Ada Limón is the 24th U.S. poet laureate.
Ada Limón will be the 24th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for the United States, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today.
“Ada Limón is a poet who connects,” 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 poet laureate—a position that has been taken up by Louise Glück, W.S. Merwin, Rita Dove, and Natasha Trethewey, among others—works to advance access to, and engagement with, poetry in the US. Limón told The New York Times she was still developing her own approach and that she has been thinking about the role of poetry in a time of grief.
“Right now, so often we are going numb to grief and numb to tragedy and numb to crisis,” she said. “Poetry is a way back in, to recognizing that we are feeling human beings. And feeling grief and feeling trauma can actually allow us to feel joy again.”
Congratulations to Limón, and I can’t wait to see what she does in the role. You can read her work on Lit Hub here:
Ada Limón on How to Write a Poetry Collection
