On July 25, the Academy of American Poets announced its 2023 Poet Laureate Fellows. These twenty-three poets have each been awarded $50,000 and will serve their communities in variety of ways as dictated by their proposed projects. It's exciting to read about the range of projects these poets will bring to their respective communities. Per the Academy's press release:
“The 2023 Poet Laureate Fellows and the communities they serve 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).”
We can’t help but feel particularly pleased to see such an abundant number of Latinx poets in this year’s group. We encourage you to read about the new poets laureate and their public poetry projects on Poets.org.
Here at LLB2 we love any reason to celebrate poetry, so we hope you’ll join us in extending our congratulations to all of the 2023 Poet Laureate Fellows!