Charlotte university instructor at ‘loss for words’: She’s the next US poet laureate
Ada Limón, a fine arts and creative writing instructor at Queens University of Charlotte, was officially named the nation’s 24th poet laureate on Tuesday.
Limón, 46, will served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress — a position that has existed since 1937. Her job will be to inspire an appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry, the Library of Congress said in a news release.
She found out about her hiring after receiving an invitation for a “mysterious Zoom call” on June 1, Limón told the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader. On that call, Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, welcomed her into the position.
“I was completely at a loss for words,” Limón told the Herald-Leader. “It was not on my radar. My first thought was, ‘Oh, are you sure? Did you get the right person?’ I was a little speechless and also — I don’t want to say in denial, but I had a hard time accepting it because it all seemed so surreal.”
Although she’s taught in Queens’ Master of Fine Arts program since 2014, Limón has lived in Lexington for over 10 years.
Among Limón’s “specific duties” will be initiating poetry projects, reading her work in the Coolidge Auditorium in Washington and opening the literary season on Sept. 29 before closing it in the spring, the release said.
Limón, in the release, called her appointment “an incredible honor.”
“Again and again, I have been witness to poetry’s immense power to reconnect us to the world, to allow us to heal, to love, to grieve, to remind us of the full spectrum of human emotion,” Limón said in the release.
Limón, a native of Sonoma, California, authored six poetry collections — including “The Carrying,” which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry; and “Bright Dead Things” (2015), a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Books Critics Circle Award.
Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, said Limón’s “accessible, engaging poems ground us in where we are and who we share our world with.”
“Ada Limón is a poet who connects,” she said in the release. “They speak of intimate truths, of the beauty and heartbreak that is living, in ways that help us move forward.”
Limón recently released her newest poetry collection, “The Hurting Kind,” and is currently hosting “The Slowdown” podcast series from American Public Media.
She will be in the company of a long line of distinguished poets who have served in the position, including Joy Harjo who served three terms in the position from 2019-22, Juan Felipe Herrera, Charles Wright, Natasha Trethewey, Philip Levine, W.S. Merwin, Kay Ryan, Charles Simic, Donald Hall, Ted Kooser, Louise Glück, Billy Collins, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass and Rita Dove.
This story was originally published July 13, 2022 at 11:21 AM with the headline "Charlotte university instructor at ‘loss for words’: She’s the next US poet laureate."
