Another U.S. poet laureate comes from UI

IOWA CITY - Another graduate of the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop has been named a U.S. poet laureate - the eighth graduate to achieve the honor.

Juan Felipe Herrera was named the 21st poet laureate this week by the Library of Congress. A U.S. poet laureate serves a one-year term, working to raise national awareness of poetry.

Herrera, 68, will begin his term in the fall. He is the author of 28 books of poetry as well as novels for young adults and children's collections. He has received the National Book Critics Award and the International Latino Book Award.

He is the first Hispanic to hold the position, and the eighth to have emerged from the Writers' Workshop.

'We are always so thrilled and proud when a workshop graduate is selected to serve as the U.S. poet laureate,” Kelly Smith, the Writers' Workshop librarian, wrote in an email.

The current laureate, Charles Wright, also graduated from the program. The rest of the list includes Philip Levine in 2011; Rita Dove, 1993-95; Mona Van Duyn, 1992; Mark Strand, 1990; Anthony Hecht, 1982-84; and William Stafford, the first laureate to come from the Writers' Workshop. He was the U.S. poet laureate in 1970.

Marvin Bell, who was on the poetry faculty when Herrera attended the program, said it makes sense that a lot of laureates would come from the Writers' Workshop, as it is one of the most prestigious options for poets.

'It just means many writers have passed through Iowa City and the Writers' Workshop as students or teachers,” he said in an email. 'Iowa City, of all places, was one of the very few locations where one could live among a group of self-motivated, young writers.”

Bell said he thinks Herrera could have been appointed regardless of experience at the workshop.

'His work is by turns lyrical and explosive, compassionate and aware, and his language and imagery can be transformative,” he said.

This is also something Bell, who has stayed in touch with Herrera since they both left the UI, remembers from working with him in the past:

As a teaching assistant, Bell says, Herrera would invent new ways to teach, broadening the students' ideas of what it meant to be creative.

'He had them do more work than they expected to, and the projects he designed had a shape, variety and overall purpose beyond what would be satisfactory,” Bell said. 'He asked them to write, to create books, and to go into the community to gather and present their writing.”

Herrera is currently working as a visiting professor at the University of Washington-Seattle.

Bell said he expects Herrera to bring something unique to this year's poetry appointment - a sense of selflessness.

'He is more about creativity and community, and less about self, than any previous laureate,” Bell said. 'He has boundless energy and good sense and imagination.”

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