In the aftermath of the catastrophic 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Ruthnie Angrand wrote a poem. She watched the earthquake on a television in a homeless shelter, displaced after pipes in her rented home had burst. Despite her circumstances, she felt guilty for being safe.  Writing provided a free way to process those emotions. The poem, “Birth certificate,” is “braggadocious and political,” said Angrand, and is about the moment she decided to claim both her Haitian and American identities. It is the poem that people connect most to, she said.  Angrand grew up singing opera, jazz and worship music and once planned to become a choral conductor. But the intense pressure of music schools burned out her love of music. As an adult in Syracuse, she fell in love with a new art form: spoken word poetry.  Now, she is being honored as Onondaga County’s poet laureate.  “Syracuse really taught me how to allow my art to feed those other parts of my life,” said Angrand.  Angrand has worked across Syracuse, including at the Dunbar Center, for Mayor Ben Walsh’s administration and now as the Onondaga County Legislature’s communications director. But she’s found a home in the arts scene in Syracuse, performing spoken word poems as “Rae Sunshine.”  The poet laureate position was created in 2022 by Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon and CNY Arts. Two people have previously held the position: Jackie Warren-Moore was honored posthumously when the position was developed and Georgia Popoff was poet laureate until December 2025.  “Her body of work and vision for the laureateship reflect creativity, compassion, and a lifelong commitment to her craft,” said CNY Arts Executive Director Alex Korman.  Angrand applied and was selected for the honor before beginning her job at the county legislature.  As poet laureate, Angrand will receive a stipend of $7,000 per year, which she will spend on two initiatives: creating a youth poet laureateship position for the area and working on the social media brand Salt City Stages, which serves as a digital space connecting poets in Central New York.  “I’m not trying to do everything myself and fit it into the margins of my life,” said Angrand. “I want this to be a project everyone owns.  In a press statement, McMahon said the award “is not only a testament to your remarkable voice, but a celebration of the creativity that runs deep throughout Onondaga County.”  Angrand’s spoken word poetry draws on her Haitian-American identity and her vocalist background. She uses both English and Haitian Creole in her poems, and said she focuses on human connection when she is performing.  “A lot of my poetry is either about love, introspect, human connection and exploration, or politics,” she said. “And not politics in a rant sense but politics in a sense of how it affects us as people.”  For a time Angrand got tired of “Birth Certificate.” But eventually, she realized how deeply other people connected to it to the idea of refusing to check a box, and she fell in love with it again. Sometimes, she teaches audiences Haitian phrases so they can join in the poem with her.  Angrand’s own favorite poem is one of the psalms, which she quoted out loud: “The Lord is my light and my salvation / of whom shall I be afraid?” The earthquake was a turning point in Angrand’s life. She had grown disconnected from her identity over the years, she said.  Angrand spent her early years in Queens, New York, surrounded by Haitian and other immigrant communities. She attended a francophone church and grew up singing worship music. But when her parents separated, her mom moved the family to Atlanta.  At the time, Atlanta did not have a strong Haitian community. It was a massive culture shock, Angrand said. In Atlanta, Angrand learned to understand her Black identity more, she said.  “I didn’t really get to dig into Black history and understand what the word diaspora meant until I got to Atlanta,” Angrand said.  She attended the DeKalb School of the Arts, majoring in music and minoring in media arts. Angrand took her passion for music all the way to university, where she planned to major in choral conducting. But the intense pressure burned out her love of singing. After years of focusing on grinding for her career, Angrand moved to Central New York to attend Syracuse University. She had always written lyrics to process her emotions, but in Syracuse she connected with a spoken-word community and started writing poetry. She performed in the basement of a Chinese restaurant, in a place the community began calling Underground Poetry Spot.  In the years since, Angrand has performed on stages and in spaces across Central New York. She has volunteered on the board of the Landmark Theatre and for the Juneteenth committee, among other things.  Now, Angrand can tell how people know her by the first words they say to her: if they call her “Ruthnie,” they know her from her background in communications. If they call her “Rae,” they know her for her poetry.  “What I needed was here,” Angrand said. “And not only was it here, it kind of hugged me back. This city really said ‘I hear you.’ I don’t know if it saw me right away, but it said ‘I hear you,’ and that was enough for me.”  The post ‘What I needed was here’: How Ruthnie Angrand became Onondaga County’s poet laureate appeared first on Central Current. ...read more read less