Juan Felipe Herrera On Poetry In Tough Times
Juan Felipe Herrera is the 21st Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. NPR met with Herrera on World Poetry Day, March 21, 2017, to talk about the role of poetry in society.
As the United States Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera travels the nation reading poems to audiences in communities large and small, communities often starkly different from the U.S.-Mexico border region where Herrera grew up as a son of Mexican immigrants.
Yet he said the response he gets from young people who hear his
