compton, recalled being wary as she walked through her neighborhood, where she said talking about poetry was out of reach.

“I don’t see many kids doing things like this,” she said.

Working on the book, he said, opened up a new side of him. She started confiding in her friends about stress, or concerns, that would not stay inside.

‘I still can’t believe it’

As of August 2025, Paige and her classmates have been developing their poems, receiving feedback from Cheng and submitting their final pieces for publication as a collection of poems.

The cover, designed by Bravo reader Adrian Lopez, features a tree wrapped around the spine. The poems focus on their comments on current affairs and native plants; publication was completed in December, when Valenzuela and Cheng organized a reading and celebration of their work at Bravo High.

“Did you know that your work will be read all over the country?” Cheng said to the students in class one day. “I’m sending it all the way to New York!”

“Feng Shui Poetry in the Parks Vol. 1” is published online and will be shipped to bookstores and libraries from San Francisco to Chicago and the Library of Congress.

The students giggled and gasped in disbelief. “No pressure, I guess,” joked one student.

“It’s really crazy, I still can’t believe it. It was my dream,” said Alina. “I never realized I could be a published author as a junior in high school.”

On poetry reading night, students, parents and friends gathered excitedly in the Bravo High School library, lining up in front of a single microphone. Out in the corridor, the heated chatter of young people echoes in the halls, and cars honk on the busy street outside to pick them up. But inside the library, there was silence among the crowd for the long-awaited exhibition.

Aolani “Lani” Alarcon stepped up to the microphone to silence the voices. As the lights went down, she thanked the crowd, a white flower in her hair catching the light as she recited her first poem, “White Sage.”

He says that poetry did not come easily to him. “One of the biggest things I struggle with is judgment, so opening up or writing about emotional topics or things that mean something to me was difficult,” said Lani. “Knowing that I won’t be judged, or that people will really like what I write, means a lot.”

The 16-year-old girl smiled as she read, describing the sage as a prayer to the ancestors. His next poem, “The Hummingbird,” entered into grief.

“You teach me that healing is not forgetting,” she read through tears. “Learning to carry love without breaking in.”

Manuel Alarcon, his father, was sitting in the crowd, hands clasped for attention. When he finished reading, he pulled Lani and hugged him for a long time.

“This field trip, it took them out of the city life,” Alarcon said. “It’s more than opening a book, listening to a teacher. You need what’s being said outside to really understand life. And city kids don’t have that. I want [my daughter] to be part of breaking the cycle.”

Valenzuela clapped loudly and cheered as each student stepped off the stage.

“When new voices, and voices from marginalized communities are often silenced, sometimes we internalize that and silence ourselves,” Valenzuela said. “I want them to feel like they can talk.”

As Feng Shui Poetry in the Parks moves into another semester—perhaps its last—students continue to explore writing poetry in LA’s parks. Others, like 17-year-old Saneli Soto, exposed themselves on the road.

Saneli’s poem reads as follows:

I’m used to the concrete floor
And concrete walls.
I’m used to five-story buildings.
I needed a quiet place.
Where I can just lie on the grass.