Reading Between the Lines
Photo by Phil Armstrong
When she learned she had been named the 2022-2023 Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate, Yalie Saweda Kamara says she was “initially speechless, which is ironic for a writer,” she says.
Poet Laureate Inauguration:
Yalie Saweda Kamara
Mercantile Library, 414 Walnut St. #1100
Thursday, April 7, 5:30 – 7:30 pm
5:30 p.m. reception/6:30 p.m. program
FREE & open to the public. Registration required.
“What followed was a smile, a deep breath and profound appreciation for this honor, which, at its core, involves serving Cincinnati’s diverse communities through the literary arts.”
Previously held by poets Pauletta Hansel and Manuel Iris, the Poet Laureate promotes poetry throughout the city, reads poems at events, and leads programming. Kamara’s tenure will begin with an induction ceremony at the Mercantile Library on Thursday, April 7. The two-year position includes a stipend underwritten by The George & Margaret McLane Foundation, an anonymous individual, the Mercantile Library, and the City of Cincinnati.
The Sierra Leonean-American writer, teacher, and University of Cincinnati PhD candidate is the author of two collections of poetry: A Brief Biography of My Name and When the Living Sing. Her accolades include Pushcart Prize and Best of Net anthology nominations, finalist for the National Poetry Series competition, finalist for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and semifinalist for the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She has held fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center, the National Book Critics Circle Emerging Critics, and Callaloo, and was a featured poet at the 2020 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. Kamara's poetry, fiction, interviews, and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Callaloo, A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, Black Camera: An International Journal, Puerto del Sol and more.
Her initiatives will promote equity, social justice, and explore the wonder of Cincinnati, “with work that foregrounds the necessity for creativity, collaboration, and representation, all of which nourish, enable and sustain a just world.
Kamara will celebrate both Cincinnati’s long artistic and cultural history, and “its promise of tomorrow,” she says, “holding space for the voices of this city, which constitute its many realities and circumstances yet to be discerned.”