U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón & Robert Casper: A Conversation

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Ada Limón returns to the Miami Book Fair to celebrate her new appointment as the 24th U.S. Poet Laureate and The Hurting Kind, an astonishing collection about interconnectedness between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves. What does it mean to be the hurting kind? To be sensitive not only to the world’s pain and joys, but to the meanings that bend in the scrim between the natural world and the human world? To divine the relationships between us all? To perceive ourselves in other beings – and to know that those beings are resolutely their own, that they “do not / care to be seen as symbols”? With Limón’s remarkable ability to trace thought, The Hurting Kind explores those questions – incorporating others’ stories and ways of knowing, making surprising turns, and always reaching a place of startling insight. Presented in partnership with the Library of Congress and O, Miami; moderated by Robert Casper, head of Poetry and Literature at the Library of Congress.

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Funding for this program was provided through a grant from Florida Humanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of Florida Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Limón, Ada

Ada Limón became the 24th poet laureate of the United States in July 2022. She is the author of several poetry collections, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry; Bright Dead Things, a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Books Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; and Sharks in the Rivers. Her work also has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Harvard Review, Pleiades, and Barrow Street. Limón is the host of the podcast The Slowdown. “I have always been too sensitive, a weeper / from a long line of weepers,” she writes. “I am the hurting kind.” What does it mean to be the hurting kind? To be sensitive to the world’s pain and joys and to divine the relationships between us all? To perceive ourselves in other beings? In The Hurting Kind (Milkweed Editions), Limón explores those questions and more as she incorporates others’ stories and ways of knowing, always reaching a place of startling insight. There are flashes of the pandemic, ghosts whose presence manifests in unexpected memories. But The Hurting Kind is filled, above all, with connection and the delight of being in the world.

Casper, Robert

Robert Casper is head of the Poetry and Literature Center, Library of Congress. He was previously programs director for the Poetry Society of America, the nation’s oldest poetry organization. In that capacity, he organized 50-60 events a year, including poetry readings, panel discussions, conferences, awards ceremonies, festivals, and events that were held in 13 cities across the country. He was also the founding publisher of the literary magazine Jubilat, which published the best of contemporary American poetry, along with interviews and a variety of other short literary forms.

U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón & Robert Casper: A Conversation