Ada Limón named the 24th U.S. poet laureate
Limón succeeds the Native American poet Joy Harjo to be the new U.S. poet laureate consultant in poetry
America's next poet laureate, Ada Limón, has long thought of her work as a public art form.
"I grew up with poetry being in the community," says Limón, a native of Sonoma, Calif. "It wasn't supposed to just be something read on page; it was supposed be read out loud. I remember going to poetry readings at the bookstore where I worked when I was 16. It's the oral tradition. That part of poetry has always remained true to me."
The Washington, D.C.-based Library of Congress announced this week that the 46-year-old Limón had been named the 24th U.S. poet laureate, officially called the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Her one-year term begins Sept. 29 with the traditional reading at the Library's Coolidge Auditorium, one of the laureate's few formal obligations.
Limón succeeds Joy Harjo, the Tulsa poet, musician, playwright and author of the memoir Poet Warrior. Harjo, a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, became the United States' first Native Nations poet laureate in 2019.
Listen | Joy Harjo on Writers & Company:
Limón is an award-winning and unusually popular poet, her acclaimed collection Bright Dead Things selling more than 40,000 copies. She has published six books of poetry, most recently The Hurting Kind, and also hosts the podcast The Slowdown.
Limón was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award in the poetry category for her 2018 book The Carrying. The collection explores the human condition across a range of experiences, including a woman contemplating infertility and a daughter caring for aging parents.
"Ada Limón is a poet who connects," Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said in a statement. "Her accessible, engaging poems ground us in where we are and who we share our world with. They speak of intimate truths, of the beauty and heartbreak that is living, in ways that help us move forward."
The position was established in 1985, with other laureates including Louise Glück, W.S. Merwin and Rita Dove. Laureates receive a U.S. $35,000 (approx. $45,573.45 Cdn) stipend, along with U.S. $5,000 (approx. $6,508.00 Cdn) for travel expenses, the funding originating not from the American government, but from a private gift made decades ago by the philanthropist Archer M. Huntington.
While the job is officially based in Washington, D.C., the poets are not required to live there — Limón will mostly work from her home in Lexington, Kentucky — and are generally free to shape the position around their passions. The Slowdown podcast grew out of a project launched by Tracy K. Smith when she served as laureate from 2017-2019.
Limón is known in part for her poems about nature and hopes to give readings at parks and other settings that emphasize and celebrate our place in the world.
"Poetry is a way to remember our relationship with the natural world is reciprocal," she says. "It's having a place to breathe and having a place to pay attention."
— With files from CBC Books
