MARTY SEARCHES FOR NEW POET LAUREATE

BP MARKOWITZ ANNOUNCES POET LAUREATE ADVISORY COMMITTEE AT BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL

On Saturday, September 12, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz announced the creation of the Borough President Poet Laureate Advisory Committee to search for the borough's new poet laureate to succeed the late Ken Siegelman. The committee members include Dionne Mack-Harvin, Brooklyn Public Library; Anthony Vigorito, member of Brooklyn Poetry Outreach and associate of Ken Siegelman; Rob Casper, Poetry Society of America; Julie Agoos, Brooklyn College; and Linda Susan Jackson, Medgar Evers College. The announcement was made at the Brooklyn Book Festival Gala Mingle held at St. Francis College.

Siegelman, who passed away at his Gravesend home on June 19, 2009, was named poet laureate by BP Markowitz on January 24, 2002. As a social studies teacher for more than three decades, Siegelman developed classroom poetry while teaching at Abraham Lincoln High School. English was an unfamiliar language in his classroom--composed of Russian and Spanish-speaking teens--but Siegelman saw students wanting and waiting to learn. 

For more than eight years, Siegelman hosted Brooklyn Poetry Outreach, a collaboration with BP Markowitz and the Park Slope Barnes & Noble that features monthly poetry readings and discussion by some of Brooklyn's best and aspiring poets. He also participated in BP Markowitz's student poetry project.