The Olympia City Council recognized Kathleen Byrd, the city's fourth poet laureate, on Tuesday, Jan. 7, for using poetry to engage the community on environmental and climate change issues.
During the council meeting, Byrd read two poems—"Incantation" by the late Polish-American poet Czeslaw Milosz and her original work from her new book, "Last Resort."
Over the past year, Byrd has been actively engaged in various initiatives to connect the Olympia community with poetry.
Byrd has been a featured reader at local poetry events, conducted climate-focused writing workshops with Thurston County youths, and coordinated collaborative events blending poetry and visual art at the spring 2024 Arts Walk.
The Olympia City Council expressed gratitude for Byrd's work.
"Thank you for the creative ways to hold this role and involve community members," Mayor Pro Tem Yen Huynh said.
Byrd's term as poet laureate began in June 2023 and will end in July 2025.
"It has been an honor to serve as the city's poet laureate. I enjoyed all the opportunities to share my poetry, but also to witness people writing and sharing their poetry at the events, and particularly to bring youth into the conversation around climate change through poetry," Byrd told the council.
Olympia selects a poet laureate every two years to engage the community in literary arts.
According to Stephanie Johnson, Olympia's Arts Program manager, the Poet Laureate program's goals include promoting poetry as an art form, expanding access to the literary arts, connecting the community to poetry, and promoting poetry as a community voice that contributes to a sense of place.
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Olywelcomesall
Thank you Kathleen Byrd for all you’ve done to help grow our knowledge and appreciation for poetry. I’ve attended your forums and seen the positive engagement of the attendees to to the creative ways you bring poetry alive for us. Your workshops have helped so many of us to write poems and reveal our deepest sense of place, ecological wonder and climate change.
Thursday, January 23 Report this