MARYLAND AT A GLANCE

LITERATURE

POETS LAUREATE

• Poet Laureate
• Youth Poet Laureate
• Former Poets Laureate
• Baltimore Youth Poet Laureate

POET LAUREATE

• Lady Brion, Poet Laureate of Maryland, 2024-

  Lady Brion was named Poet Laureate of Maryland by the Governor on September 16, 2024. She is the only spoken word artist ever chosen to hold Maryland's Poet Laureate position. Her works include Black Pearls, Evolving Sands, 2014; Beatitude Society, 2016; My Head Unbowed, 2018; Skelter, 2018; Antigone (adapted by David Feldshuh with original poetry by Lady Brion), 2019.

  Member, Arts Incubator Workgroup, 2024-.

  Howard University, B.A. (communication & culture), 2012; University of Baltimore, M.F.A. (creative writing & publishing design), 2018. Cultural Curator, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, 2014-; Program Manager, DewMore Baltimore, 2015-18; Founder and Executive Director, Pennsylvania Avenue Black Arts and Entertainment District, 2019-.

YOUTH POET LAUREATE

Tara Prakash, Youth Poet Laureate of Maryland, 2024-; Montgomery County Youth Poet Laureate, 2024-.

Sidwell Friends School, Washington, DC. Her works include Flat Irons; Everything is Lava but Us; Dear Nani; Handfuls; The Girl Who Birthed a Moon; Revolutions; How to Forgive Yourself in Five Easy Steps; I Haven't Changed; How to Forget in Six Easy Steps; Caged; Our Star; My Brother's Eyes; Hollow Bodies; Black History Matters; The Creases of Time; Loosening Our Blindfolds; Left Unsaid; Ramona and Beezus Book Review; A Splash of Water; Hunting Season.

FORMER POETS LAUREATE
In the 18th century, Ebenezer Cooke, author of The Sot-weed Factor: Or, A Voyage to Maryland (1708), styled himself Poet Laureate. Maryland did not have an official poet, however, until 1959. In that year, the General Assembly authorized the Governor to appoint a citizen of the State as Poet Laureate of Maryland (Chapter 178, Acts of 1959; Code General Provisions Article, sec. 7-317).

• 1959-1962 Maria Briscoe Croker
  
• 1962-1979 Vincent Godfrey Burns
  
• 1979-1985 Lucille Clifton
  
• 1985-1988 Reed Whittemore
  
• 1991-1995 Linda Pastan
  
• 1995-2000 Roland Flint

Roland Flint (1934-2001) was named Poet Laureate of Maryland by the Governor in September 1995. A nationally recognized poet, Dr. Flint taught English at Georgetown University from 1968 to 1997. He retired as professor of English in 1997. His works include And Morning (1975); The Honey and Other Poems for Rosalind (1976); Say It (1979); Resuming Green: Selected Poems, 1965-1982 (1983); Sicily (1987); Stubborn (1990); Hearing Voices (1991); Pigeon (1991); Pigeon in the Night (1994); and Easy: Poems (1999).

For reasons of health, Dr. Flint resigned as Poet Laureate in October 2000. He lived in Kensington, Maryland, where he died on January 2, 2001.

• 2001-2004 Michael Collier
  Michael Collier was named Poet Laureate of Maryland by the Governor in February 2001. A former Guggenheim Foundation fellow and former director of poetry programs at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Michael Collier joined the faculty of the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1985. Currently, he directs the University's creative writing program. Since 1994, he also has been director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. His works include The Neighbor (1995), The Folded Heart (1989), The Clasp (1986), and most recently, The Ledge (2000), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

  Born in Phoenix, Arizona, May 25, 1953. University of Arizona, M.F.A., 1979. Resident of Catonsville, Maryland. Married; two children.

• 2004-2009 Michael S. Glaser
  On August 2, 2004, Michael S. Glaser was named Poet Laureate of Maryland by the Governor. Dr. Glaser has served as head of the Division of Arts and Letters and chair of the English Department at St. Mary's College of Maryland, where he began teaching in 1970. He is a professor of English and co-founded and directs the College's biannual Literary Festival and the annual Voices reading series. For over 20 years, he has served as a Maryland State Arts Council poet-in-the-schools and also has served twice as a guest artist at the Maryland Artist and Teacher's Institute.

  Dr. Glaser's works include A Lover's Eye (The Bunny & Crocodile Press), and In the Men's Room and Other Poems, which won the 1996 Painted Bride Quarterly chapbook competition. His most recent collection of poems, Being a Father, was published in July 2004. Dr. Glaser also has edited two anthologies of Maryland poets, The Cooke Book (1989) and Weavings 2000: The Maryland Millennial Anthology. He has received the Homer Dodge Endowed Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Columbia Merit Award from the Poetry Committee of the Greater Washington, D.C. area for his service to poetry.

  Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1943. Denison University, B.A.; Kent State University, M.A., Ph.D. Resident of St. Mary's City, Maryland. Member, Maryland Humanities Council, 2012-. Married; five children.

• 2009-2018 Stanley Plumly
  On October 1, 2009, Stanley Plumly was named Poet Laureate of Maryland by the Governor. A Maryland Distinguished University Professor since 1998, Mr. Plumly founded the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at the University of Maryland, College Park.

  He has written nine books of poetry, including Old Heart (2008); Now That My Father Lies Down Beside Me: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2000 (2000); The Marriage in the Trees (1997); Boy on the Step (1989); Summer Celestial (1983); Out-of-the-Body Travel (1977); Giraffe (1974); How the Plains Indians Got Horses (1973); and In the Outer Dark (1970). His work also includes Argument and Song: Sources and Silences in Poetry (2003), a collection of essays, and Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography (2008).

  Plumly's work has been recognized through eight Pushcart Prizes, a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in 2001, the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2002, and the Paterson Poetry Prize in 2007.

  Born in Barnesville, Ohio, May 23, 1939. Wilmington College, B.A., 1962; Ohio University, M.A., Ph.D. Died in Frederick, Maryland, April 11, 2019.

• 2018-2023 Grace Cavalieri
  Grace Cavalieri was named Poet Laureate of Maryland by the Governor on December 14, 2018.

  Born in 1932. New Jersey College at Trenton, B.S. (education), 1954; Goddard University, M.A. (creative writing & education), 1975; University of Maryland, College Park. Co-founder, Washington Writers Publishing House, 1976 (editorial board, 1976-82). Founder, The Bunny and the Crocodile Press/Forest Woods Media Productions, Inc., 1979. Former visiting poet, St. Mary's College of Maryland. Resident writer, Word Works, Tuscany, 1996-2003. Her works include Why I Cannot Take a Lover (1975); Body Fluids (1976); Swan Research (1979); Bliss (1986); Trenton (1990); Migrations (1995); Pinecrest Rest Haven (1998); Heart on a Leash (1998); Sit Down, Says Love (1999); Cuffed Frays and Other Works (2001); Greatest Hits, 1975-2000 (2002); What I Would Do For Love (2004); Water on the Sun: Aqua Sui Sole (2006); Anna Nicole: Poems (2008); Navy Wife (2010); Millie's Sunshine Tiki Villas: A Novella in Verse (2011); Gotta Go Now (2012); Cosa Farei per Amore: Poesie dalla Voce di Mary Wollstonecraft (2013); The Man Who Got Away (2014); The Mandate of Heaven (2014); Life Upon the Wicked Stage (2015); With (2016); Other Voices, Other Lives (2017); Showboat (2019). Widow; four daughters, four grandchildren.

BALTIMORE YOUTH POET LAUREATE

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