July 25, 2023, 9:00am
Today, the Academy of American Poets announced its 2023 Poet Laureate Fellows, twenty-three poets who “serve as poets laureate of states, counties, and cities across the United States and will be leading public poetry programs in their respective communities in 2023–24.” Each laureate will receive an award of $50,000, for a combined total of $1.1 million granted, plus an additional $114,500 in matching grants to ensure project support from local nonprofit organizations.
These funds will be used to create “community-focused intergenerational workshops, readings and slams, art installations, poetry walks, interactive maps, youth empowerment projects, anthologies and chapbooks with their communities, and more,” and support programs that “focus on fostering a sense of belonging, welcoming people into spaces, prioritizing mental health, survival, and healing, and encourage participants to recognize their relationship to the environment.” That is: more poetry for more people, which is always good.
“The Academy of American Poets celebrates the unique position poets laureate occupy at state and local levels, elevating the possibilities poetry can bring to community conversations and reminding us that our national spirit can be nourished by the power of the written and spoken word,” said Ricardo Maldonado, president and executive director of the Academy, in a press release. “We are inspired by these projects—which include intergenerational workshops, city- and statewide festivals, community-generated publications, and more—that the twenty-three Fellows will carry out, and grateful to the Mellon Foundation and the nonprofit organizations supporting this life-affirming work.”
The 2023 Poet Laureate Fellows are:
Diannely Antigua (Portsmouth, NH), Lisa Bickmore (Utah), Jennifer Bartell Boykin (Columbia, SC), Joseph Bruchac (Saratoga Springs, NY), Lauren Camp (New Mexico), Laura Da’ (Redmond, WA), Oliver de la Paz (Worcester, MA), Farnaz Fatemi (Santa Cruz County, CA), Nicholas Gulig (Fort Atkinson, WI), Peter J. Harris and Carla Rachel Sameth (Altadena, CA), Taylor Johnson (Takoma Park, MD), Yalie Saweda Kamara (Cincinnati, OH), Brandy Nālani McDougall (Hawaiʻi), Gloria Muñoz (St. Petersburg, FL), Sharon Kennedy-Nolle (Sullivan County, NY), Shin Yu Pai (Seattle, WA), Willie Perdomo (New York), Jason Magabo Perez (San Diego, CA), Glenis Redmond (Greenville, SC), Erin Elizabeth Smith (Oak Ridge, TN), Junious Ward (Charlotte, NC), and Joaquín Zihuatanejo (Dallas, TX).