- POETS LAUREATE
A Poet Laureate is a poet, officially appointed by a government, who is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events. In 1937 the United States Library of Congress began appointing an official Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. In 1985 an Act of Congress changed the name of the position to Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.
CURRENT POET LAUREATE:Philip Levine
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Aware, Philip Levine was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress in August 2011. Levine's poetry has been set to music by American composers such as Fred Cohen.
Photo Credit: Geoffrey Berliner, courtesy of the Library of Congress More
Past Poets Laureate:
- W. S. Merwin (2010)
- Kay Ryan (2008)
- Charles Simic (2007)
- Donald Hall (2006)
- Ted Kooser (2004)
- Louise Glück (2003)
- Billy Collins (2001)
- Stanley Kunitz (2000)
- Louise Glück (1999)
- W. S. Merwin (1999)
- Rita Dove (1999)
- Robert Pinsky (1997)
- Robert Hass (1995)
- Rita Dove (1993)
- Mona Van Duyn (1992)
- Joseph Brodsky (1991)
- Mark Strand (1990)
- Howard Nemerov (1988)
- Richard Wilbur (1987)
- Robert Penn Warren (1986)
- Gwendolyn Brooks (1985)
- Robert Fitzgerald (1984)
- Reed Whittemore (1984)
- Anthony Hecht (1982)
- Maxine Kumin (1981)
- William Meredith (1978)
- Robert Hayden (1976)
- Stanley Kunitz (1974)
- Daniel Hoffman (1973)
- Josephine Jacobsen (1971)
- William Stafford (1970)
- William Jay Smith (1968)
- James Dickey (1966)
- Stephen Spender (1965)
- Reed Whittemore (1964)
- Howard Nemerov (1963)
- Louis Untermeyer (1961)
- Richard Eberhart (1959)
- Robert Frost (1958)
- Randall Jarrell (1956)
- William Carlos Williams (1952)
- Conrad Aiken (1950)
- Elizabeth Bishop (1949)
- Léonie Adams (1948)
- Robert Lowell (1947)
- Karl Shapiro (1946)
- Louise Bogan (1945)
- Robert Penn Warren (1944)
- Allen Tate (1943)
- Joseph Auslander (1937)

