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Marcus Amaker (born October 29, 1976, in Las Vegas, Nevada) is the first poet laureate of Charleston, South Carolina. [1] He has ten published books and, in 2021, was named an Academy of American Poets Fellow. His poetry has been recognized by PBS NewsHour, [2] TEDx, [3] Huffington Post, [4] Charleston Magazine, [5] The Post and Courier , [6] Charleston City Paper, [7] Charleston Art Mag, [8] and Charleston Regional Business Journal. [9]
Marcus was born in Las Vegas, Nevada to Betty and Willie Amaker, who were stationed there because of the Air Force. The family moved to England, Maryland, Japan and Texas before moving to South Carolina. Marcus' family is from Orangeburg, South Carolina.
Amaker graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1999. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in Journalism. After graduation, he worked at the Anderson Independent-Mail . He later moved to Charleston in 2003 to work as a graphic designer at The Post and Courier . While at ThePost and Courier, he became editor of Preview and Charleston Scene, the paper’s entertainment sections.
Marcus Amaker and Marjory Heath Wentworth read at Mayor John Tecklenburg’s inauguration, in 2016. Shortly thereafter, Tecklenburg named Amaker Charleston, South Carolina’s first poet laureate. Amaker frequently visits schools to lead poetry workshops with students. Amaker was asked to compose a poem for the removal of the John C. Calhoun statue in June, 2020.
He was also named the artist-in-residence of the Gaillard Center in 2019 and an Academy of American Poets Fellow in 2021. [10]
In addition to poetry, Amaker is an opera librettist. His debut opera, The Weight of Light, will premiere in 2024 for the Chicago Opera Theater.
He penned the lyrics for Unknown, a song cycle commissioned by UrbanAiras, a DC-based opera company. It was covered by PBS Newshour and The Washington Post. Marcus' lyrics for "The Rain," a song by opera singer Will Liverman, was named one of NPR's top songs of 2021. The album received a Grammy nomination.
He's also a graphic designer, web designer, videographer and musician. He is the lead graphic designer for the national music journal No Depression. As a musician, he has released more than 30 albums under the alias tape loop. He's also released two albums with Grammy-nominated drummer/producer Quentin E. Baxter of Ranky Tanky.
Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935. He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for All the King's Men (1946) and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979. He is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry.
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government or conferring institution, typically expected to compose poems for special events and occasions. Albertino Mussato of Padua and Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) of Arezzo were the first to be crowned poets laureate after the classical age, respectively in 1315 and 1342. In Britain, the term dates from the appointment of Bernard André by Henry VII of England. The royal office of Poet Laureate in England dates from the appointment of John Dryden in 1668.
Robert Pinsky is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. He was the first United States Poet Laureate to serve three terms. Recognized worldwide, Pinsky's work has earned numerous accolades. Pinsky is a professor of English and creative writing in the graduate writing program at Boston University. In 2015 the university named him a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor, the highest honor bestowed on senior faculty members who are actively involved in teaching, research, scholarship, and university civic life.
Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from the previous "consultant in poetry" position (1937–86). Dove also received an appointment as "special consultant in poetry" for the Library of Congress's bicentennial year from 1999 to 2000. Dove is the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1987, and she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. Since 1989, she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she held the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English from 1993 to 2020; as of 2020, she holds the chair of Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.
William Stanley Merwin was an American poet who wrote more than fifty books of poetry and prose and produced many works in translation. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's unique craft was thematically characterized by indirect, unpunctuated narration. In the 1980s and 1990s, his writing influence derived from an interest in Buddhist philosophy and deep ecology. Residing in a rural part of Maui, Hawaii, he wrote prolifically and was dedicated to the restoration of the island's rainforests.
Donald Andrew Hall Jr. was an American poet, writer, editor, and literary critic. He was the author of over 50 books across several genres from children's literature, biography, memoir, essays, and including 22 volumes of verse. Hall was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard University, and Christ Church, Oxford. Early in his career, he became the first poetry editor of The Paris Review (1953–1961), the quarterly literary journal, and was noted for interviewing poets and other authors on their craft.
The Post and Courier is the main daily newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina. It traces its ancestry to three newspapers, the Charleston Courier, founded in 1803, the Charleston Daily News, founded 1865, and The Evening Post, founded 1894. Through the Courier, it brands itself as the oldest daily newspaper in the South and one of the oldest continuously operating newspapers in the United States. It is the flagship newspaper of Evening Post Industries, which in turn is owned by the Manigault family of Charleston, descendants of Peter Manigault.
Kwame Senu Neville Dawes is a Ghanaian poet, actor, editor, critic, musician, and former Louis Frye Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of South Carolina. He is now Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and editor-in-chief at Prairie Schooner magazine.
Juan Felipe Herrera is an American poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist. Herrera was the 21st United States Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017. He is a major figure in the literary field of Chicano poetry.
Natasha Trethewey is an American poet who served as United States Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014. She won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her 2006 collection Native Guard, and is a former Poet Laureate of Mississippi.
Jaki Shelton Green is an American poet. In November 2009, she was named the first Piedmont Laureate by a collection of Triangle-area arts councils. She currently resides in Mebane, North Carolina. Green teaches Documentary Poetry at Duke University within the Center for Documentary Studies.
David Lee is an American poet and the first poet laureate of the state of Utah. His 1999 collection News From Down to the Café was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and, in 2001, he was a finalist for the position of United States Poet Laureate. He has been acclaimed by the Utah Endowment for the Humanities as one of the twelve greatest writers to ever emerge from the state. A former farmer, he is the subject of the PBS documentary The Pig Poet. His poems have appeared widely in publications including Poetry, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, Narrative Magazine, and JuxtaProse Literary Magazine. He has been cited as an influence on writers such as Lance Larsen and Bonnie Jo Campbell.
Kelly Cherry was an American novelist, poet, essayist, professor, and literary critic and a former Poet Laureate of Virginia (2010–2012). She was the author of more than 30 books, including the poetry collections Songs for a Soviet Composer, Death and Transfiguration, Rising Venus and The Retreats of Thought. Her short fiction was reprinted in The Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and New Stories from the South, and won a number of awards.
The South Carolina Poet Laureate is the poet laureate for the state of South Carolina. As of October 2020, the position was vacant following the resignation of Marjory Heath Wentworth after 17 years in the post. No term of office is set by law. Laureates are appointed by the Governor of South Carolina.
Marjory Heath Wentworth is an American poet. She was named by Governor Mark Sanford as the sixth South Carolina Poet Laureate in 2003.
Bennie Lee Sinclair was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She was named by Governor Richard Wilson Riley as the fifth South Carolina Poet Laureate from 1986 to 2000.
Grace Beacham Freeman was an American poet, columnist, short story writer and educator. She wrote a syndicated column "At Our House" from 1954 to 1964 and was named by Governor Richard Wilson Riley as the fourth South Carolina Poet Laureate from 1985 to 1986.
Helen von Kolnitz Hyer was an American poet. She was named by Governor John C. West as the second South Carolina Poet Laureate from 1974 to 1983.
John J. Tecklenburg is an American businessman and politician. He served two terms as mayor of Charleston, South Carolina, sworn in on January 11, 2016. Tecklenburg was defeated in 2023 by former state legislator William S. Cogswell Jr. He became the first mayor of Charleston to lose a reelection campaign since 1959.
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