Richard Hague selected 2025-2027 Cincinnati And Mercantile Library Poet Laureate

The Mercantile Library has announced Richard Hague as the Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate. Previously held by poets Pauletta Hansel, Manuel Iris and Yalie Saweda Kamara, the Poet Laureate promotes poetry throughout the city, reads poems at events and leads programming. 

John Faherty, the Warner-Huguenin executive director of The Mercantile Library, said, “Richard Hague has been Cincinnati’s poetry teacher for decades. His poems are lyrical, powerful, and fearless. He is the right poet right now.”

The two-year post includes a stipend underwritten by the city of Cincinnati and the Mercantile Library. Hague’s tenure will begin with an induction ceremony on Tuesday, July 8 at 6 p.m. at The Mercantile Library. 

“Not only am I honored to be named Poet Laureate, but I look forward to supporting poets and the art of poetry in the city I have lived, studied, and taught in for sixty years,” said Hague. “I also hope to celebrate, among many other things, Cincinnati’s river heritage, being myself a native of another old Ohio River town, Steubenville, site of the original Land Office for the Northwest Territory. Finally, I am privileged to follow Pauletta Hansel, Manuel Iris, and Yalie Kamara in maintaining the vital and varied poetry scene they have created in their roles as Poets Laureate.”

Hague is a graduate of Xavier University whose work has appeared in Poetry, Smartish Pace, Appalachian Journal, Northern Appalachian Review, Nimrod, Mid-American Review, Ohio Magazine and among many other publications, and in dozens of anthologies. He is author or editor of 22 volumes of prose and poetry, most recently Continued Cases (Dos Madres Press, 2023), a collection of environmental, satirical and political poems and the nonfiction collection Earnest Occupations: Teaching, Writing, Gardening and Other Local Work (Bottom Dog Press 2018). He has taught writing and literature in Cincinnati and elsewhere for 54 years.

Pictured: Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poets Laureate (l to r): Yalie Saweda Kamara, Ph.D, 2022 to 2025 and Richard Hague, 2025 to 2027 with Pauletta Hansel, inaugural poet in the Mercantile Library