Poet Laureate for City of Knoxville
Call for Nominations: Poet Laureate for City of Knoxville
Deadline for applications to be received: 5 PM on Friday, March 28, 2025
The Arts & Culture Alliance of Greater Knoxville, in partnership with the City of Knoxville, invites nominations for the next Poet Laureate for the City of Knoxville.
The position of City Poet Laureate was created in June 2016 and R.B. Morris, Marilyn Kallet, Rhea Carmon and Joseph Woods (Black Atticus) have each served terms as Poet Laureate.
The Poet Laureate serves as a public voice of Knoxville, creating city-specific works and participating in literary outreach and educational programs.
The deadline for nominations to be received is 5 PM on Friday, March 28, 2025. Click here to download the guidelines and nomination form (PDF).
For questions or more information, please contact the Alliance at (865) 523-7543 or info@knoxalliance.com.
Knoxville has a long and rich literary heritage:
- George Washington Harris’ Knoxville-based tales of Sut Lovingood were an influence on Mark Twain, William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor;
- Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of “The Secret Garden,” wrote her first novel in Knoxville based on her experiences as an adolescent here;
- Pulitzer Prize winners James Agee and Cormac McCarthy both grew up in Knoxville, and the city figures prominently in their works;
- Poet Nikki Giovanni was a Knoxville native who attended Austin-East High School and often wrote about her memories of the city.
The City’s Poet Laureate program aims to extend and build on this heritage by recognizing and supporting citizen poets of exceptional talent and accomplishment.
Legal residents of the City of Knoxville are preferred as nominees (for at least one year [beginning on or before April 1, 2024]), and in the alternate, nominees who can show that they live in Greater Knoxville and have worked extensively in the city for the last five years (2019-2024) are also eligible.
Nominee as well as nominator must be at least 18 years old. Poet may not self-nominate.
Nominee must have had at least one book of poetry published or the equivalent thereof.
The Poet Laureate will receive an annual honorarium of $3,000.