The U.S. Poet Laureate and the Library of Congress

Carla Hayden was sworn in as the 14th Librarian of Congress on September 14, 2016. She is  the first woman and the first African American to lead the national library. Prior to her latest post she served as CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland. Prior to joining the Pratt Library, Hayden was deputy commissioner and chief librarian of the Chicago Public Library from 1991 to 1993. She was an assistant professor for Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh, and library services coordinator for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. She began her career with the Chicago Public Library as the young adult services coordinator, and as a library associate and children’s librarian, beginning in 1973.

Robert Casper is the head of the Poetry Office at the Library of Congress. For over 80 years the office has been home to the Consultant in Poetry/Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, also known as the U.S. Poet Laureate. Robert has previously worked at the Poetry Society of America and the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, and he has served as poetry board chair for the Brooklyn Literary Council. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Campbell McGrath is the author of nine previous books. He has received numerous awards for his poetry, including a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has been published in publications such as New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, the Paris Review, the New Yorker, Poetry, and Ploughshares. His poetry is represented in dozens of anthologies. Deeply personal but also expansive in its imaginative scope, the collection Nouns & Verbs (Ecco) brings together thirty-five years of McGrath’s writing. He gives us startlingly inventive new poems while surveying his previous work—lyric poems, prose poems, and a personal epic, “An Odyssey of Appetite,” exploring America’s limitless material and spiritual hungers. Nothing is too large or small to remain untouched by McGrath’s voracious intellect and deep empathy as he investigates the enduring human experiences of love and loss. In a starred review, Booklist noted that “McGrath’s absorbing, amusing, and reflective traveling music entices us on the road yet again.”