Arthur Sze is the new U.S. Poet Laureate.
The Library of Congress just announced that Arthur Sze will be the nation’s 25th Poet Laureate for 2025-2026. He will take over the position on October 9th from the previous Laureate Ada Limón, who served for two, two-year terms.
Sze is a poet, translator, and editor, and the author of twelve books of poetry. He writes often about the Southwest, where he’s lived for years. Acting Librarian of Congress Robert Randolph Newlen describes his work as full of “great formal innovation” and that “like Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Sze forges something new from a range of traditions and influences – and the result is a poetry that moves freely throughout time and space.”
We’ve published a few of Sze’s poems on Lit Hub over the years, including “Unpacking a Globe” from his National Book Award winning collection Sight Lines. He was also named as the first poet laureate of Santa Fe and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for his book Compass Rose.
In the announcement of his appointment, Sze said, “As the son of Chinese immigrants, and as a sophomore who decided to leave MIT to pursue a dream of becoming a poet, I never would have guessed that so many decades later I would receive this recognition.”
What does the Poet Laureate do? Pretty much whatever they want; the position is open to the interpretation of each individual poet. The Library instructs the Laureate “to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry” but doesn’t specify how, choosing to keep “to a minimum the specific duties required.” Traditionally, Laureates curate readings and symposia, but in recent years, Laureates have gotten more creative and also launched specific projects, like Joy Harjo’s “Living Nations, Living Words” which collected and mapped First Peoples Poetry, and Juan Felipe Herrera’s “La Casa de Colores”, which included collectively written, epic poems.
We’ll have to see what Sze will do during his tenure, but he’s said that he “feels a great responsibility to promote the ways poetry, especially poetry in translation, can impact our daily lives. We live in such a fast-paced world: poetry helps us slow down, deepen our attention, connect and live more fully.” Translation has been a core part of Sze’s practice, including a collection of his own translations of Chinese poems called The Silk Dragon II. I’m hopeful he’ll bring this passion for other traditions of writing into the role.
I’m also glad to see such an excellent choice by the Library of Congress, which has recently been a target of Trump and his hogmen—I was afraid this year’s Laureate would be someone like Kid Rock.
Congratulations to Arthur Sze! He will inaugurate his tenure with a live reading on his first day, October 9th, and you can reserve tickets for free starting this Thursday at loc.gov.
