It’s been weeks since Chicagoans were asked to nominate a poet in either written or spoken traditions for the position as the city’s first Poet Laureate. In January, a call for nominations went out with nearly 1,300 nominations submitted. On Monday, the city announced that multidisciplinary artist avery r. young was chosen for the role.
The Chicago Poet Laureate program is a collaboration between Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office, the Chicago Public Library, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and the Poetry Foundation.
As Chicago Poet Laureate, young will serve a two-year term and be awarded a $50,000 grant for the commissioning of new poems and the creation of a public program series for youth and students.
As an ambassador for the city’s literary and creative communities, young comes to the role as a poet, educator and composer with creative projects in music, performance, visual arts and literature. Young is co-director of the Floating Museum, an arts collective that explores relationships between art, community, architecture, and public institutions, a 2022 Field Foundation Leader for a New Chicago awardee, and performer with the band de deacon board.
“As a respected multidisciplinary artist in our community, avery has the ability to push the boundaries of this position beyond the ceremonial and deliver something that is unique, engaging and transformational,” said DCASE Commissioner Erin Harkey. “The possibilities for his tenure are endless as we think about how poetry might intersect with performance, music, education, activism and civic dialogue.”
We talked with young, about his past, present, and his plans for the future as the inaugural poet laureate for the city. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What were you doing prior to this new role?
A: The Floating Museum is doing The Garden, our newest inflatable. Kushala Vora is the lead designer on it. We’re investigating this idea of the ways in which plants are used in good and not so good ways, and the means of recognizing their healing qualities and the means in which people have capitalized off plants that grow out of the ground. Our next inflatable is a replica of the Mecca Flats (an apartment building which stood where Mies van der Rohe’s Crown Hall currently sits on the Illinois Institute of Technology campus). We’re trying to get it so people cannot just look at it, but be inside it. We’re trying to figure it out.”
Q: What do you want to achieve in this position?
A: I’m trying to figure out how to create and build upon some work during my two-year tenure and that work will mainly be focused on stories about Chicago. Then I am looking to really figure out a way to support any Laureate coming behind me by establishing a department that has adequate funds for programming that will not just make it about me, or the Laureate, but it will give opportunities for other poets and creatives to examine archives and create stories centering Chicago. That is my plan. But the immediate plan is to enjoy this moment. Take it in and celebrate because I’m in the history books now, for sure and I’m totally appreciative and honored, and I know this means more work to be done.
Poetry is not just for pages and binders. We all have tiny stories that we can share in so many different ways and a lot of my practice as a poet has been about the various spaces where language can exist and using sound, music, performance, visual art, sculpture in ways in which to get it. Me as Poet Laureate is definitely an example of where all that poetry is. You have an artist that is making records, a visual poetry book, and being a part of an art collective that views the city as a museum. I can figure out the ways in which we infuse language in all the projects that we do.
I would like to also open this up to other poets and have them engage archives in the libraries in other institutions in the city, to do work that is Chicago centered because there’s so many stories of Chicago within Chicago, it’s so many people, places and things for poets to delve into and write about. I’m trying to create multiple opportunities for other artists in the city and keep poetry and the idea that the poem, or their poetry is not necessarily an event. I’d like to put poetry on billboards and make it integral and the means in which we understand it to get a closer relationship to it.
This is such a city of great poets. It could have been anybody and I would have been supportive of whoever it was. Now I can support myself. I don’t say I’m perfect for the position, but I will say the position is perfect for me.
Q: You said church was pivotal for you as an artist. Elaborate.
A: Yes, especially when it comes to language. Seeing the ways in which a minister could use language to evoke this spiritual transformation out of people, that’s when I was like, ‘that ability to do that, that’s what I want to do.’ And I didn’t necessarily think it was about being a preacher, but the ability to have people in such a grip, in this exchange of energy. Because the attention is to have an experience that exceeds our human one, we want to have a spiritual experience. Brothers and sisters go to church to get up out of their bodies, and I learned I could do that through poems and in my performance of them, I can transform a space into a story I’m sharing.
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Q: You’ve touched a lot of genres with your work — architecture, education — is there a certain area that you haven’t touched yet that this job will enable you to do?
A: Although I get to do a lot of public art with the Floating Museum, I would like to add that to my personal practice. I’d like to spend a bit more time in galleries. I’d like to spend more time creating score for stage and/or film, and if we could figure out how the poet laureate introduces me more into theater.
Poetry Fest: Dr. Eve L. Ewing and avery r. young will be in conversation 3 p.m. April 29 at the Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St.; chipublib.org/poetry