Danielle Legros Georges

Boston Poet Laureate

Danielle Legros Georges is Boston's Poet Laureate. She was born in Haiti but grew up in Boston's Haitian community in Mattapan. She has been teaching in Lesley University's Creative Arts in Learning Division since 2001. Her recent literary awards include the 2014 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship in Poetry, the 2012 Massachusetts Cultural Council Finalist in Poetry, Lesley University Faculty Development Grants, and a 2013 Black Metropolis Research Consortium Fellowship/Andrew W. Mellon Grant. She’s quoted on the website as saying, “America is best when it recognizes its inherent plurality. Americans are best when, embracing plurality, we move toward and seek to understand those around us. Americans are best when we are engaged and dialogic . . . . It allows us to see that, though different in many ways, de Crèvecoeur, Wheatley, and Lazarus, were each immigrants or the daughter of immigrants. They were bicultural, and bilingual, if not speakers of several languages.”