Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah announced as Boston’s next poet laureate

WBUR | April 17, 2025

Boston has found its next poet laureate to lead the city in public poetry programs and inspire young writers.

Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah will be the city’s fourth poet laureate, Mayor Michelle Wu and the city’s Office of Arts and Culture announced Thursday. Oppong-Yeboah, who uses he/they pronouns, will assume the four-year role in July. They succeed Porsha Olayiwola, co-owner of Dorchester’s independent bookstore justBook-ish, whose term ended in January.

Oppong-Yeboah grew up in the city and works as a librarian at Joseph Lee School in Dorchester. The Ghanaian American also taught 11th-grade English at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School for six years and worked as a teaching artist for 10 years.

Oppong-Yeboah said at first, they didn’t plan on applying for the role because they thought of poet laureate candidates as the “best poets in Boston.” They didn’t think they fit into that category.

“ I still feel very much like a working poet, someone who is writing and exploring and honing their craft,” they said. “But then I had a couple conversations with friends and that shifted my mindset about what the role could be. The place they guided my attention to was thinking less about your poetic practice and thinking more about what you could do in the role.”

Oppong-Yeboah started imagining what they could accomplish in the community and realized they had lots of ideas. They want to continue to build on the work of previous poet laureates and encourage people to be more engaged with poetry.

“I would like to create more space in our city for people to hear a poem that unsettles them, that offers them a new perspective, that just has them experience beauty,” they said. “I want to create more moments like that.”

They also plan to foster collaborations with  Boston’s public and school libraries.

“ I want to give people the experience I had as a young child, which was hearing a living poet read for the first time,” Oppong-Yeboah said. “I think there are a lot of young people in our schools who have never had that experience, and I think it’d be beautiful.”

Olayiwola and Thomas Johnston, who runs the poet laureate program, chose judges and oversaw the selection process — they did not vote. The selection committee narrowed the applicants down to six finalists before choosing Oppong-Yeboah.

“It was extremely competitive,” said Olayiwola. “ I think what stood out about Emmanuel was really his humility as it relates to connecting with other humans around the literary arts. I just think who he was as a person kind of shown through in a really dynamic way.”

Oppong-Yeboah said they’re friends with Olayiwola, and she shared how being poet laureate made her realize her dreams were possible. Oppong-Yeboah looks forward to pursuing their own dreams for community building through words.

“ The things that I care about are community and the feeling of connectedness,” they said, “and then also about just creating spaces where people grasp the things that poetry has to offer, which I think are a different way of thinking and an appreciation for life.”

Olayiwola said she has a dinner with Oppong-Yeboah scheduled for next week to congratulate him and help him prepare for his new role.

As for the newly named poet laureate, they will run an open mic and poetry slam with poet Crystal Valentine at justBook-ish on April 18 and May 2.