The long, gray moss that softly swings In solemn grandeur from the trees, Like mournful funeral draperies,-- A brown-winged bird that never sings. A shallow, stagnant, inland sea, Where rank swamp grasses wave, and where A deadliness lurks in the air,-- A sere leaf falling silently. The death-like
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states
Louisiana
Established in 1942, the state poet laureate position in Louisiana is currently held by Ava Leavell Haymon. Haymon is the author of four poetry collections, including Eldest Daughter, published by Louisiana State University Press in 2013. She has received the Louisiana Literature Prize for poetry, the L. E. Phillabaum Poetry Award, and the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. She is a teacher and directs a summer retreat center for writers and artists.
recent & featured listings
type |
name | state |
|---|---|---|
| Festival | Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival | Louisiana |
| Reading Series | RELIC: Readings in Literature and Culture | Louisiana |
| Writing Program | McNeese State University | Louisiana |
| Writing Program | Louisiana State University | Louisiana |
| Writing Program | Tulane University | Louisiana |
| Writing Program | University of Louisiana at Lafayette | Louisiana |
| Writing Program | University of New Orleans | Louisiana |
| Writing Program | Xavier University of Louisiana | Louisiana |
| Conference | New Orleans Bookfair | Louisiana |
| Conference | Words & Music: A Literary Feast in New Orleans | Louisiana |
Louisiana poet laureate
Ava Leavell Haymon
Ava Leavell Haymon is the author of Eldest Daughter (Louisiana State University Press, 2013).
poems
poem
1900
poem
1994
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids poem
2009
Talking about New Orleans About deforestation & the flood of vodun paraphernalia the Congo line losing its Congo the funeral bands losing their funding the killer winds humming intertribal warfare hums into two storm-surges touching down tonguing the ground three thousand times in a circle of grief four
