Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday appointed Lee Herrick, a Fresno-based author and professor, to be the state’s poet laureate, citing a physique of labor that “explores the range and vitality of the California expertise and the exhilarating success of the American experiment.”
Herrick, 52, was born in Daejeon, South Korea, and adopted when he was 10 months previous by mother and father from Northern California. Previously Fresno’s poet laureate, he teaches at Fresno Metropolis Faculty and within the MFA program on the College of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe. He has a spouse and daughter and lives in Fresno.
Herrick is the creator of three poetry collections — “Scar and Flower,” “Gardening Secrets and techniques of the Useless” and “This Many Miles From Want” — and has revealed verse in quite a few literary magazines, anthologies and textbooks.
“As a instructor, poet, and father, Lee writes movingly about his id as a Californian and encourages others to mirror on what the state means to them,” Newsom stated in a press release. “Lee’s dedication to highlighting the various experiences of Californians, and making them so accessible by way of his poetry, makes him an ideal candidate for Poet Laureate. I stay up for his work to encourage communities and people throughout the state by way of the facility of the written phrase.”
The state’s earlier poet laureate was Dana Gioia, a former chairman of Nationwide Endowment for the Arts, who crammed the position from 2015 to 2018. The place had been vacant since Gioia’s departure.
“I’m deeply honored, humbled, and excited to be named California Poet Laureate,” Herrick stated in a press release.
Herrick spoke to The Instances in 2021 about being an Asian adoptee raised by white mother and father. He started to find his Korean id when he was in school after rising up in Danville, Calif. Having been the one pupil of colour at his elementary faculty, he stated books had been his main entry to details about the tradition he’d been born into.
Asian adoptees “start to consider that they’re virtually if not completely white,” he stated. “That’s a hazard for everyone concerned. There are some who deny their identities nicely into their 50s.”
Herrick’s new position will see him advocating for the artwork of poetry in lecture rooms and boardrooms alike. He’ll serve a two-year time period, as soon as confirmed by the state Senate, and can obtain a stipend from the California Arts Council.