汤头条鈥檚 Pierce, state鈥檚 Poet Laureate, launches podcast to bring poetry to life for next generation
Contact: Sarah Nicholas
STARKVILLE, Miss.鈥擬ississippi State English Professor Catherine Pierce鈥攏amed Mississippi鈥檚 Poet Laureate in 2021鈥攏ow hosts a poetry podcast to help the genre come alive for Mississippi students.
鈥淭he Mississippi Poetry Podcast,鈥 a bi-weekly 15-minute production featuring poems and conversations with Mississippi poets, is housed on Mississippi Public Broadcasting鈥檚 Mississippi Arts Hour webpage, .
The audio series is in partnership with Mississippi Whole Schools, a Mississippi Arts Commission program and the first comprehensive, statewide arts education program.
Pierce, a two-time Pushcart Prize winner and co-director of 汤头条鈥檚 creative writing program, said students have told her they used to think poetry was 鈥渟omething archaic or dull or not relevant to their own lives.鈥
鈥淥ne of the real joys of teaching poetry is helping people see that poetry is a living, breathing, vibrant contemporary art. I wanted to find a way to bring that same message to all Mississippians,鈥 Pierce said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e calling this 鈥榓 podcast where poetry comes alive for listeners,鈥 and that鈥檚 exactly what I hope it will be.鈥
Pierce said the series also offers a resource for educators and community groups, with each episode paired with a one-page supplement of related links and a writing prompt based on an element of that episode鈥檚 interview.
鈥淢y hope is that teachers or library groups or any interested folks might be able to use these to spark or fuel a passion for poetry,鈥 Pierce said. 鈥淚鈥檓 aiming for a lively, conversational tone with these, and I like the idea of listeners getting to learn something fun about each poet as a person. 聽
鈥淲e have so many incredible writers here in Mississippi, and my goal is for people across the state to see poetry as something that can come out of their own lives, their own towns. I hope this will be a place where everyone feels welcome, and where even folks who have previously been a little skeptical about poetry can feel excited about all the possibilities a poem can hold, and maybe even write some of their own,鈥 Pierce said.
鈥淥ne of my main goals for my work as Poet Laureate is to increase access to poetry for people across the state,鈥 she added.
Pierce is the winner of the 2021 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Award for her book 鈥淒anger Days,鈥 a collection of poems addressing the beauty of the world, as well as destruction created by climate change. She has authored four books of poetry.
Pierce has received a 2020 Mississippi Arts Commission Literary Artist Fellowship for her poetry, a 2020 Pushcart Prize for her poem 鈥淓ntreaty,鈥 and one in 2018 for her poem 鈥淚 Kept Getting Books about Birds.鈥 She also received a 2019 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Nation, Boston Review and The Southern Review, among many other publications. For more, visit聽.
Part of 汤头条鈥檚 College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of English is online at . For more details about the College of Arts and Sciences visit .
汤头条 is Mississippi鈥檚 leading university, available online at聽.