The State of Michigan is reviving its poet laureate program after more than 50 years.
Officials have selected award-winning poet and Detroit resident Nandi Comer as Michigan’s newest poet laureate. Before Comer, Michigan had only appointed one other state poet laureate, Edgar A. Guest. Guest held the title from 1952 until his death in 1959.
Comer has spent years helping young people in Detroit use poetry to express themselves. Comer says she never imagined she would receive the great honor of becoming the state’s poet laureate.
“I'm really excited about relaunching a program that can really redefine the way that Michigan really looks at its creative writing community and how it values it.”
Comer remembers always being someone who naturally reflected on their experiences. This inherent drive eventually led them to begin writing poetry at 15 years old in a class led by Terry Bohnhorst Blackhawk. Blackhawk is the founder of InsideOut Literary Arts Project, a nonprofit serving the needs of children in Detroit's public schools.
"I was in high school, and she started teaching me how to write, how to just express myself. And then she invited me into the creative writing classroom where I learned how to put together a creative writing journal," Comer said. "And I learned how to edit my poems and it was from there that I really got my first dose of what it meant to be like a poet."
Over the years, Comer has been dedicated to youth development by serving as a writer-in-residence in Detroit Public Schools Community District and community centers. She has also worked in collaboration with organizations, including YArts and InsideOut Literary Arts Projects. In 2018 Comer received the William Wiggins Award for Outstanding Teaching at Indiana University.
She says poetry has always given her the opportunity to give names to the things that make us all feel emotionally up or emotionally overjoyed.
"When I'm doing my own work that oftentimes I, along with my community, feel this overwhelming sense of something happening around me that feels so important that I have to write it down," Comer said. "And so I feel like I'm practicing along with my colleagues and all of these other poets in the world, we are practicing the work of naming the human experience."
Comer says poetry gives her an opportunity to connect with people in intimate and sacred ways.
"When our audience sees our work or interacts with our work or reads our work, that they too will say: 'Oh, yeah, I've seen that. I felt that. I feel that way right now. Thank you,'" she said. "Those are the times that I feel like I'm really just flexing my literary muscles."
Comer was born and raised in Detroit and much of her poetry is set in Detroit. Comer says she continues the practice of thinking about Detroit's history and how it can give her insight into the world today.
"So I've been thinking about music from when I was growing up, and thinking about how poetry can help to really describe a time that I'm very nostalgic about," she said. "But you know, I've been really thinking about the past and how it's showing up in my work right now."
As Michigan’s poet laureate, Comer will travel to schools and libraries statewide to motivate upcoming writers and creatives.
"I'm really excited about turning inward towards our state and saying: 'look how beautiful we are, look how amazing we are,'" she added.
By being named the state's poet laureate, Comer is hoping more Michiganders will get to interact with her work and find meaning in it.
"I like to really challenge myself to think about how to create language that has never been seen before in poetics. And I really am excited to have people look at the work and think and understand that this is something different," she added.
Comer received a B.A. in English and in Spanish with an emphasis on Latin American Culture from the University of Michigan. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, The Journal of Pan African Studies, Sycamore Review, and Third Coast. She is the author of American Family: Syndrome (Finishing Line Press) and Tapping Out (Northwestern University Press), which was awarded the 2020 Society of Midland Authors Award and the 2020 Julie Suk Award.
