Jennifer Militello, Goffstown
New Hampshire’s Executive Council has confirmed Gov. Chris Sununu’s nomination of Jennifer Militello of Goffstown, New Hampshire, as the next New Hampshire Poet Laureate. Militello will serve a five-year term beginning April 2024. The state’s Poet Laureate serves as an ambassador for all poets in New Hampshire and works to heighten the visibility and value of poetry in the state.
Jennifer Militello is the author of Identifying the Pathogen (forthcoming, 2025), The Pact (Tupelo Press/Shearsman Books, 2021) and the memoir Knock Wood, winner of the Dzanc Nonfiction Prize (Dzanc Books, 2019), as well as four previous books of poetry: A Camouflage of Specimens and Garments (Tupelo Press, 2016), finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award and the Sheila Margaret Motton Prize, Body Thesaurus (Tupelo Press, 2013), named one of the top books of 2013 by Best American Poetry and runner-up for the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, Flinch of Song, winner of the Tupelo Press First Book Award, and the chapbook Anchor Chain, Open Sail.
Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, POETRY, Poetry London, The Poetry Review, and Tin House, as well as in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poems for Every Occasion, and 100 Poems to Save the Earth. She has been awarded the Barbara Bradley Award, the Yeats Poetry Prize, the Ruskin Art Club Poetry Award, the Betty Gabehart Prize, and the 49th Parallel Award, and grants and fellowships from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Writers at Work, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. Her poem "Mansplaining" is recited by high school students across the nation each year as part of the Poetry Out Loud national arts education program.
Militello has taught at Brown University, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and the Rhode Island School of Design, and is currently a faculty member in the MFA program at New England College.
For more information, please visit https://jennifermilitello.com/ or find her on Twitter or Instagram at @jenifrmilitello.
Photo credit: Joanne Smith
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Established by the state legislature in 1967, New Hampshire’s poet laureate is an honorary five-year position held by an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the field of poetry. The poet is appointed by the governor, with the advice and consent of the Executive Council, from a list submitted by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire.
Nominations for the position of Poet Laureate are received from across the state and reviewed by a committee comprised of representatives from the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and the New Hampshire Writers’ Project, as well as other select members from the New Hampshire literary community.
Although there are no specified duties, the Poet Laureate is an ambassador for all poets in NH and works to heighten the visibility and value of poetry in our state. Beginning in 2013, private contributions made to the Walter Butts’ New Hampshire Poet Laureate Fund, created in memory of the former New Hampshire Poet Laureate and coordinated through the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, are providing a modest annual honorarium to help the New Hampshire Poet Laureate achieve his or her stated mission.
