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Poet Laureate Program for Allegheny County

Pittsburgh has long been a home for poetry, and City of Asylum continues this tradition by establishing the first Poet Laureate Program for Allegheny County with support from RAD.

The City of Asylum Poet Laureate of Allegheny County is an award and two-year service position offered to an emerging or established poet who seeks to engage with residents of Allegheny County through poetry.

The Youth Poet Laureate of Allegheny County is awarded to a young person between 13-18 years old who is passionate about their art and their communities. 

The Gulf Tower Forecasts Rain: A Pittsburgh Poetry Anthology

The Gulf Tower Forecasts Rain, A Pittsburgh Poetry Anthology

The Gulf Tower Forecasts Rain is an anthology that celebrates poetry inspired by Pittsburgh places, history, colloquialisms, and quirks. This project was created by Doralee Brooks, City of Asylum’s poet laureate of Allegheny County 2022-24.

Purchase your copy

Events featuring our Poets

Want to book a Poet Laureate for a reading or commission? Contact us at PoetLaureate@cityofasylum.org.

Poet Laureate Program Alumni

Youth Poet Laureate Program Alumni

Eco-Justice for All!

eco justice for all

Inaugural Poet Laureate Celeste Gainey’s project is Eco-Justice for All! Poetry Confronts Climate Catastrophe, a workshop and reading series. Eco-Justice for All! invited community members to explore and respond, through reading, writing, and live performance, to the prompt:

How can poets use language to reveal, grapple with, even influence the urgent climate crisis and all those it affects? What happens when we explore this intersection in community to make a caring way through the Anthropocene?

Eco-Justice for All! culminates with a poetry anthology in the form of a zine featuring the work of 25 poets published in June 2022.

Poem of the Week

City of Asylum believes that All Pittsburghers are Poets. Beginning in May 2020 and running through April 2021, poems by residents of Allegheny County of all ages and levels of experience were published weekly at Sampsonia Way Magazine. Read all 50 poems here.

All Pittsburghers are Poets in the Press

Acknowledgements

This project is supported in part by the taxpayers of Allegheny County through a RADical ImPAct Grant from the Allegheny Regional Asset District (RAD). RAD works here.

Urban Word is the leader of the National Youth Poet Laureate Network and the primary partner of the Youth Poet Laureate of Allegheny County program.

Sampsonia Way Magazine is a publication of City of Asylum in partnership with the University of Pittsburgh.