Ada Limón

An all American poetry reading with Ada Limón and Porsha Olayiwola. Host: Tsead Bruinja

Ada Limón is poet laureate of the United States, the first Latin American woman in this distinguished position. Her mission is to use poetry to recover humanity in her so divided country: "Poetry is elemental, necessary and extraordinarily human." You feel that when you read her poems. Limón is not only an extraordinary writer, but also a gifted speaker.

‘I am human, enough I am alone and I am desperate,  
enough of the animal saving me, enough of the high  
water, enough sorrow, enough of the air and its ease,  
I am asking you to touch me.’   

Ada Limón now has six collections of poetry to her name. One of her collections, The Carrying, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. She recently received a Guggenheim Fellowship to support her work. Recently, Limón was in the news for partnering with the U.S. space agency NASA: one of her poems will be engraved on the side of a rocket and launched into space. She is an extraordinary writer, but also a gifted speaker. If you want to experience that before she comes to Rotterdam, listen to her reviewer-acclaimed podcast The Slowdown, in which she advocates for a calmer way of life.