Inaugural Poet Elizabeth Alexander

Update 1-20 Transcript/video of Alexander's poem.
Elizabeth Alexander studied under poet Derek Walcott, apparently a favorite Obama's. Here is her website. Read some of her poems.

WaPo: Next month, the little girl, Elizabeth Alexander, now 46, a prize-winning poet and professor of African American studies at Yale University, is scheduled to stand at the other end of the Mall before what will probably be an even bigger throng and read a poem at the inauguration of the nation's first African American president.

They are two moments in Washington history, more than four decades and about two miles apart, that on Jan. 20 will bracket a part of one poet's life, along with a chapter in the country's narrative.

"It was one of the iconic stories of my childhood," Alexander said yesterday of her attendance at the March on Washington. She said of her duty next month: "It will be hard, but it will be a privilege."

Alexander, who grew up in Washington and attended Sidwell Friends School, was named by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies as the poet to read at the swearing-in.

Other performers at the inauguration:

Alexander will join soul singer Aretha Franklin, civil rights figure Joseph E. Lowery and classical musicians Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Gabriela Montero and Anthony McGill on the program.

She will be only the fourth poet to read at a swearing-in, after Frost, who read at John F. Kennedy's in 1961, Maya Angelou, who read at Bill Clinton's in 1993, and Miller Williams, who read at Clinton's second inauguration in 1997, according to government officials.

Alexander's bio at Poets.com:

Elizabeth Alexander was born in 1962 in Harlem, New York, and grew up in Washington, D.C. She received a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. from Boston University (where she studied with Derek Walcott), and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania.

Her collections of poetry include American Sublime (Graywolf Press, 2005), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Antebellum Dream Book (2001); Body of Life (1996); and The Venus Hottentot (1990).

Alexander’s critical work appears in her essay collection, The Black Interior (Graywolf, 2004). She also edited The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks (Graywolf, 2005) and Love’s Instruments: Poems by Melvin Dixon (1995). Her poems, short stories, and critical writing have been widely published in such journals and periodicals as The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Callaloo, The Village Voice, The Women's Review of Books, and The Washington Post. Her work has been anthologized in over twenty collections, and in May of 1996, her verse play, Diva Studies, premiered at the Yale School of Drama.