Ada Limón, named the U.S. Poet Laureate last year, will serve two more years, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden has announced, making the California native the third laureate to serve for as long as three years.
Limón, the author of six poetry collections and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, is the nation’s 24th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, as the post is officially known. She began her her term in September 2022 and will conclude it in April 2025. She joins Joy Harjo and Robert Pinsky in serving for three years.
“During her first term, Ada Limón has done so much to broaden and promote poetry to reach new audiences,” Hayden said. “She also laid the groundwork for multiple laureate outreach efforts to come, many with federal agencies. A two-year second term gives the laureate and the Library the opportunity to realize these efforts and showcase how poems connect to, and make sense of, the world around us.”
On June 1, Limón will return to the Library to reveal a new poem she has written for NASA’s Europa Clipper mission. Limón’s poem will be engraved on the spacecraft that will travel 1.8 billion miles to explore Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons.
In August, she will appear at the National Book Festival. Later in the fall, the Library will announce details of Limón’s signature project — a first-ever partnership with the National Park Service and the Poetry Society of America to present poems in national parks across the country — as well as laureate initiatives with federal and nonfederal partners.
“I am beyond honored to serve for another two years as the poet laureate of the United States,” Limón said. “Everywhere I have traveled during my first term, both nationally and internationally, I’ve been reminded that poetry brings people together.”
During her first year, Limón participated in two events hosted by Dr. Jill Biden, first lady of the United States; one for the National Student Poets Program; and the other with Brigette Macron, wife of the president of France, during a state visit.
Limón also participated in an event hosted by Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, wife of the president of Mexico, for the North American Leaders Summit in Mexico City. In Buenos Aires, Limón participated in a conversation with Argentine poets Laura Wittner and Daniela Auginsky for the Library’s Palabra Archive.
In April, for National Poetry Month, Limón served as the guest editor for the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series in a first-ever series collaboration between the academy and the Library.
Limón is the author of six poetry collections, including “The Carrying,” which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and “Bright Dead Things,” a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Books Critics Circle Award. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the Kentucky Foundation for Women.
Her newest poetry collection, “The Hurting Kind,” was published as part of a three-book deal that includes publication of “Beast: An Anthology of Animal Poems,” featuring work by major poets over the past century, to be followed by a volume of new and selected poems.
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