In Praise of Mystery

U.S. Poet Laureate Coming to Salina in October 2024

The United States Poet Laureate Ada Limón will join Humanities Kansas, the Salina Art Center, and Salina Arts and Humanities for a free poetry reading at the Salina Art Center on October 17, 2024. This will be her first poetry reading in Kansas since becoming the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States in 2022. 

Coinciding with the launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft on its mission to explore the moons of Jupiter, Limón’s poetry reading in Salina during National Arts and Humanities Month will include the first poem ever engraved on the side of a spacecraft, “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa.” Stay after the reading to stargaze in the art center’s courtyard!

“We are looking forward to celebrating National Arts and Humanities month with this incredible poetry event in the heart of Kansas,” shared Julie Mulvihill, executive director of Humanities Kansas. “We are honored that Ada said yes to our invitation and that Salina, with its strong and vibrant arts and humanities community and a culture of poetry lovers, offered to host the opportunity.”   

Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her book Bright Dead Things was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Her most recent book of poetry, The Hurting Kind, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and wrote a poem titled In Praise of Mystery that is engraved on NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft that launches to the second moon of Jupiter, also in October 2024. In 2023 she was awarded a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship.

As the 24th Poet Laureate of The United States, her signature project is called You Are Here and focuses on how poetry can help connect us to the natural world. Limón shared that her new anthology, also called You Are Here, includes “poems written for vast and inspiring vistas to poems acknowledging the green spaces that flourish even in the most urban settings,” and she’s hopeful the book will “reimagine what ‘nature poetry’ is during this urgent moment on our planet.” She will serve as the U.S. Poet Laureate until the spring of 2025. 

Tickets for the event will be available in August at salinaartcenter.org.