George Elliott Clarke, is a Canadian poet, playwright and literary critic who served as the Poet Laureate of Toronto from 2012 to 2015, and as the 2016–2017 Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. His work is known for its use of a wide range of literary and artistic traditions, as well as its physicality and political substance. One of Canada's most illustrious poets, Clarke is also known for chronicling the experience and history of the Black Canadian communities of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, creating a cultural geography that he has coined "Africadia."
Sheree Lynn Fitch is a Canadian writer and literacy advocate. Known primarily for her children's books, she has also published poetry and fiction for adults.
Children's poetry is poetry written for, appropriate for, or enjoyed by children.
Lorri Neilsen Glenn is a Canadian poet, ethnographer, essayist and educator. Born in Winnipeg, and raised on the Prairies, she moved to Nova Scotia in 1983. Neilsen Glenn is the author and editor of several books of creative nonfiction, poetry, literacy, ethnography, and essays. She was Poet Laureate for Halifax from 2005-2009, the first Métis to hold the position. Her writing focuses on women, arts-based research, and memoir/life stories; her work is known for its hybrid and lyrical approaches. She has published book reviews in national and international journals and newspapers. Neilsen Glenn has received awards for her poetry, creative nonfiction, teaching, scholarship and community work.
Donna Allard is a Canadian poet and writer. From 2000 to 2011, she served as Atlantic representative, national coordinator and president of the Canadian Poetry Association and was on its board of directors. She was president of the executive board of the Canadian Poetry Association from 2005-2011, and is a founder of the Sojourner Literary Festival and co-founder of the Canadian Poets Guild (2016). She was also a founder of the National Milton Acorn Festival, where she served for eight years. She was named National Beat Poet Laureate in 2020. She lives in Richibucto, New Brunswick.
Millicent Travis Lane is an American-born Canadian poet based in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
Heather McHugh is an American poet. She is notable for Dangers, To the Quick and Eyeshot. McHugh was awarded the MacArthur Fellows Program and Griffin Poetry Prize.
Douglas Grant Lochhead FRSC was a Canadian poet, academic librarian, bibliographer and university professor who published more than 30 collections of poetry over five decades, from 1959 to 2009. He was a founding member and vice-chairman of the League of Canadian Poets and was elected its first secretary in 1968. He served as president of the Bibliographical Society of Canada (1974–76), and was a member of bibliographical societies in the U.S. and Britain. In 1976, he was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Randall Maggs is a Canadian poet and former professor of English Literature at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College of Memorial University, in Corner Brook, Newfoundland. He is one of the organizers and now artistic director of the March Hare, the largest literary festival in Atlantic Canada.
Marilyn Nelson is an American poet, translator, biographer, and children's book author. She is a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, and the former Poet Laureate of Connecticut. She is a winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, and the Frost Medal. From 1978 to 1994, she published under the name Marilyn Nelson Waniek. She is the author or translator of more than twenty books and five chapbooks of poetry for adults and children. While most of her work deals with historical subjects, in 2014 she published a memoir, named one of NPR's Best Books of 2014, entitled How I Discovered Poetry.
Angela Jackson is an American poet, playwright, and novelist based in Chicago, Illinois. Jackson has been a member of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), a community that fosters the intellectual development of Black creators, since 1970. She has held teaching positions at Kennedy-King College, Columbia College Chicago, Framingham State University, and Howard University. Jackson has won numerous awards, including the American Book Award, and became the fifth Illinois Poet Laureate in 2020.
John Barton is a Canadian poet.
Pearl London (1916–2003) was an American supporter of literary arts and teacher of poetry in New York City.
Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda was named Poet Laureate of Virginia by the Governor, Tim Kaine, on June 26, 2006. She succeeded Rita Dove and served in this position from June 2006 – July 2008. While serving as Poet Laureate, Carolyn started the "Poetry Book Giveaway Project" and added the "Poets Spotlight" to her webpage highlighting one poet from the Commonwealth each month, in addition to traveling widely to promote poetry in every corner of Virginia.
Marilyn L. Taylor is an American poet with six published collections of poems. Taylor's poems have also appeared in a number of anthologies and journals, including The American Scholar, Able Muse, Measure, Smartish Pace, The Formalist, and Poetry magazine's 90th Anniversary Anthology. Her second full-length collection, Subject to Change, was nominated for the Poets' Prize. She served as the city of Milwaukee's Poet Laureate in 2004 and 2005, and was appointed Poet Laureate of the state of Wisconsin for 2009 and 2010. She also served for five years as a contributing editor for The Writer Magazine. A retired Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, she taught poetry and poetics for the Department of English and later for the Honors College. She currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she presents readings and facilitates workshops throughout Wisconsin and beyond.
Beth Ann Fennelly is an American poet and prose writer and was the Poet Laureate of Mississippi.
Erika L. Sánchez is an American poet and writer. She is the author of poetry collection Lessons on Expulsion and a young adult novel I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, a 2017 finalist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. She was a professor at DePaul University.
Fern G. Z. Carr is a contemporary Canadian poet and writer who resides in Kelowna, British Columbia. A full member of the League of Canadian Poets, Fern G. Z. Carr is the author of Shards of Crystal. She is a former lawyer, teacher, and past president of both the Kelowna branch of the BC Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and Project Literacy Central Okanagan Society. Carr composes and translates poetry in six languages, including Mandarin.
The National Youth Poet Laureate is a title held in the United States by a young person who demonstrates skill in the arts, particularly poetry and/or spoken word, is a strong leader, is committed to social justice, and is active in civic discourse and advocacy. It is a title awarded annually to one winner among four finalists, most of whom have been chosen as the Poet Laureate for their city and region.
Anna Minerva Henderson (1887–1987) was a teacher, civil servant, and poet from Saint John, New Brunswick. According to the New Brunswick Black History Society, during Canada's centennial in 1967 she published a "chaplet" containing 22 poems which is believed to be the first book to be published by a Black woman who was born in Canada. In 2004, Henderson and New Brunswick publisher Abraham Beverley Walker were the subject of the 2004 W. Stewart MacNutt Memorial Lecture at the University of New Brunswick by George Elliot Clarke who at the time was serving as the Poet Laureate of Toronto. In 2006, Clarke published "Anna Minerva Henderson: An Afro-New Brunswick Response to Canadian (Modernist) Poetry" in the journal Canadian Literature, based upon this lecture.
