Poetry for Normal People

Poetry for Normal People is a project started by 2025 Berkeley Youth Poet Laureate, Anita Marie Julca. The project aims to amplify the voices of ‘normal people’ through survival and healing based poetry-writing workshops. A survivor of domestic violence, Anita Marie became a writer ‘accidently’ as she was searching for a channel to lead her to peace with both herself and her world. Through facilitating and leading workshops at women’s shelters, homeless shelters, detention centers, schools, prisons, universities, and themed library workshops to bring together strangers who have experienced similar pains, Poetry for Normal People wants to change how we write, produce, and understand literature. Writing is an art, and art is best utilized as a tool for healing, resistance, and discovery.

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Poetry for Normal People is about reshaping the world of poetry by centering survivors of violence, not as metaphors or cautionary tales, but as writers, leaders, and authors of their own futures. This project rejects the gatekeeping of elite literary spaces and asks: what happens when the most silenced people become the loudest voices in the room? By teaching poetry as a form of survival, activism, and self-trust, it creates new literary spaces rooted in truth, not perfection. The poems that emerge from these workshops do more than express pain. They build bridges between strangers, reclaim power from abusers and systems, and help survivors name the things they were once told to keep quiet. Our poetry isn’t just about beauty. It’s about justice. And it’s about time.