The Propitious People’s Poetry
of Bettina “Poet Gold” Wilkerson

“If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for?”
— Alice Walker

She’s an outspoken people’s poet and one of New York State’s official Poet Laureates[1]. There are no easy definitions for the creative powerhouse Bettina Wilkerson, who is known by all simply as Poet Gold. This is not your conventional poetry, as it might have been taught in your English class. You can rightly call her a poet, but the multi-faceted and utterly original Gold is a performance artist, actor, poet, lyricist, teacher, mentor and hookster. She explains, “I’ve always written poetry, stories, songs, and lyrics – I have an affinity for writing lyrics and melodies, and hooks – as people would say, I’m a hookster.” All that with a bent for unbridled expository socio-critical wordsmithing.

There has always been a duality in poetry, dating back to the earliest written words. There is the noble, respected academic writing of the celebrated poets, and the common street poetry of the people, often found in song lyrics. Perhaps the best recent reflection of that partition is the outcry of objections and denouncements among some high-browed academics when the musician Bob Dylan was bestowed the Nobel Prize for Literature. “It’s not literature” the unrewarded snobs claimed loudly and bitterly. Yet, Dylan’s poetry is studied at Harvard and Princeton and loved by millions of people. It was good enough for the people and for the Nobel Prize committee.

Poet Gold exclaims, “You won’t need a dictionary to translate my poetry. It’s spoken like in prose – just very real language.” She communicates straight from the heart and her poems have soul, at once the voice of a strong black woman calling for racial justice with words as testament of their own humanity, and for human universalism.

Poet Gold brings her poetry directly to the people, to young kids in the inner city, often in Poughkeepsie, New York, where she resides. She was born in the Bronx. At the age of ten she moved to Washington Heights, where she spent most of my life. “I was influenced very much by the Latin culture there, and the Jewish culture, and the Cubano culture. It was a very mixed neighborhood of individuals, as well as the African Americans who lived there. It was a middle-class area. It came with its challenges as a teenager as drugs and gangs started developing during that time.”

She had the privilege of attending the Chapin Preparatory School and she started her career early, “I was always an artist, always had some experience in the arts. My parents had me in dance school and acting school. I also did a couple of television things for children’s programming that was available at that time.” After prep school she went directly into Katharine Gibbs School, which was at that time considered as one of the best business administration schools in the country. She went on to study broadcasting and communications at the New York Institute of Technology.

While her studies provided a foundation, as far as poetry and writing she is an autodidact – a self-learner who started as lyricist and a songwriter. She explains, “My belief was that words, like music, can be healing for people and can offer some level of introspection – give us a moment to just think about who we are, what we do, how we connect or disconnect. I’ve done that most of my life since my teenage years.”  She devoted herself to poetry as a career after moving to the Hudson Valley of New York fifteen years ago.

Even when taking on tough thematic, such as racism, war, gun violence, or human rights, her message remains uplifting to the spirit, free of revolutionary fervor. The lyrical provocateur and raconteur activates the heart with inspiration and a grounded vision for a better world through self-healing. It’s liberation through verse, for both joy and empowerment. This positivism, these encouraging and evocative words are remarkable when understanding her personal challenges. It’s impossible to write about the poet without understanding her medical condition because she has channeled a great deal of suffering into her potent poetry, filled with love and compassion despite her disabilities. As a child she was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, sera negative. She also has Sjogren’s syndrome, a whole tissue disease that leads to bone failure and comes with a host of immunological challenges. She went through thirteen surgeries and she is due to have at least four more. She has had her hips replaced, plus screws in her knee and ankles. She used to be in a wheelchair but now walks with a cane. Presently, she is struggling to avoid paralysis because of craniocervical junction abnormalities on her spine. “When I go to sleep and wake up I just don’t know really what I’m going to deal with in the morning. So, I’m very grateful for each day I get, particularly each day of mobility.”

Her inspirational and thought-provoking words aim to unite, emancipate and liberate. Her words are forces with the power to free us from ourselves. “I activate the heart by writing from a perspective of sharing other people’s stories. A lot of my poetry speaks to other people’s pain. Sometimes it connects with my own life. It’s just about conveying people’s voice, capturing what they’re saying and translating it in a way so that others can understand it. By understanding it, it creates empathy.”

She is active as teacher, workshop leader, speaker and writer. As a teaching artist, Poet Gold has collaborated with institutions and non-profits. She has worked with at-risk youth (Youth with Promise) and has served organizations who utilize the arts to confront issues such as gun violence in their communities to social justice. Presently she is the co-host for the iHeart Radio show and podcast “Finding Out with Pete and The Poet Gold,” as well as Creator and Host for the online web-series “Leading with Artivism”, a collaboration with Arts Mid-Hudson. She is also the host of the Inspiration Art Group International’s virtual exhibitions. Poet Gold’s distinct voice and poetry can be heard in the American Heart Association NYC 2022 “Go Red for Women” campaign. 

Her most recent poem took on the spade of killings of unarmed black people, by police and racist citizens.

Bettina Poet Gold’s live performance are integral to her essence.

Poet Gold’s Bibliography:

When My Soul Speaks, I Scribe . . . Poems by Bettina Gold Wilkerson. 2013

You are My Blue – Poems by Bettina Gold Wilkerson and photographs by Bibiana Huang Matheis. 2018

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[1] Dutchess County, New York. 2017 and ’18.

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Photos above by Bibiana Huang Matheis from the book ‘You are My Blue’, with Bettina “Poet Gold” Wilkerson. 2018.