WHO: Texas’s 2024 poet laureate, Amanda Johnston.
WHAT: The Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship for Johnston’s project, Praisesong for the People: Poems Celebrating the Heart and Soul of Texas.
WHY IT’S SO GREAT: Poetry is often confined to the hallowed halls of academia, and Johnston, our state’s newest poet laureate, wants to expand its reach to the halls where most Texans experience life. Though her designation as a Texas State Artist provides exposure for her work, the position doesn’t involve funding. So she turned to the Academy of American Poets, which every year gives $50,000 fellowships to poets laureate of cities and states in the U.S.
She now has the backing to fully pursue her proposed project, Praisesong for the People: Poems Celebrating the Heart and Soul of Texas, for which she’ll commission seventy poets—ten from each of the seven regions of Texas—to write “praisesongs” to Texans. “Not celebrities, not notable figures, but the people who make an impact on our everyday lives,” Johnston says. The fellowship allows her to pay each poet for their work and covers travel to readings of praise poems around the state (check them out this fall in Austin, Houston, Dallas, El Paso, San Antonio, McAllen, and Abilene).
Her inspiration comes from a desire to counteract the doom and gloom of Texas politics and the barrage of bad news we’re all subject to. “There is so much coming through the ether that is negative,” she says. “The sound bites can be really dreadful.” Raised in Texas and currently living in Austin, Johnston is often asked by non-Texans how she could stand to reside in the state. Her answer: “It’s the community that you live in. The people that are around you. So through the power of poetry, I wanted to celebrate the incredible, diverse communities that I think get lost in the noise of the world.”
Poetry, she says, is the best way to do that—in a way, it’s the most equitable method: it doesn’t take any money or many materials to write a poem; you can use “nothing else but your body and your imagination.” With her project, she hopes to make this even clearer—that poems can be written by anyone and about anyone. “Writing a poem for someone and giving it to them is like giving them their flowers. That’s where my energy is focused,” she says.
As of this past weekend, the project’s website is up, and in October it will begin featuring the commissioned praise poems as well as guidance for various age groups (from kindergarteners to adults) on how to write one, which is a big part of Johnston’s goal to make poetry more accessible. “When I teach poetry, I don’t ever start with canon or older works. I start with contemporary works because we have to be able to see the work in front of us that is reflecting the times,” she says. She often turns to Lucille Clifton and Sharon Olds poems. “The way Sharon Olds writes vulnerably about her own experiences and owns that in her work is a really powerful thing for other writers to see and to read,” she says. “Because then it lets us know that our experiences are enough.”
So far, confirmed praisesong writers include San Antonio’s former poet laureate Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson and transgender writer, visual artist, and cultural worker KB Brookins. Even those not commissioned will have the opportunity to write a praise poem and share it on social media, where it might be reposted by Johnston to Instagram or X.
Johnston is excited to have the opportunity to give voice to Texas poets, particularly those in less visible communities. “I’m trying to be intentional and celebrate folks who are writing poetry who are black, BIPOC, LGBTQIA-plus and who are intergenerational, immigrants, differently abled—we all live here and have extraordinary lives. And our communities lift us up and hold us in trying times and absolutely in joyful times. The joy is still here because of the people.”
