Well-versed K-State professor named 2025 Guggenheim Poet-in-Residence
Monet. Van Gogh. Matisse. The world-famous Guggenheim Museum in New York City is filled to the brim with talented artists — and now Traci Brimhall, Kansas State University distinguished professor of English, is among them.
While the Guggenheim is well-known for its sculptures and paintings, Brimhall will spotlight a different type of masterpiece — the verbal kind. Named the museum’s next poet-in-residence, Brimhall is ready to write where the world comes to look.
Brimhall, the director of K-State’s creative writing program, is already a nationally recognized poet and nonfiction writer, serving as the current Kansas poet laureate and receiving the Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship in 2024.
The Poet-in-Residence program, now in its fourth year, is a collaboration between the Academy of American Poets and the Guggenheim. As a vessel to explore the relationship between poetry and museum spaces, the Poet-in-Residence encourages connection and community through verbal arts.
“We are thrilled to be working with Traci Brimhall as our next Poet-in-Residence,” said Cyra Levenson, deputy director and Gail Engelberg director of education and public engagement.
“Finding space to dream together and explore what we cannot yet see through art and poetry are critical public projects.”
Still in the beginning stages of her residency, Brimhall’s poems have already graced the streets of New York, with the Guggenheim passing out her work to celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day. Throughout the partnership, she will also help design poetry postcards for museum patrons, participate in the Guggenheim’s Aye Simon Reading Room and lead staged evening events.
While working in the Big Apple, Brimhall isn’t leaving the Little Apple — or its art scene — in the dust. Partnering with the Museum of Art + Light in Manhattan, Kansas, she and her students will lead poetry activities for the public, aiming to build a local visual-arts-centered community.
“Museums are one of the places I love to visit to activate my sense of wonder,” Brimhall said. “To-do lists and packed calendars can overtake my life, but museums are always an invitation to awe and curiosity.”
Read how Brimhall brings poetry to other majors across campus.
Making it modern – Kansas State University Foundation
Written By: Abbigail Marshall
Curated from: https://www.k-state.edu/news/articles/2025/04/traci-brimhall-named-guggenheim-poet-in-residence.html
