Sofia Starnes News Today

The Louis I. Jaffe Professor of Creative Writing and English was appointed by Governor Ralph Northam in July 2020.

Suzanne Rhodes is happiest when she's writing poems.

Suzanne Rhodes of Fayetteville is happiest when she's writing poems. Technically, she is not required to do any writing or crafting of poetry during her year as Arkansas State Poet Laureate, a position she assumed in February that recognizes a poet of significant talent. But it has always been an integral part of her life, ever since childhood when she would frequently wake her sister in the middle of the night to read her a poem that she'd just written.

Thank you, poetry.  I’m writing this last blog post while looking out the window at my dad’s summer garden, thinking about all the animals and insects and leafy things making things work outside. I’m thinking, too, about all the people who write, read, and perform poems, and how they are everywhere in the world, feeding and tilling and fertilizing and germinating and creating harvest with their words. I hope these three issues of Poetry have done one or all of those things for you, and ...