April is National Poetry Month, an annual celebration designed to raise awareness and appreciation for the art of poetry. Throughout the month, communities across the country engage with poetry through events, activities, and readings.

What better way for our community to join this celebration than by welcoming Kansas’ own Poet Laureate, Traci Brimhall, to the Wellington Public Library this Saturday, April 26, from 1 to 2pm.

Brimhall began her service as Kansas Poet Laureate on January 1, 2023. A distinguished professor and Director of Creative Writing at Kansas State University, she was selected for the honor by the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission (KCAIC) and will serve through 2026.

The Poet Laureate of Kansas is an honorary role that promotes the reading and writing of poetry for Kansans of all ages. As part of her duties, Brimhall travels across the state offering public readings, workshops, lectures, and presentations designed to inspire a love of poetry.

An award-winning poet, Brimhall is the author of several poetry collections. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, New England Review, American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times and The Nation. She received the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Poetry and the Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship in 2024, among numerous other honors.

Brimhall’s poetry has been praised as “tight, dynamic, and inventive.” Of her creative process, she has said, “Most of my poems have some formal play, whether it’s immediately evident or not. I often create some sort of formal restraint on my work because it helps me decide what images and bits of language are essential to a poem and what I should probably cut. I’m a hoarder in poems, and I need rules to keep from cluttering up what the poem is trying to say.”

This month, Brimhall was elected as the 2025 Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim New York, NY where she will have a new opportunity to bring her visions for poetry and visual arts to life.