Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden has named Tracy K. Smith the next Poet Laureate. Smith will succeed outgoing laureate Juan Felipe Herrera and be the twenty-second poet to hold the position. Her term will begin in September. She will give a reading at the Library of Congress to open its annual literary season.

Hayden said of Smith’s work, “Her work travels the world and takes on its voices; brings history and memory to life; calls on the power of literature as well as science, religion and pop culture. With directness and deftness, she contends with the heavens or plumbs our inner depths—all to better understand what makes us most human.”

 “I am excited about the kinds of social divides that poetry may be able not just to cross but to mend,” Smith told Anne Holmes, Digital Content Manager for the Library of Congress’s Poetry and Literature Center.

Smith won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for her collection Life on Mars. Her first book, The Body’s Question (2003), received the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Graywolf Press will publish her fourth book, Wade in the Water, in April 2018. She has also published a memoir, Ordinary Light, in 2015.

Smith told The New York Times, “I’m very excited about the opportunity to take what I consider to be the good news of poetry to parts of the country where literary festivals don’t always go. Poetry is something that’s relevant to everyone’s life, whether they’re habitual readers of poetry or not.”

Carolyn Kellogg of The Los Angeles Times spoke to Smith about the nomination and her work. She asked what it was like to receive the honor at the relatively young age of 45. Smith commented:

This is the greatest acknowledgement that I’ve experienced ever as a writer—it makes me feel like, OK, someone’s listening, and someone wants me to keep doing what I love and need to do. And that feels really good. … I feel really fortunate that Natasha Tretheway, who was also a young laureate, is a friend—seeing how her work as a writer continues to grow and change, and she’s pushing herself now into a new genre, I feel heartened that this doesn’t have to be the end point of anything in my career, but rather a turning point.

Related reading: In October 2015, LitHub published a conversation between Smith and Gregory Pardlo, who won the Pulitzer for poetry in 2015.

Photo Credit: Shawn Miller / Library of Congress