Ada Limón: "The Unleaving: How Poetry Helps You to Not Miss Your Life"

At a time when social media and our societal structures demand our constant attention to the rigged algorithm, we’ve stopped paying attention to what really matters, the world around us. Using poetic examples and stories from real life, poet Ada Limón invites us to remember that we are alive and will help us reconnect to what matters. According to Limón, “Poets often are very good at the myopic and being present, deeply looking, paying attention. But I think we’re also good at the long view, expanding outward, thinking about the planet itself, thinking about what happens when neither you nor I are here. So I think that it’s about witnessing, paying attention, and being curious about who we are as individuals and as a collective.” Ada Limón is the author of seven books of poetry, including Startlement: New & Selected Poems; The Hurting Kind, which was a finalist for the Griffin Prize; The Carrying, which won the National Books Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; and Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. Limón is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was named a 2024 Time Magazine Woman of the Year. She is the author of two picture books, In Praise of Mystery as well as And, Too, The Fox, and was the editor of the anthology You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World. She served as the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States.