In 2021, Roscoe Burnems was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Burnems will commission local youth and adult poets to take part in an interactive, multi-art form experience inspired by murals in Richmond, Virginia. The poets will create, record, and perform ekphrastic work inspired by these murals, which will be part of an interactive, self-guided mural tour. With the help of a local non-profit that brings equitable computer-science education to Richmonders, youth-created QR codes will be featured on the murals that lead to the ekphrastic poem(s). Burnems will also collaborate with a local muralist to create a literary and visual project inspired by his original poems.