The Westminster Poet Series began in 1999 when Linda Pastan, at the time the Poet Laureate of the State of Maryland, came to Westminster to give an evening reading and visit with English classes the following day. The second poet in the series was Billy Collins, who had just been named United States Poet Laureate. Since then, the school has welcomed award-winning poets from all around the United States to campus for two-day visits. Westminster Poets have been United States Poets Laureate, State of Connecticut Poets Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winners, and National Book Award winners.
January Gill O’Neil Named Westminster Poet for 2024-2025
The English Department is delighted to announce that January Gill O’Neil has been selected as the Westminster Poet for 2024-2025.
O’Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University and the author of four acclaimed books of poetry:
Glitter Road (2024),
Rewilding (2018),
Misery Islands (2014), and
Underlife (2009). She has long been active in the New England poetry scene. From 2012-2018, she served as the executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, and she currently serves on the boards of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs and Montserrat College of Art.
Former Westminster Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil says about O’Neil’s latest collection: "The alluring poems in
Glitter Road delve into past heartbreaks and the exquisite joy of family and new found love in a constantly changing world. In sure and talented hands like O’Neil’s, vibrant landscapes whirl, take root, and break bread with ghosts. It's clear these heart-filled poems will have a full and magnificent life of their own." Poet Kelli Russell Agadon writes, "In
Glitter Road, the brilliant and beautiful collection of poems by January Gill O’Neil, we are taken from
truth to tenderness, old love to new love, the Northeast to the deep South, and everywhere in between. O’Neil is an engaging lyric storyteller who moves us seamlessly from Tina Turner to the legacy of Emmett Till to cartwheels, a Hallmark card that hasn’t been invented yet, and into
John Grisham’s bed. O’Neil writes, “I’ll take my miracles however they appear/these days”—and how can we not praise the wounded world with her? Whether writing about Blackness, body, family, nature or nurture, love or loss, O’Neil always keeps a sense of hope and humor.”
bout poetry, O’Neil has written: “Poetry is power. Making the choice to sit down and write or read a poem is power. It’s a choice. It’s self-care. It’s the start of a revolution. It’s change. Like a photo, a poem captures a moment. And that is powerful.”
What is especially appealing about O’Neil’s poems is the way they explore a wide range of themes and subjects in language that is both accessible and scintillating. She is also a very engaging reader of her own poems. Here are a few links to explore if you want to know more
about January Gill O’Neil:
https://poets.org/poet/january-gill-oneil,
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/january-oneil, and
https://www.januarygilloneil.com/.O’Neil will be visiting Westminster from Feb. 24-25. She will give an all-school reading Monday morning, Feb. 24 and speak with English classes during the academic day on both Monday and Tuesday.
And here are a few of O’Neil’s poems:
Elation
In the city’s center is an unwalled forest:
a dense plot of cedars so thick their canopy
keeps light from reaching the ground.
We gaze at the stretched-out stalks—
Etiolation, you say, pointing skyward,
but all I hear is elation.
It’s the elongation of stems,
the branches growing up, not out,
their long trunks turned white.
They claim this space as their own,
making the most of what’s given them.
We listen to spindly trees creaking—
rocking chairs on a wooden porch,
the clatter of branches like the chatter
between old, coupled voices
when no one is around.
Cartwheel
And when no one is looking
I will spin my Ferris-wheel-body
into a patch of late autumn leaves,
pretend I am a kaleidoscope
in what I can only describe
as a soul walk,
my neurons navigating
how fast and how hard
I move in space.
I should be dead
or at best badly injured,
fighting gravity in jeans
and an oversized sweatshirt
that flips above my head,
each move betraying me
as the revolution happens.
I have never been a gymnast,
I’m not limber, can’t to this day
touch my toes or do the splits.
How have I not broken a bone?
Sooner or later, all our graves
come for us—my legs
cloud-swimming toward
the coming world.
Back straight, tummy tucked,
my stance wide and precise
as I wager a bet on myself.
What I want to say is this:
all this time, I have been able
to balance my little life in my hands.
That I go through the turn
and keep landing on my feet
is a goddamn miracle.
Hoodie
A gray hoodie will not protect my son
from rain, from the New England cold.
I see the partial eclipse of his face
as his head sinks into the half-dark
and shades his eyes. Even in our
quiet suburb with its unlocked doors,
I fear for his safety—the darkest child
on our street in the empire of blocks.
Sometimes I don’t know who he is anymore
traveling the back roads between boy and man.
He strides a deep stride, pounds a basketball
into wet pavement. Will he take his shot
or is he waiting for the open-mouthed
orange rim to take a chance on him? I sing
his name to the night, ask for safe passage
from this borrowed body into the next
and wonder who could mistake him
for anything but good.