Welcome! The Nevada County Poet Laureate Program is an initiative of Nevada County Arts Council in collaboration with Nevada County Board of Supervisors and Nevada County Libraries.

What is a Poet Laureate and what they do?

Poets are active listeners, bearing witness to our deepest truths, shaping culture, reflecting humanity, and inspiring change.

A poet laureate is someone chosen—originally by kings, now by communities—to represent a region. Poet laureates might compose poems to mark important moments, actively engage and support others to develop a love of poetry and its potential, and inspire literary initiatives of meaning to residents. Laureate refers to wearing a crown of laurel leaves, a symbol of honor in Ancient Greece for poets and heroes.

Our Nevada County Poet Laureate Program was inaugurated at Sierra Poetry Festival in 2017 in the presence of California Poet Laureate, Dana Gioia, and to mark the special designations by the state given to our California Cultural Districts. Most recently, California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick has joined us on stage and in our parks alongside our current Nevada County Poet Laureate, Kirsten Casey.

Meet Kirsten Casey, our Nevada County Poet Laureate!

Kirsten Casey is an active member of California Poets in the Schools and, after sixteen years, she is now regional coordinator. She has annually trained our county judges for Poetry Out Loud in the schools, and was founding coordinator for Nevada County Art Council's international children’s poetry exchange, Dream a Difference, in 2017. Her first book of poetry, Ex Viv0: Out of the Living Body, was published by Hip Pocket Press in 2012. Her upcoming collection of poems explores historical and literary characters struggling with the use of social media in the modern world. In 2020, she co-edited Molly Fisk’s "Academy of American Poet's Laureate" project, California Fire and Water: a Climate Crisis Anthology. 

In welcoming Kirsten, we said farewell to former Poet Laureate Chris Olander. Chris spent 2020 saving the world through fresh new poems about nature, the climate, and social justice. Chris Olander’s poem, Monarch, was sent to the Nevada County Board of Supervisors, to Governor Gavin Newsom, to local, state and national legislators, our State Parks, our Department of Fish and Wildlife, the National Park Service and an array of other national environmental groups.

Kirsten works in partnership to Nevada County Arts Council’s Literary Arts Committee and Nevada County Libraries. You can learn more about Kirsten at kirstencasey.com.

Chris Olander 2019 - 2021

On April 27 2019 - at a passing of the laurels ceremony alongside Molly Fisk at Sierra Poetry Festival - we welcomed Chris Olander as our Nevada County Poet Laureate.

Chris is a poet and bio-educator, and has taught with California Poets in the Schools since 1984. He blends performance techniques with spoken word to create what he calls an ‘Action Art Poetry - musical images phrasing to dramatize relative experiences – a poetry arising from oral and bardic traditions.’ Chris Olander’s debut book of poems is River Light. Kirk Lumpkin says, “What has always impressed me about Chris Olander’s poetry is how present, how kinetically alive the energies of nature are in it and of how the words dance in the breath and sinew of it.” 

Walt Whitman Kisses the Soldiers

Whitman visits the Civil War hospital each day, armed 
with a knapsack of simple tokens:
oranges, tobacco, hoarhound candy, jelly, 
pickles, brandy, and knitted socks.
He dresses in a wine-colored suit,
black Moroccan boots, and a wide brimmed hat
with a drawstring of dangling golden acorns. 
Whitman is the opposite of the exhausted 
doctors, in their stained gowns.
Nothing is clean. 
The infirmary walls are always yellow 
from lantern light and sickness. The air seems yellow, too.
But Whitman bursts in flushed and laughing, showing no pity
for the legless and the fevered, no disgust
for the old gauze exposing dark patterns of bullet holes, 
a scabbed map of what lies underneath, every terrible thing 
that happened before. Death is not worse 
than being abandoned. He hears 
he familiar sound of wooden canes
on cold tiles, and mattress springs squeaking, 
as a body is rolled over. Whitman cannot forget 
his first visit to Lacy House, where a horse cart sat just outside, loaded 
with amputated feet, legs, arms, and hands.
The parts of the patriotic, a waste heap.
What is left of the boys, once attached
to their limbs, now sleeping under tents of
mosquito netting? Whitman brings them bowls
of ice cream, and they imagine summer porches,
the sound of a crank turning in ice, the smell
of blooming jasmine. Whitman comes in with stationery,
licorice, and novels. He copies addresses into his notebook,
takes dictation, mails the letters of these soldiers. 
When he says goodnight, Whitman kisses the soldiers, 
one by one, as if he is their mother, tucking them in,
and with each kiss, a different meaning:
you will see tomorrow, your purpose is not pain, 
I will not forget you, what you need I will bring,
I will always return.
First he feels it, the warmth 
of their unshaven cheeks,
their soft, sour breath in the dark,
and knows so much remains 
in their damaged lives, in their young
disfigured bodies, and then 
he writes it all down.

- Kirsten Casey

Molly Fisk 2017 - 2019

Our inaugural Poet Laureate was celebrated poet, Molly Fisk. Over the course of her two-year tenure, Molly supported a community-written wall poem, ran daily writing prompts for residents, and led free monthly Poetry Hours across the county, as well as authoring poems of relevance locally. In 2019 Molly was awarded an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, one of only thirteen inaugural fellowships nationwide. The fellowship supported Molly’s work as a poet, and helped her launch an important new project called Fire and Water to help children write about the fires and floods that are increasingly devastating our state, as a way to help them process trauma and uncertainty. Fire and Water culminated in a collection of poetry and public readings across Northern California.

Fisk was born in San Francisco, educated at Harvard, and holds an MBA from Simmons College Graduate School of Management. She lives in Nevada City, where she teaches poetry and creative writing, and works as a life coach in the Skills for Change tradition. More about Molly and be found at poetrybootcamp.com, at mollyfisk.com, and at mollyfiskunlimited.com.

God Speaks to the Rope Swings of Summer

in his gentlest voice, reminding them
about change, about fallow fields and the quiet
everything needs to grow stronger
at facing life and death, uncertainty, joy,
obstruction. This one, hanging straight
from its branch over Oregon Creek, is listening.
He mentions the way opposing twists
will hold each other longer
and how knots keep children’s feet
from slipping. Three-ply, four, hemp or nylon,
it doesn’t matter. The creek sparkles on,
creek-like. Woodsmoke dilutes the sky’s clear blue.
A madrone leaf slowly spins downstream,
oblivious and holy.                - Molly Fisk