Cave Canem Presents: POETS LAUREATE!

Thursday, March 5, 3:20 p.m. to 4:35 p.m. ET
Ballroom I, Baltimore Convention Center, 400 Level

A poet laureate is an individual honored with that title and who often has published collections of poems, critically acclaimed performances, a résumé decorated with literary awards. A less-discussed attribute is that they are usually selected by their peers and/or geosocial groups for the contributions they make to their respective communities. Hear Curtis Crisler, Regie Gibson, Natalie Graham, and Jacqueline Trimble read their poems and discuss their projects and tenures as poets laureate.

Curtis L. Crisler was born and raised in Gary, Indiana, and is an award-winning poet/author. His latest book is Doing Drive-bys on How to Love in the Midwest. He has six poetry books, two YA books, and five chapbooks. He’s been published in various magazines, journals, and anthologies. Crisler has been awarded fellowships and residencies from City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, Cave Canem, VCCA, and more. He was awarded a Library Scholars Grant Award, a RHINO Founders’ Prize, Indiana Arts Commission grants, and others. He was nominated for the Eliot Rosewater Award and a Jessie Redmon Fauset Book Award. Crisler’s poetry has been adapted to theatrical productions in New York and Chicago. He’s the Indiana Poet Laureate and professor of English at Purdue University Fort Wayne.

Regie Gibson is the inaugural poet laureate of Massachusetts. He has received numerous awards, including two Live Arts Boston grants for his musical, The Juke: A Blues Bacchae. Gibson has been a consultant for the NEA “How Art Works” initiative and the Mere Distinction of Colour exhibit. He is the author of Storms Beneath the Skin and the creator of the Shakespeare Time-Traveling Speakeasy. Gibson has performed with and composed for the Boston City Singers, Mystic Chorale, and Handel and Haydn Society. He was a poet in residence at Cary Memorial Library and Museum of Fine Arts Boston and is on the boards of the Lexington Symphony, GrubStreet, and the New England Poetry Club. He served as creative lead for a team from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. Gibson teaches at Clark University and is an assistant professor at Berklee College of Music.

Photo Credit: Edward Boches


Jacqueline Allen Trimble is an NEA creative writing fellow, a Cave Canem fellow, and a two-time Alabama State Council on the Arts fellow. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Offing, The Rumpus, Poet Lore, contemporary poetry anthologies, and other journals. It has also been featured by the Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day, the American Academy of Poets’ Poem-a-Day, and Poetry Daily. Her first collection, American Happiness, won the Balcones Poetry Prize, and her next collection, How to Survive the Apocalypse, was named one of the ten best poetry books of 2022 by the New York Public Library. Trimble is professor of English and chairs the Department of Languages and Literatures at Alabama State University.





Natalie J. Graham, a native of Gainesville, Florida, earned her MFA in poetry from the University of Florida and PhD in American studies from Michigan State University. Graham is an award-winning poet and performer. Her poetry collection, Begin with a Failed Body, was selected by Kwame Dawes for the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Graham served as the inaugural poet laureate of Orange County, California. In August 2024, she joined the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as a professor in Africana studies and currently serves as the interim department head.