Speaking with Dr. Mona Lake Jones, one can clearly understand why, for five years, she was Seattle’s Poet Laureate and is today King County’s Poet Laureate. Gracious and open, she waxes poetic about her own life, passions, and community, celebrating the positive, the miraculous, and the inspirational.

“I look around me and see a little piece of joy here and a little piece of joy there and say, ‘I need to write about that’,” explained Dr. Jones. “I’m drawn to writing about what I call the sweetness of life.”

Dr. Jones began writing when her two children graduated from high school. “I worked full-time when they were growing up, so I didn’t have a lot of time to explore my creativity. After they left for college, I began looking for ways to express myself artistically.” As Director of Public Relations for Seattle Community Colleges, she was often asked to speak publicly and would insert lines of her poetry into her speeches. At one such appearance, an editor from the national magazine, Essence, was in the audience.

“She suggested that I send some of my poems into the magazine and they were accepted,” she explains matter-of-factly. “It really was just a matter of being in the right place at the right time.”

However, it was her talent, not her timing, that propelled her to success. After several of her poems were printed in the magazine, readers began writing in, asking where they could purchase her book — a book which didn’t exist. The editor called her and suggested that she put together a compilation of poems. “I thought to myself, ‘Well, I guess I’m a poet’.”

Her first book of poetry, The Color of Culture, was followed by The Color of Culture II, and she recently released a CD titled, “Poetry Dancing on Music.” Winner of both the Langston Hughes and Blackbird Literary Awards, she is a full-time poet and motivational speaker, spending much of her time on the road, speaking to colleges, conventions, and civic groups about issues of culture and diversity.

“As a child, I thought everyone’s experience was the same as mine, that everyone’s grandmother played the blues and made sweet potato pie. But as I began to learn more about other cultures, I truly loved and embraced the differences.”

A resident of southeast Seattle, Dr. Jones immersed her children in the many cultures of the neighborhood as well. “One day my children were home from college and had invited many of their friends from the neighborhood over to celebrate in our backyard. As I looked out the kitchen window, I just smiled at the sight of African American, Hispanic, Asian, and white teenagers all together having a fabulous time. Where else but in this neighborhood can you find that?”