Jennifer Militello: New Hampshire's New Poet Laureate

Congratulations to Jennifer Militello, just announced as New Hampshire's incoming Poet Laureate! Militello's poems have been published in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, American Poetry Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and Poetry, and her most recent collection is 2021's The Pact (Tupelo Press/Shearsman Books). Its follow-up, Identifying the Pathogen, will be released in 2025. She currently teaches in New England College's MFA program.

Among her best known poems is "Mansplaining", certainly one of the definitive works on the topic. "Your certainty has me curtained," her speaker declares, addressing an unnamed male boor. "Your nerve has me nervous. Your/ childhood has me childlike and/ your nastiness nests in my belfry/ like a hawk." 

Militello will be appearing at the Nossrat Yassini Festival Saturday (4/13) in the panel discussion How Can We Hope?, at 11:30 AM in Hamilton Smith Hall, Room 210. 

--Matthew Mallory Dinaro

Photo by Joanne Smith