The Goals of Poet Naomi Ayala

Naomi Ayala is a nomadic woman. She has moved from one place to the next. Her e-mail addresses change, her mailing addresses change, and her careers change. But one thing that hasn't altered about her is her need to give back to the community. Ayala has taught at primary and secondary schools along with community centers and state prisons like Connecticut prison in her late teen years. She has organized literary events throughout the state's corrections system. She also worked for La Raza's Center for Community Educational Excellence as a curriculum developer and editor of English and Spanish texts. She has been a consultant.

She is responsible for events like the Inner City Cultural Developmental Project on the Arts and the Institute for Community Research. She is the co-founder of the New Haven Alliance for Arts and Cultures and helped to establish New Haven's first International Festival of Arts and Ideas. She has been a program director of Celebra la Ciencia: Changing the Face of Science (a community science festival that introduces science to different Latino communities).

But just as importantly, Ayala is known as a poet. She has received the 2001 Larry Neal Writers Award for Poetry from the DC Commission on the Arts, the Connecticut Latinas In Leadership Award, the Trailblazer Arts Award, and the 2000 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy of Environmental Justice Award.

She is an all-around busy person who is not ashamed to show her enjoyment in activism. The poetry she writes sparks your attention to her strong beliefs in just about everything. One example would be "The Night I Walk Into Town" in which she talks about how a newspaper caught her eye when she was going to meet her brother. Then she looks to the corner to see a homeless man and remembers that there are at least 25,000 more of him.