The Literateur has posted a review of Coronary; I just wish that half the things that it said were true.

The news has been circulating for a few days, but: Natasha Tretheway, a native of Gulfport and author of four wonderful books of poetry and nonfiction, has just been named United States Poet Laureate. What with Kristen Dupard’s recent championship at the Poetry Out Loud national competition, it’s been a good few weeks for poetry in Mississippi.

It’s with great pleasure that this announcement comes from the editors of Dark Mountain: that copies of the new anthology, due out in August just in time for the third Uncivilisation festival, are now available for pre-order. It’s a great honor to be included in the volume — one of the poems from my collection Ecotone is included — but an even greater honor to sit alongside such wonderful, and necessary, poets and writers as Gregory Norminton, Caspar Henderson, and Em Strang. At each of the previous Dark Mountain festivals, the volume has always proved to be a critical source for discussion and debate, not least for its capacity to offer a roadmap forward through our present age and circumstance. Every one of these books is handmade, as is their thought. In short: August cannot come soon enough.

If education, as Stefan Collini said last night in his Enlightenment Lecture at the University of Edinburgh, is “more or less like a pizza — with knowledge being delivered from point A to point B”, then I’m grateful to have placed an order for an extra-large. I’ve just taken up a position as a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, and will be in residence in Edinburgh from now until the end of the summer. I’m looking forward to studying a wide range of topics, among them, the cultural history of the haar — the freezing fog so famous along the eastern coast of Scotland (and what greeted me as I left the flat this morning). And, of course, what the Scots have invented in order to combat its effects.

Reports are still trickling in (Twitter stream here), but the core of the story is official: Kristen Dupard, a high school senior from Ridgeland, MS, is this year’s 2012 Poetry Out Loud National Champion.

I cannot say how thrilling this is.

I had the honor of judging Kristen during the Mississippi state finals earlier this year, when she recited poems by Cornelius Eady and Ben Jonson, and knew from her performance that she was a sure shot for national-level entry. Her poise, her command of the poems, her sheer joy at performing them, and her impeccable stage presence told us all that if there was anyone who had a shot at the national title, it was her. She’d won the state-level contest in 2011, too, fending off eight other ferociously talented contestants both years, no small feat itself — but that she took it home over fifty-two other contestants — reciting “Invitation to Love” by Paul Lawrence Dunbar for her final poem — is fantastic news for Kristen, for her family, for the state of Mississippi, and for poetry everywhere. I know no more deserving champion.

Congratulations, Kristen. Way to hit one out of the park.