The Presidential Inaugural Committee for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris announced that National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman perform her poetry at the 59th Presidential Inaugural Swearing-In Ceremony, set to take place on Wednesday, January 20, on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol.
The 2020 National Book Festival will feature three major threads -- "Fearless Women, "Hearing Black Voices" and "Democracy in the 21st Century" -- that will anchor the Library's 20th festival and its first virtual one. This post focuses on "Fearless Women."
The Library has recently digitized Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks reading her poems, including the iconic "We Real Cool," at two events 24 years apart as part of National Poetry Month. The recordings are part of the 50 poems added each year to Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature.
Poet Maya Angelou’s debut memoir, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” is her most famous work. The coming-of-age story has influenced writers and touched millions of people. Yet its title is not original to Angelou: She borrowed it from a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar that he composed, at least in part, in response …
This post was first published on “From the Catbird Seat,” the blog of the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center. Rob Casper, head of the center, wrote it. Today is one of the biggest days of the year for the Poetry and Literature Center — it’s the day of the poet laureate announcement. I want to …
Tracy K. Smith, the U.S. Poet Laureate, concludes her two terms in the post with an on-stage conversation with poets from around the nation at the Library of Congress's Coolidge Auditorium on April 15.