2017 Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism Celebration Honors Recipient Christopher Soto (aka Loma)

On Friday, April 21 at the Arts Club of Washington, Split This Rock presented the 2017 Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism, sponsored by the CrossCurrents Foundation, to Christopher Soto, aka Loma. The ceremony, cosponsored by the Arts Club of Washington, the Institute for Policy Studies, and Busboys and Poets, was an inspiring celebration that packed the house. 

Judged this year by Holly Bass, Dawn Lundy Martin, and 2015 Freedom Plow Award Recipient Mark Nowak, the 2017 award went to Christopher Soto, who was selected for his advocacy on behalf of undocumented writers and queer homeless youth and for supporting queer poets of color. Christopher offered an acceptance speech by video, as he had a prior commitment in Boulder, CO, meeting with the leaders of the Undocupoets Campaign, one of the initiatives for which he was selected. 

The three award finalists, Francisco Aragón, Andrea Assaf, and JP Howard, were also celebrated and each delivered memorable and poignant words as part of the award program, including poems!

The finalists are: 

Francisco Aragón for supporting and promoting Latinx poetry and poets:

Andrea Assaf for telling stories of the Arab-American experience and of US service members and Iraqis in the Iraq war:

 

and JP Howard aka Juliet P. Howard for building community among queer poets of color:

 

Additionally, the program included a welcome from Arts Club of Washington President Judith Nordin, opening remarks from Split This Rock Executive Director Sarah Browning, and words from CrossCurrents Foundation Chair Ken Grossinger. 

Jay Chavez, a member of Split This Rock’s Youth Programs, courageously helped open the event with a breathtaking poem about their mother’s experience immigrating to the United States. 

Visit YouTube to watch videos of the entire program. And check out photos from the event, all by Chelsea Iorlano, on Flickr.

Prior to presenting the award to Christopher Soto, Holly Bass delivered the following judges' statement:   
 

In his bio, Christopher Soto (aka Loma) describes himself as a “queer Latin@  punk poet and prison abolitionist.” Loma’s proclaimed identities challenge us to think about the seemingly incompatible inhabiting one body and working from that one body to write searing, critical poems that alter the impact of lived reality. 

In the prose poem, “Rework,” Loma writes:

[…]There was a manner by which the oppression was normalized; by which the feeling of liberation was long forgotten; by which everything revolved around capital. But you could no longer afford to stay in your father’s home. There was no rent control and some nights you thought that he would kill you in your sleep. Language is where the tongue fails itself over and over again[…]

This excerpt is much more than a traumatic personal narrative. The oppositional nature of things is laid bare: “oppression”/ “normal”; “oppression”/ “liberation”; “capital”/ “liberation”; “rent control”/ “capital”; “no rent control”/ “death.” Loma calls our attention to the impossibility of existence with the experience of trauma, and yet one survives. There is also an insistence on the failure of language in the face of these layers of lived experience. The poem is riddled with layers in which the incompatible happens simultaneously. And, how do we speak these things, the poem seems to ask, what words can struggle an approximation?

Christopher Soto’s multifarious work bridges the gap between literary activism and organizing, as the very poetry he writes is often investigative of the cultural and structural barriers of toxic masculinity, misogyny, heterosexism, racism, and xenophobic nationalism. In his literary activist work, Loma creates spaces for the intersection of identities to be expressive—such as in Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, where Loma is editor. He is also a co-founder of the Undocupoets Campaign whose mission is to “promote the work of undocumented poets and raise consciousness about the structural barriers that are faced in the literary community [and to support] all poets, regardless of immigration status.”

We exist, as poets, in an era of egregious politics, an era where #MuslimBan and #BuildAWall flash across our iPhones built in China by other poets like Xu Lizhi, the 24^-year-old migrant factory worker who committed suicide by jumping out of a residential dormitory owned by his employer, Foxconn. Social media allows us to be anywhere at anytime, to trace social upheavals by hashtags, to be there from our living rooms.

The poet, the poem, the iPhone, the world… We’re all articulated within the “invisible-visibleness” of a Global north perpetually attempting to dominate the Global south. It’s a poetics (and an economics) of consumerism, migrant labor, and the deep loss of empathy and agency. And it’s a poetic response to these arenas that we find in Loma’s own poetry, dragging out the underbellies we refuse to look at unless we’re forced to look.

Of the many deeply engaged poets who were nominated for the Freedom Plow Award, we have chosen Christopher Soto as this year’s winner. It was far from an easy decision. What is happening in the United States at this moment has re-energized a bounty of magnificent projects to address the almost daily injustices that flash across lighted screens. The assaults upon the environment, our bodies, who we choose to love and how we choose to live and where we choose to sell our labor power. These and so many more areas of our lives are seemingly under attack at the present moment. And we were deeply heartened by the many, many poets currently working against these assaults.

One of these poets, Christopher Soto, inspires us with the depth and variety of his engagements. In addition to his work with the Undocupoets Campaign, he has helped to establish Amazon Literary Partnership grants for undocumented writers. These fearless and necessary contributions, defiant in the face of Trump-era hatred and bigotry, make Loma a model Freedom Plow citizen. We are pleased to grant him this award on behalf of Split This Rock.

The ceremony concluded with these moving words from Christopher Soto:

We are grateful to the Arts Club of Washington for hosting the awards celebration again this year. Our thanks especially go out to Sandra Beasley, Judith Nordin, and Yann Henrotte for their help and hospitality. We extend our deep appreciation as well to all the Freedom Plow sponsors, Upshur Street Books and Anna Thorn as the event book seller, ASL interpreter Billy Sanders, Skies The Limit Entertainment for videotaping the ceremony, Grace Toulotte of United by Love Design, and all of the Split This Rock interns and staff.

We look forward to honoring the innovative work of activist poets again in 2019!

Interview with JP Howard aka Juliet P. Howard, 2017 Freedom Plow Award Finalist!

The Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism, sponsored by the CrossCurrents Foundation and co-sponsored by the Arts Club of Washington, Busboys and Poets, and the Institute for Policy Studies, recognizes and honors a poet or poetry collective doing innovative and transformative work at the intersection of poetry and social change. The award, judged this year by Holly Bass, Dawn Lundy Martin, and 2015 award recipient Mark Nowak, is being given for the third time in 2017. Tickets now on sale! Join us on April 21 at the Arts Club of Washington for the Award Ceremony!

ABOUT JP HOWARD AKA JULIET P. HOWARD

JP Howard aka Juliet P. Howard is the author of SAY/MIRROR, a debut poetry collection published by The Operating System (2016, 2nd expanded ed. and 2015, 1st ed) and a chaplet bury your love poems here (Belladonna Collaborative*, 2015). SAY/MIRROR was a 2016 Lambda Literary Award Finalist in the Lesbian Poetry Category. JP is a Pushcart Prize nominee and was selected as a 2016 Judith Markowtiz Emerging Writers Award Winner from Lambda Literary Foundation. She was one of Velvetpark Magazine's Official 25 Queer Women of 2016 and was selected as one of GO Magazine's 2016 "100 Women We Love!"

JP curates and nurtures Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon (WWBPS), a forum offering women writers at all levels a monthly venue to come together in a positive and supportive space. The Salon, which has been featured in Poets & Writers Magazine, celebrates a diverse array of women poets and includes a large LGBTQ POC membership.  

JP is a Cave Canem graduate fellow, an alumna of the VONA/Voices Writers Workshop, and a Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging LGBT Voices Fellow. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Queer Voices Anthology, Apogee Journal, The Feminist Wire, Split This Rock's blog, Nepantla: A Journal for Queer Poets of Color, Muzzle Magazine, Adrienne: A Poetry Journal of Queer Women, The Best American Poetry Blog, MiPOesias, Mom Egg Review, Talking Writing, Connotation Press and the anthology, Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander. She is Editor-at-Large for Mom Egg Review.

JP holds a BA from Barnard College, a JD from Brooklyn Law School and an MFA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York. She resides in New York with her wife and two sons. Her family was proudly featured on a 2014 cover of Gay Parent Magazine.

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SPLIT THIS ROCK INTERVIEWS JP HOWARD AKA JULIET P. HOWARD

By Fran McCrae

How would you describe the role of poetry in activism and community building?

As a queer poet of color, I am especially aware and appreciative of the long-standing history of black lesbian poets who have used poetry as a form of activism and as a way to both agitate and empower. Poetry for me is part and parcel of activism and community building. I'm thinking particularly of black lesbian poets, Pat Parker, Audre Lorde, and Cheryl Clarke. Discovering their voices while in college helped me to to understand the clear intersection of poetry, activism, and community building. They wrote about racism, feminism, the beauty and sexiness of loving women, and consistently used their poetry to speak truth to power. They made it crystal clear that poetry is political and that poets can and should use poetry to bring community together.

Modern day political movements like #BlackPoetsSpeakOut, follow in the great literary tradition of black activist poets and allow black poets and our allies to use the power of our words to march, chant, write, build, and empower community, both nationally and internationally.
 
What poets have most influenced you and why?

I grew up in Sugar Hill, Harlem, and as an only child of a single Mama, I spent countless hours afterschool in my local library, the Hamilton Grange Branch of the NY public library. It was really my home away from home.

Early poets who influenced me way back in elementary and middle school include Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, Margaret Walker, Lucille Clifton, and Sonia Sanchez. I discovered The Black Poets Anthology edited by Dudley Randall in the poetry section of my local library and it became my poetry bible. I checked it out of the library so much, that my Mama went out and got me my own copy.

Later on in college, black lesbian activist poets who I mentioned above (Pat Parker, Audre Lorde and Cheryl Clarke) had the most significant influence on me personally, politically, and socially. They literally gave me the courage to come and stay out of the closet over thirty years ago. I continue to call out their names and celebrate their work. 

What was your defining moment in becoming a poet-activist? 

A poem that I loved and memorized when I was back in elementary school, For My People, by the dynamic sista poet, Margaret Walker, was an early defining moment for me. Her poetry showed me, at a very young age, that a writer could be both a poet and an activist. I may not have had the word “activist” in my vocabulary at that age, but I remember that Walker’s poetry made me feel alive.

For My People educated the reader about African American history (both painful and empowering moments), while simultaneously serving as a call to action for black folks. When I reread For My People, as an adult, I remembered that I had always loved this poem on a visceral level, before I fully understood its power or all its social implications. I was probably no more than nine or ten years old and my Mama would proudly have me recite it each Sunday to the church ladies after church.

Before discovering poetry, I was a painfully shy child. However, that particular poem, really spoke to me and helped me find and share my voice. I loved the rhythm of the words and how strong my voice sounded when I performed it. It made me stand tall because of the force and power of the words. The church ladies would clap each week and I’d smile each time, then run and get a warm slice of sweet potato pie. I still love that final stanza, a call for action, that still speaks true today:

        Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a
        bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second
        generation full of courage issue forth; let a people
        loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of
        healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing
        in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs
        be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now
        rise and take control.

Your collection SAY/MIRROR takes its inspiration from vintage photographs of your mother. How would you describe the potential of poetry to impact collective memory?

Poetry can sometimes be a trigger and here I’m using the word “ trigger” as a tool: poems can get our collective attention, remind us of our history (both political and personal), and encourage political activism.

While there can be collective power and beauty in poetry, there can also be collective pain and mourning. This is particularly true when we remember/honor/start a literal “roll call” of names of our black, brown, and LGBTQ bodies that have been murdered or maimed, seemingly without any justice in sight. Poetry ensures that we don’t forget the growing list of names as we seek justice for our ancestors and our injured, who have been targets of racism, homophobia, transphobia, and discrimination based on immigration status. Poetry forces us to pay attention; to look this sometimes ugly country directly in the eye and call it on its flaws.

Sometimes poetry can give us unexpected hope. Recently I participated in a Poets Vigil for NEA at Trump Tower in New York City organized by my friend Loma (Christopher Soto).  Poets and allies were on the street protesting and local poets shared our poems of protest. A bus driver driving his bus along Fifth Avenue, saw and heard our vigil of protester poets, with our signs, placards, and candles. He pulled his bus over towards us, looked over in our direction from his drivers side window, gave us a big thumbs up and honked his horn loudly in support, while encouraging us to keep it up. Strangers on the street stopped, listened, and many clapped or shared supportive words of solidarity. Ultimately, it was a beautiful and empowering experience (though freezing outside) as we bonded over our shared activist experience; that evening became a part of our collective memory. 

Being a woman, a person of color, and a member of the LGBTQ community, you are able to channel many voices in your work. How do these communities intersect in your writing and what are the challenges of representing them all?

It is basically impossible for these voices/parts of myself, black, queer and woman, not to enter my work or intersect. It frames the lens through which I see and experience the world and it is part and parcel of who I am.

When I am writing poems celebrating or mourning black youth, I am writing as a black lesbian mother of two sons, including one queer teen. When I write political poems, the various parts of myself intersect and inevitably speak up. I want others in the room who may be too shy to speak up, to know that we are here, we queer POC voices exist and we will speak out as long as there is breath in our bodies.

I’m constantly thinking about a quote of one of my favorite poets, the late black, lesbian, activist poet, Pat Parker, who once said: "If I could take all my parts with me when I go somewhere, and not have to say to one of them, 'No, you stay home tonight, you won’t be welcome…' The day all the different parts of me can come along, we would have what I would call a revolution."

I am fully aware that all those parts of me (black, queer, woman), all those voices are not welcome in some forums simultaneously, but that never stops me from making my best efforts to bring “all the different parts of me” and to bring my fullest, queerest, blackest, full woman self into the room, onto the page, up on the stage, and in my role as curator and educator.
 
You curate and nurture the Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon (WWBPS). How does this forum support women writers?

WWBPS supports primarily women writers (though we are open to everyone) by hosting monthly writing workshops with a new featured woman poet/writer/author monthly. Each month featured Salon writers are paid honoraria thanks to donations and my Brooklyn Arts Council Grant (BAC), awarded the last four years. Our workshops are pay-what-you-can and there’s no required fee, though donations are always welcome.

The Salons occur on weekends and we have a four to five hour leisurely chunk of time to produce new work, have a featured reading by our visiting author, and a Q & A session with our feature. We wrap up with a multi-genre open mic, open to all participants. We celebrate our powerful voices, while producing new work, thanks to generous women who open their homes to us each month or help me find affordable community spaces. WWBPS literally and figuratively nurtures us; Salons are potluck events and participants bring delicious home-cooked meals.

Women who attend often tell me that the Salons are warm, welcoming, and safe spaces to create new work and to share works-in-progress during the open mic. Recently, some Salon members have been accepted into MFA programs across the country, others are getting their work published in journals, often for the first time, some have their first chapbooks or books published or forthcoming, many are getting accepted into residencies or writing retreats. Some, who were once shy, now perform their poetry in larger venues, after building up their confidence in our open mics.

The Salon has become an extended poetry family, where members support each other on an ongoing basis, even outside of the Salon, networking and building community. We are an incredibly diverse and intergenerational group of writers, many of us are queer POC and allies, as are many of our features. We learn from each other, as well as from our featured authors, who are often dynamic educators. Featured poets are invited to sell their books at each Salon, thereby supporting small, independent presses.

Thanks to my Brooklyn Arts Council grants, I started a traveling Salon poetry library a few years ago. My 2017 BAC Grant allows me to stock the library with new poetry books throughout the year, often from LGBTQ and POC writers, thereby exposing members to diverse, emerging poetic voices.

What has been your most memorable experience within the WWBPS?

One of my most memorable WWBPS experiences was when we performed in front of a full house at the renowned Word for Word Reading Series at Bryant Park in New York City last summer. It was really a dream come true, as that reading series has been one of my favorite series for many years! I was interviewed on behalf of WWBPS, along with Salon member Keisha-Gaye Anderson, and portions of our Bryant Park performances were featured on CUNY-TV’s Study With the Best cable tv show. 

What’s coming up next for you? Any new projects in the works? 

As for my writing, I’m in the early stages of writing my memoir and recently finished taking a memoir writing workshop with the amazing Bushra Rehman, so I have lots of editing to do. I’m editing my poetry chapbook manuscript, “We Beautiful Black Boys.” My literary baby, WWBPS celebrates its Six Year Anniversary on Friday, April 28th with a phenomenal line-up of Salon poets performing! I’ve rented a lovely space and am catering it so I’m super excited.

I’m especially looking forward to some upcoming collaborations with various community and literary organizations. I’m currently the guest editor, with poet Amber Atiya, of a special edition of Sinister Wisdom Journal entitled “Black Lesbians: We Are the Revolution!” (influenced by who else? Pat Parker!) It’s forthcoming in the latter part of 2017; we are busy making final selections and edits.

Apogee Journal and New York Writers Coalition recently received a 2017 Community Arts Grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council to design and facilitate affordable craft-based writing and editing workshops.  I’ve been invited to facilitate one of their generative writing workshops as a teaching artist for this new series. My workshop will use the brilliant texts of Audre Lorde and James Baldwin to help writers create powerful mini-personal essays or narrative, memoir-themed political poems.

I’m partnering with Humanities New York and have been invited to serve as a Readings and Discussions Scholar to create an inaugural Audre Lorde Readings and Discussion statewide program in NY for them. Of course, I’m always busy lining up featured authors for the Salon; some upcoming 2017 featured poets include Antoinette Brim, Donika Kelly, DeLana Dameron, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Anastacia Renee, and Heather Buchanan, plus others!

What advice would you give to emerging writers from underrepresented groups (people of color, LGBTQ, etc.)? 

I would urge emerging writers from underrepresented groups (folks of colors, LGBTQ, and marginalized writers) to find and build a writing community wherever you are. This can include reaching out to local writers, to friends who are writers or even an online community of writers, particularly for folks in rural communities without easy access to queer POC writers or allies.

I also encourage emerging writers to apply to organizations that specifically support and celebrate their communities, such as Cave Canem, Lambda Literary, VONA/Voices Writing Workshop for Writers of Color, CantoMundo, and Kundiman. Many of those organizations, including Cave Canem, Lambda, and VONA, have really provided a nurturing space for me to grow as a writer throughout the years.

It’s also important to go to readings, meet and hear other poets, and if folks can, attend local affordable writing workshops when offered. Also read everything you can get your hands on! 

Learn more about JP at her website.

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Fran McCrae is a poet, advocate for the cooperative model of business, and volunteer for Split This Rock. She hails from the Texas Hill Country and currently lives in Washington, DC. Her work has previously been published in Epigraph Magazine and Burnt Pine Magazine.

Letter to the National Rifle Association Against Gun Violence

In July of 2016, Split This Rock opened its blog to poets writing against violence and for embrace. In solidarity with all those targeted by violence at home and abroad -- from the LGBTQ and Black communities in the United States to devastated families of Baghdad -- Split This Rock requested poems in response to and against violence toward marginalized communities.

As we had hoped to do, we have sent these poems, in print, to the National Rifle Association and to members of Congress who represent the states most affected by gun violence. We invite you to do so as well!

To the National Rifle Association,

More and more rapid fire assault weapons are used in this country not in any defense, but for mass shootings in places of enjoyment and sanctuary and commerce -- colleges, high schools, malls, homes, grade schools, places of employment, churches, mosques, temples, and nightclubs -- to assault people for who they are and what they believe.

These are attacks of the most un-American kind, though perpetrated by Americans. People killed because of their faith, their class, their gender, their ethnicity, their sexuality, their ideas. People killed for every reason in the world, except self-defense. Mass shootings, hate crimes, domestic violence, domestic terrorism -- the attack on LGBTQ people at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, the attack on children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the attack on women at a movie theater in Lafayette, LA, the attack on people of faith at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin, the attack on people of color at church in Charleston, SC -- these are not acts of self-defense. These attacks are personal and political in nature, built out of resentment, fear, and access to military-style assault weapons.

Split This Rock invites the leadership at the NRA to read the enclosed poems. They are from the pens of poets both nationally famous and yet unknown. They are poets who know what it means to live with gun violence, domestic violence, fear of their own society’s hatred of them. They are the kinds of people often killed by angry men or angry boys with access to assault weapons.

We appeal to your conscience. We ask that the NRA stop imagining that all these lives are worth less than the lives of their membership or the profits of the weapons manufacturers. We ask that the NRA, as an organization, come to understand its mission as vital to more than one American value. We call for the NRA to support, to actively demand the following:

• a total ban on assault rifles (both sale and purchase);
• mandatory background checks and a "no buy" list for all weapons for violent felons, domestic abusers, stalkers;
• weapon liability insurance so that citizens who want to own guns for safety, sport, and collection can insure them the way we insure cars against liability;
• weapons licensing in a manner similar to the training and licensing of drivers to own and operate a personal vehicle.

Offering these poems to you, we hope that you will be moved, perhaps at long last, to consider the deep social and personal costs of your positions and influence. Split This Rock cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes social change. It calls poets to a greater role in public life and fosters a national network of socially engaged poets. In the name of this mission, we offer you these voices from the nation you love.

You may read the poems at Split This Rock's blog.

For love of the people,
Split This Rock

Response to Split This Rock-Initiated Call for a Poet Laureate of Color

We received the following letter yesterday from Rob Casper, Head of the Poetry & Literature Center at the Library of Congress, which is responsible for the Poet Laureate position.

Rob's letter is in response to the Open Letter Split This Rock initiated, urging the Librarian of Congress, Dr. James Billington, to appoint a person of color as the next Poet Laureate. 

The announcement will be made on Thursday this week and we don't know who Dr. Billington has chosen. Unfortunately, too, it appears that Dr. Billington had already made his choice when he received our letter. However, we're glad to have raised this critical issue and are confident that the voices of all the signatories will be heard in the future, as Rob indicates at the end of the letter.

We're putting our heads together about how to proceed and we want to hear your thoughts. Email us ideas for further activism at info@splitthisrock.org. And thanks to all who signed and spread the word!

Sarah Browning

Executive Director

Split This Rock

**

  

Dear Sarah Browning,

Thank you for your letter to James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress, about the selection of the next Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. Thank you also for your public support of our two past Poets Laureate.

I wanted to reply on behalf of the Library to you and the signees of your letter. If you could, please forward this response on to them, and feel free to post this on your website as well.

I think of you and the signees of your letter as my peers, and I feel a strong connection to the work you do collectively to champion poetry across the country. The Poetry and Literature Center has recently partnered with various outside organizations to expand the poets and poetry we present. For instance, we have worked with Letras Latinas on a host of public programs as well as a series of interviews titled “Spotlight on U.S. Hispanic Writers” (online at http://www.loc.gov/poetry/hispanic-writers/). I am also proud of our new “Asian American Literature Today” series and our work with the Library’s “Area Studies” divisions―African and Middle Eastern, Asian, European, and Hispanic―and with outside organizations such as the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa and various embassies, to feature writers from around the world. And I am thrilled we are working with Split this Rock to launch the first-ever poetry slam at the National Book Festival this August.

The Poetry and Literature Center assists the Librarian of Congress in the selection process for the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry position. The position was created by an act of Congress, Public Law 99-194, which states: “Individuals are appointed to the position of Consultant in Poetry by the Librarian of Congress for one- or two-year terms solely on the basis of literary merit.” Since I have worked at the Library, we have conducted two surveys to begin this process: in 2011 for the 18th Poet Laureate and recently for the 20th Poet Laureate, asking fifty nominators from 24 different states, including the current and nine former Poets Laureate, as well as critics, scholars, lit org directors/literary presenters, and bookstore owners. I was happy you agreed to serve as a nominator for this year’s survey. We asked nominators who we felt would put forth the widest range of poets in terms not only of race, but also of gender, sexual orientation, and class, as well as aesthetic and regional diversity from across the country.

Once we compiled a list of nominees, I assisted the Librarian of Congress as he worked to select this year’s Laureate. This law is the result of former Congressman Matsunaga’s efforts, as you say, and was signed into law by Congress―the body that oversees the Library. I feel it is our duty to follow the letter of the law as closely as possible, with the knowledge that “literary merit” can mean different things to different people. To me the term strongly but not exclusively suggests a body of work that has received the highest levels of recognition. The Librarian of Congress is ultimately responsible for the selection, and he consults other experts in the field. I can tell you that the Librarian is arguably the best reader of poetry I have met, who is not part of the field. He is well-versed in English, American, and Russian poetry, and has memorized more of all three than most poets I know have of one. He has an ear for lyricism and a keen sense of craft, and he understands the fundamental work of poetry is to challenge and expand the use of language in ways that have enduring value. He is also supportive of contemporary American poetry and receptive to the great variety of its best efforts.

Before we received your open letter, the Librarian had already selected the 20th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. However, I will refer to your letter, and to the results of our survey―which includes the names of some 76 poets, 21 with more than one vote―for the Poet Laureate selection process in the near future. We did this with the 2011 list, when the Librarian appointed Natasha Trethewey to the position. In my current position, with the Library’s mission to “further the progress of knowledge and creativity for the benefit of the American people” as my charge, I will continue to champion the great wealth of American poetry. I look forward to working with you and with the signees of your letter.

Sincerely,

Rob Casper

Robert Casper

Head, Poetry and Literature Center

101 Independence Ave., S.E.  |  Washington, DC 20540-4860

P: (202) 707-1308  |  F: (202) 707-3595  |  E: roca@loc.gov

www.loc.gov/poetry