2025-2027 Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate Celebration with Richard Hague

The Mercantile Library is thrilled to announce Richard Hague as the 2025-2027 Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate.

The two-year post includes a stipend underwritten by the City of Cincinnati and the Mercantile Library. Previously held by poets Pauletta Hansel, Manuel Iris, and Yalie Saweda Kamara, the Poet Laureate promotes poetry throughout the city, reads poems at events, and leads programming.

Richard Hague is a graduate of Xavier University whose work has appeared in Poetry, Smartish Pace, Appalachian Journal, Northern Appalachian Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Nowhere Magazine, Hiram Poetry Review, Nimrod, Mid-American Review, Ohio Magazine, Still: The Journal, Gyroscope Review, The Cleveland Plain Dealer and Creative Nonfiction, among many others, and in dozens of anthologies. He is author or editor of 22 volumes of prose and poetry, most recently Continued Cases (Dos Madres Press, 2023), a collection of environmental, satirical, and political poems and the nonfiction collection Earnest Occupations: Teaching, Writing, Gardening, and Other Local Work (Bottom Dog Press 2018) listed as “Recommended” by the US Review of Books. A Katharine Bakeless Scholar at Bread Loaf, he studied with Scott Russell Sanders. He has taught writing and literature in Cincinnati and elsewhere for 54 years.

“Not only am I honored to be named Poet Laureate, but I look forward to supporting poets and the art of poetry in the city I have lived, studied, and taught in for sixty years,” said Hague. “I also hope to celebrate, among many other things, Cincinnati’s river heritage, being myself a native of another old Ohio River town, Steubenville, site of the original Land Office for the Northwest Territory. Finally, I am privileged to follow Pauletta Hansel, Manuel Iris, and Yalie Kamara in maintaining the vital and varied poetry scene they have created in their roles as Poets Laureate.”

6 pm reception/6:30 pm program
Free & open to the public. Registration required.