The Michigan Department of Education and Library of Michigan have named Detroit native Dr. Melba Joyce Boyd as the state’s new poet laureate. Boyd is only the third poet laureate to serve Michigan, succeeding Nandi Comer who held the position from 2023-2024.

As Michigan poet laureate, Boyd will connect with Michigan residents, educators and youth across the state to promote literary arts and poetry.  

“I am honored and excited being named the poet laureate of Michigan,” Dr. Boyd said in a press release. “Although I have lived in other states and other parts of the world, Michigan is where I was born and raised. I have spent most of my life here. This is where I became a poet, learned to appreciate and respect nature, and to cherish and inspire humanity. I look forward to sharing my poetry with a broad range of audiences across the two peninsulas and encouraging our young people to recognize the power of poetry to stimulate creative thinking and as a passionate cultural resource.” 

An award-winning author, Boyd has published 13 books, nine of which are poetry. Two of them, “Death Dance of a Butterfly” and “Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall,” have been selected as Michigan Notable Books by the Library of Michigan. Her writing has also appeared in anthologies, academic journals, cultural periodicals and newspapers across the U.S. and Europe. In 2023, she was named the Kresge Eminent Artist.

Boyd is a retired distinguished professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University and is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Michigan’s Department of Afroamerican and African Studies. She received a Doctor of Arts in English from the University of Michigan, as well as master’s and bachelor’s degrees in English from Western Michigan University.

Host Stephen Henderson sat down with Boyd to talk about her new position as Michigan poet laureate, the role other creative art forms play in poetry, and what influences her own writings. Plus, Boyd reads one of her many Detroit-centric poems, “Stage Black.”