The Library of Congress has announced Arthur Sze as the 25th U.S. poet laureate. Sze has had a decades-long career as a poet, with his work often drawing inspiration from philosophy, science and nature. He’s also an editor and translator of poetry. Sze will start on Oct. 9, taking over from Ada Limón.
The job of the poet laureate is to promote the reading of poetry, and different laureates choose different fields and avenues. In the announcement, Sze says he intends to focus on promoting translated poetry.
Sze, born in New York City, is a child of Chinese immigrants. He studied math and science at MIT in 1968. But in a 1998 interview with WHYY’s Fresh Air, he said he found himself “totally bored” in a classroom and found himself writing all the time instead. So he transferred to the University of California, Berkeley to study poetry