Engaging People with Poetry
Illinois Poet Laureate Angela Jackson to visit Springfield
March 13, 2025
Illinois Poet Laureate Angela Jackson fell in love with poetry at a tender age, thanks to a poem called “Eletelephony” by Laura Elizabeth Richards, which begins: “Once there was an elephant/Who tried to use the telephant.“
“The musicality, the rhyme,” Jackson said. “I was in love.”
When Jackson was 8 years old, she wrote a poem for her mother who “jumped for joy.” Within a few years, Jackson knew she wanted to be a writer, inspired by Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women. Jackson became an accomplished poet, novelist and playwright.
Born in Mississippi and raised on the south side of Chicago, Jackson is the fifth of nine children in a family who moved to Chicago during the Great Migration, a decades-long movement of Black Americans from the South to places with more economic and social opportunities, mostly in the Northeast and urban Midwest.
One catalyst for her poetry was summer trips to Mississippi, where she saw segregation very publicly displayed.
“It was a harsh encounter,” said Jackson, “an in-your-face encounter that made me want to write about it. It was as if the poet or novelist had found her subject.”
Inspired by Black poets such as Gwendolyn Brooks, a former Illinois poet laureate, issues of social justice have informed Jackson’s poetry through the decades. Jackson, though, considers herself mainly a love poet.
While a student at Northwestern University, Jackson showed her poems to Hoyt Fuller, a teacher as well as an editor of Black World, a magazine devoted to Black culture and arts. Fuller encouraged her to read poetry at Organization for Black American Culture meetings. OBAC fostered the intellectual development of Black creators, and Jackson joined the group in 1970.
Jackson remarked that it was quite an education, studying poetry at Northwestern, a prestigious school where she was enrolled as part of an initiative to desegregate the college, and also studying poetry on the south side of Chicago with other Black poets and writers as part of the Black arts movement in the 1960s and 1970s.
In choosing Jackson as Illinois’ fifth Poet Laureate in 2020, Illinois First Lady MJ Pritzker said, “Illinois has a proud history of poets who have given us reason for hope in dark times, offered poignant insight into our own humanity and delivered profound social critiques.”
The job of a poet laureate is to engage Illinoisans in poetry, with each poet laureate given a small stipend to enact that work. Jackson’s initiative was to place young poets in different places such as schools, nursing homes and prisons in hopes of reaching people who may have never been previously exposed to much in the way of poetry.
Jackson will soon retire, and her residency in Springfield marks her last events as poet laureate. The selection process for the next poet laureate, who will be announced April 30, is already in the works.
As for her plans on what to do next, Jackson said that she was discouraged from writing political poetry during her tenure and is eager to embark on that once again.
Carey Smith is a working-class poet and writer whose focus is on what it means to be human.
—
All May Enter
(from a letter to Illinoisans)
All may enter the realm of the poem. Poetry belongs to each of us, wealthy, super rich, middle class, working class, and poor. I think the shut out – middle class, working class and poor have a storehouse of poems yet to be heard. We are each rich with the beauty and purpose of words, if written words are available to us and we let their potential in.
–Angela Jackson
—
Angela Jackson’s public appearances in Springfield
Monday, March 17
10 a.m.- 1 p.m.
Hoogland Center for the Arts
Jackson is a guest at the state Poetry Out Loud contest, then recites at the reception following it.
Tuesday, March 18
6-8:30 p.m.
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum
Jackson gives a presentation, “Life as a laureate,” in Union Theater. She will be available after the program to sign copies of her poetry books, several of which will be available for purchase.
Advance registration is required: https://www.tix.com/ticket-sales/alplmfoundation/2469/event/1419922
Wednesday, March 19
12-1 p.m.
University of Illinois at Springfield
UIS Public Affairs Center classroom 3B (third floor)
Poetry reading and Q&A session. K-12 teachers and local writers are invited to attend, in addition to the general public.
Thursday, March 20
11 a.m.-1:30 p.m.
Lincoln Land Community College
LLCC Writing Center (lower level of the library)
Jackson will facilitate a poetry writing workshop and speak about her life, her inspirations and her experiences as Illinois Poet Laureate.
Jackson’s residency is made possible by Springfield Area Arts Council through a bequest from Bobette Gerlach and by Illinois Arts Council and Illinois Humanities, in collaboration with the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Hoogland Center for the Arts, Lincoln Land Community College and University of Illinois Springfield.