SA Poet Laureate Releases EP to Chronicle Perseverance

August 19, 2021 - Downtown

By Ricardo Delgado, Staff Writer | San Antonio Sentinel

Conceived from the struggle of surrounding everyday life, Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson chronicles her perseverance through unsteady times in her new EP, “Elevated”, available on all digital music platforms on August 17.

Made to accompany a street mural once surrounding Travis Park as part of Centro San Antonio’s Art Everywhere initiative, “Elevated” is a reflection on the social climate surrounding the creation of the original installation at, as well as the “mentality that I felt I needed to carry,” to persevere through the last year and a half, Sanderson told the San Antonio Sentinel. 

Local volunteers and artists helped paint the bright yellow text painted onto the streets surrounding Travis Park, which read, “Jubilant and exuberant is the melanin of our skin. From despair we have ARISEN.” When asked what exactly “despair” entailed, Sanderson cited the constant uncertainty since the beginning of 2020 onward.

“Hopelessness presented itself to us on many different fronts, [the] lack of certainty for what things are and what things could be,” Sanderson said. "Because we're always asking, 'Is this our new normal?' Or, 'Can we have the normal that we used to have?”

She waxed poetic for the poem’s final line as well, but with a much more aspirational explanation.

“Every day that you survive, you have arisen, you have overcome something. And speaking to people who have been oppressed systemically, [there] are many things that we've overcome. But yes, there's still an uphill battle to climb with it, and life will always present its challenges. Because for everybody that's walking in love, there's going to be somebody walking in hate, or disillusioned, or fear, or whatever.”

A press release from Centro San Antonio, who collaborated with Sanderson to make the mural, revealed an installation in Peacock Alley will commemorate the original work and its message. The release also quoted poet and author Jo Reyes-Boitel’s praise for “Elevated”.

“‘These heartfelt songs are specific to Vocab but still allow room for listeners to understand and groove with her,’” Reyes-Boitel’ said. “‘She is a living reminder of the importance of music within our own landscapes.”

Sanderson remarked the nonstop negative news provides more than enough weight to carry around in everyday life but hopes the accompanying EP can convey the mindset which got her through a tumultuous year.

“For instance, there's a song on the album called ‘Be Brave’,” Sanderson said. “It's telling people [our] fears are not necessarily going to go anywhere. We just have to learn to be brave in the face of our fears and to know that we're not alone. We felt extremely alone during the season but we're not, and there's those voices in our head to kind of tell us that we are.”

The EP also tackles coming into a leadership role during such a complex moment in history; Sanderson became San Antonio’s Poet Laureate in April of 2020, weeks before the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked nationwide protests, riots and debates regarding race relations and policing in the United States. Sanderson felt the need to amplify her activist work in her new position and speak to the systemic injustices flaring up across the country.

“My skin speaks to that,” Sanderson said. “Every day, I'm gonna face these challenges and I have faced these challenges. Discrimination and [white] supremacy is not new to me as an African American - this didn't just start happening.”

Sanderson added that those wishing to be allies or those without her platform can still help those in need, even if it isn’t readily apparent where help is needed. Some searching online can connect any willing individual to a community dedicated to making a difference, she said.

“I work with folks, they needed crazy things, like, bulldozers,” Sanderson said. “They needed meat lockers. They needed all kinds of resources to accomplish the work they were doing. Because it wasn't just a protest thing; it was like, 'We need to feed communities that are under serviced. We need to provide resources to mamas and children who don't have things that they need and they can't work during this time, or it's not safe in their community to try to go get stuff so we're gonna bring the supplies to them.”

When asked if she could paint any message on the street for all to see, Sanderson paused for a beat before answering, “Find balance”. She referred to what she perceives as a lack of balance within many people as a “cognitive dissonance”, and that if “some of us [can identify] we’re not well”, there would be less overall tension hanging in the societal air. 

“It's hard to heal when the world is still sick, but find a way to heal,” Sanderson said. “Search it out. Because what some people's responses are, it's not okay. It's definitely not okay, the things that people are doing. And we need to be real with ourselves.”

Ricardo Delgado transferred to Texas State University at San Marcos to study journalism and minor in political science. He graduated during the spring of 2021. Email him at reporter@sasentinel.com