Minneapolis’ Arts and Cultural Affairs department and The Loft Literary Center selected Junauda Petrus as the new poet laureate on Jan. 30.
While the city’s first poet, Heid Erdrich, served for one year, Petrus will serve for two as she writes poems that reflect the Minneapolis community, teaches two classes at the Loft Literary Center and leads public events featuring her poetry.
The position comes with a stipend and the ability to apply for the prestigious Academy of American Poet Laureate Fellowship program, a $50,000 award given to honor poets of literary merit.
Petrus said she was over the moon when she got selected.
“I think for me, it really just felt like, ‘Wow, what a beautiful honor,’” Petrus said. “I think also the project that I have planned where I want to get young people and elders and all of us just reconnected and talking and learning from each other, learning each other’s wisdom.”
Petrus said she feels excited the community felt she was the right person for this job.
Ben Johnson, the director of the Arts and Cultural Affairs, said the poet was picked through a panel process of literary peers by the Loft Literary Center. The decision to pick Petrus was unanimous, Johnson added.
“I’m really happy that Junauda Petrus applied and has received this award, and it feels like the right kind of poet at the time that we need a poet,” Johnson said.
This is not Petrus’ first attempt in the art scene. She wrote a children’s book called “Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers?” and initially applied to be the city’s first poet laureate but lost to Erdrich.
“My year as inaugural poet laureate was the best kind of gift because it was one I could share,” Erdrich said. “Listening to Minneapolis through her poets and listening to natural places in the city was a pleasure.”
Erdrich said she can not imagine a more difficult time to lead through poetry but knows Petrus will do it with her “heart.”
The first year of the poet laureate was successful, but Johnson said he is excited about the two-year term and the bond Petrus will make with the Minneapolis literary community and the art scene.
“We want to help support their creative endeavors and their instinct and their potential, and this is one of those platforms that allows us to look at that through a literary lens,” Johnson said.
Anyone can apply as many times as they want but only can serve as poet laureate once, Johnson said.
Petrus said her poems center around teaching people how to bring relationships together and making them feel comfortable connecting again.
“People are experiencing different parts of Minneapolis, whether you live over in the Phillips neighborhood where I grew up or whether you live over northeast or by the lakes or over north,” Petrus said.
The Loft Literary Center is hosting a celebration on Thursday from 6:30-9:00 p.m. for Petrus and the other poet laureate finalists Khadija Charif, Halee Kirkwood, Sagirah Shahid and Kyle Tran Myhre.
