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 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
Writing Program	University of Southern Mississippi Center for Writers	Mississippi
Literary Magazine	Black Magnolias	Mississippi

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

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Nor the strip of light between the slats, the window itself blind with grief. Nor the bench where the last mourner lingers, the others on to the next thing, leaning into the bar, toasting the sweethearts, gone and gone, their passion and ire softening now into the earth. Nor the bluff above the Mississippi where centuries of war dead rest, where the stone stands bearing their names, the wind of romance hard against it.

Holly Iglesias

2010

Poetry Near You

Mississippi

Recent & Featured Listings

Ann Fisher-Wirth

Liz Waldner

Etheridge Knight

Poetry Near You

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Mississippi

Recent & Featured Listings

Ann Fisher-Wirth

Liz Waldner

Etheridge Knight

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