Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureateship Extended

The Mercantile Library announces the reappointment of Professor Yalie Saweda Kamara as Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate for 2024. During her 2022-’23 Laureateship, Kamara was the winner of the Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism’s 2022-2023 Elizabeth Alexander Creative Writing Award (Smith College) and received a 2023-2024 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship Grant totaling $50,000. The grant will fund “Keep the Lights On,” a project that includes free community writing workshops for poetry to be projected in public spaces throughout the city.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled to have this opportunity to extend Yalie’s tenure, allowing her to continue her spectacular work and mentorship,” says Mercantile Library Warner-Huguenin Executive Director John Faherty.

During her term as poet laureate, Kamara has mentored local poets through open Office Hours at the Mercantile Library, spoken to high school and college students, contributed to programming that honored Mayor Aftab Pureval, the Mercantile Library, Blink, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center, and Interact for Health.

The extension of Kamara’s Laureateship aligns with the Mercantile Library’s $5.5 million dollar expansion, which necessitated moving the library to a satellite location while its historic location is renovated and expanded in first half of 2024.

“It has been an honor serving as the Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate,” Professor Kamara says. “Cincinnati’s uniqueness, spirit of collaboration, celebration of diversity and artistic investment in its past, present, and future have been an inspiration to my personal development, creative practice, and intellectual endeavors. I am looking forward to what will be forged in community over the next year of my laureateship.”