The City of Philadelphia Poet Laureate program is administered by the Free Library of Philadelphia and guided by a governing committee composed of poets, educators, and arts-organization professionals from around the city.
The Poet Laureate is a civic position that recognizes an exceptional poet who also demonstrates a commitment to the power of poetry to engage and inspire people throughout Philadelphia's neighborhoods. In addition to the two-year Poet Laureate position, the program also supports a new Youth Poet Laureate each year. The Poet Laureate mentors the Youth Poet Laureate, who represents the voice of Philadelphia's young poets. Both poets engage with Philadelphia citizens through readings, events, and a special project of their choosing.
Are you our community's next Poet Laureate? Applications for the January 2024 through December 2025 Poet Laureate of the City of Philadelphia are due by 5:00 pm on Monday, October 16, 2023.
Review the information and apply today2022-2023 Philadelphia Poet Laureate
Airea D. Matthews
Airea D. Matthews' first collection of poems is the critically acclaimed Simulacra, which received the prestigious 2016 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. The collection explores the topics of longing and desire with power, insight, and intense emotion. New Yorker critic Dan Chiasson describes Matthews's experimental forms as, "Fugues, text messages to the dead, imagined outtakes from Wittgenstein, tart mini-operas, fairy tales: Matthews is virtuosic, frantic, and darkly, very darkly, funny."
For her writing, Matthews earned a 2020 Pew Fellowship as well as the 2017 Margaret Walker For My People award. In 2016, she received both the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award and the Louis Untermeyer Scholarship in Poetry from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her work has appeared in Callaloo, Gulf Coast, Best American Poets, American Poet, The Rumpus, Tin House, Los Angeles Review of Books, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. A Cave Canem, Callaloo, and Kresge Literary Arts Fellow, Matthews is a founding member of the transdisciplinary art studio The Teeth Factory.
Matthews holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania as well as an M.F.A. from the Helen Zell Writers' Program and an M.P.A. from the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy, both at the University of Michigan. She is an assistant professor and directs the poetry program at Bryn Mawr College, where she was presented the Lindback Distinguished Teaching award.
2023-2024 Philadelphia Youth Poet Laureate
Oyewumi Oyeniyi
Oyewumi Oyeniyi is a senior at Cristo Rey Philadelphia High School. Oyeniyi was a winner of the 2023 Widener University High School Leaders Award which recognizes students in the region who have demonstrated leadership by standing up for what is right, finding a way to address a wrong, or making a significant difference in their schools or communities. Oyeniyi is also a student journalist with Youthcast Media Group and has published two articles - one about climate storytelling and its importance in the environmentalist movement and another about 988, its impact on communities, as well as its future.
"I plan to use my position as Youth Poet Laureate to spread poetry towards a larger audience and also broaden common perceptions of poetry", Oyewumi said.
For more information, including requests for appearances by the Philadelphia Poet Laureate or Youth Poet Laureate, contact poetlaureate@freelibrary.org. Please note that we may not be able to attend all requests out of respect for the time of the two poets.