APRIL ARTIST OF THE MONTH

Ada Limón

Ada Limón was named the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States in July of 2022, making her the first Latina woman to be named Poet Laureate. She has published six books of poetry and has received awards and honors for all of them as well as winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry for her book The Carrying and being named a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. One of her recent books, The Hurting Kind, is a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. On January 30th of 2023, it was announced that Limón’s poem In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa was engraved on NASA’s Europa Clipper, which will launch in 2024. 

Her signature project as the Poet Laureate You Are Here launches this April, during National Poetry Month. It will feature a call for the public to participate. This project centers around the idea of connecting poetry with nature and includes installing poetry in national parks and publishing a collection of poems reflecting poetry in the natural world.

In her most recent book, Shelter: A Love Letter to Trees, Limón explores the numerous trees that have carved a particular place in her heart, spanning across the nation and across the timeline of her life. Below is an excerpt from the poem The Valley Oak. 

“The first tree, of course, was not the first tree, but the one I remember the most. A California valley oak with a black tire swing hanging from it—an actual tire that filled with rain and worms in the spring. It looked like one of the ugliest of humanity’s inventions hung on one of nature’s most beautiful.”