John Warner Smith
Poet Laureate of Louisiana, 2019–2021
John Warner Smith earned his MFA at the University of New Orleans. He has published four collections of poetry, most recently Muhammad’s Mountain (Lavender Ink, 2018). His fifth collection will be published in 2020 by MadHat Press.
A Cave Canem Fellow, Warner Smith is the winner of the 2019 Linda Hodge Bromberg Poetry Award. He has directed Education’s Next Horizon, a statewide policy advocacy organization that seeks to improve outcomes in Louisiana public schools. Warner Smith also teaches English at Southern University in Baton Rouge. He served as the poet laureate of Louisiana from 2019 to 2021.
Read about John Warner Smith’s 2020 Poets Laureate Fellowship project.