Mississippi

State Poet Laureate

In 1963, Mississippi established a state poet laureate position, which is currently held by Ann Fisher-Wirth, who was appointed to a four-year term in 2025.

Type	Title	State
Literary Organization	The Mississippi Arts Commission	Mississippi
Poetry-Friendly Bookstore	Reed's Gum Tree Books	Mississippi
Literary Organization	The Mississippi Writers Guild	Mississippi
Poetry-Friendly Bookstore	Off Square Books	Mississippi
Literary Organization	Mississippi Humanities Council	Mississippi
Poetry-Friendly Bookstore	Turning Pages Books	Mississippi
Literary Organization	Mississippi Cultural Crossroads	Mississippi
Literary Organization	The Mississippi Writers Page	Mississippi
Writing Program	Mississippi State University	Mississippi
Writing Program	University of Mississippi	Mississippi

A man git his feet set in a sticky mudbank,
A man git dis yellow water in his blood,
No need for hopin', no need for doin',
Muddy streams keep him fixed for good.

Sterling A. Brown

1980

Through wild and tangled forests
   The broad, unhasting river flows—
   Spotted with rain-drops, gray with night;
     Upon its curving breast there goes
A lonely steamboat's larboard light,
       A blood-red star against the shadowy oaks;
Noiseless as a ghost, through greenish gleam
Of fire-flies, before the boat's wild scream—
          A heron flaps away
          Like silence taking flight.

Hamlin Garland

1893

Vicksburg, Mississippi


Here, the Mississippi carved
            its mud-dark path, a graveyard

for skeletons of sunken riverboats.
            Here, the river changed its course,

turning away from the city
            as one turns, forgetting, from the past—

the abandoned bluffs, land sloping up
            above the river’s bend—where now

the Yazoo fills the Mississippi’s empty bed.
            Here, the dead stand up in stone, white

marble, on Confederate Avenue.

Natasha Trethewey

2006

Poetry Near You

Mississippi

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Etheridge Knight

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Poetry Near You

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Mississippi

Recent & Featured Listings

Etheridge Knight

Brooks Haxton

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

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