The Southern Regional Council recently announced the newest juror for the 2026 Lillian Smith Book Awards.
Jacqueline Allen Trimble – an award-winning poet and professor of English and chair of the Department of Languages and Literatures at Alabama State University – was commissioned by Gov. Kay Ivey as the new poet laureate for the state of Alabama.
“Your job is to support, promote, and encourage, the poets of the State of Alabama,” Trimble said, explaining the core of her duties in the new role, which will span four years. “I think that Alabama has some of the most brilliant poets writing today, and I think that they don’t get enough national attention.”
Trimble’s goal is to do what she can during her four years as poet laureate to change that.
Trimble is the author of two award-winning poetry collections: “American Happiness,” which won the Balcones Poetry Prize, and “How to Survive the Apocalypse,” which was named one of the ten best poetry books of 2022 by the New York Public Library. She is a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, a Cave Canem Fellow, and a two-time Alabama State Council on the Arts Fellow. Her poems have appeared in countless literary journals, too.
But these accolades alone are not what made Trimble stand out from other candidates for Alabama’s poet laureate position.
“As an NEA and a Cave Canem Fellow who is widely published and celebrated, Jackie, of course, stood out for her vast accomplishments,” said Tina Mozelle Braziel, a Birmingham-based poet who served on the selection committee. “Even more impressive is how Jackie is a truth-teller. She skillfully uses humor and compassion in her poetry to ready her audience for the truths we need to hear.”
The truth will set you free
Trimble says her mantra is simple: The truth will set you free. She describes most of her poetry as “political,” though she said she uses history and humor to tackle tough topics.
“I always think that there’s a way to say something to anybody, to invite them into a conversation,” she said. “I don’t always know what the answer is. I know what the questions are. And I think asking questions invites people to ask their own questions.”
That said, Trimble isn’t worried if what she writes offends others – even in today’s political climate.
“I don’t think an artist can be worried about those things,” she said. “I’m not an advertisement. My job is not to offend the fewest number of people so I can sell hamburgers and cars. My job is a poet. Poets observe. Poets chronicle. Poets are truth tellers.”
Writers write
Trimble believes she was born to write.
“I always tell people I rolled out of the womb a writer,” Trimble said. “I just was waiting to learn how to read, and then it was on! Pretty much as soon as I learned to read, I started writing.”
Trimble has written essays and episodes for South African soap operas.
“But poetry was my first love,” she said. “My mother had this collection called the ‘Harvard Classics’ that is basically an encyclopedia of all of Western literature, from Plato through modernism. They’re mostly poets and I spent my childhood reading those things. I fell in love with T.S. Eliot and Edgar Allan Poe.”
She recalled memorizing Eliot’s “The Naming of Cats” when she was in the 4th or 5th grade.
“Now I’m not going to pretend that when I was 10 years old, I had any idea what these people were talking about, but I knew it was beautiful and it was transforming,” Trimble said. “For me, poems were like incantations and I said, ‘I want to do that.’”
But life had different plans. Instead of pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing, Trimble earned a PhD in English. And instead of being a writer, she devoted her career to teaching. For nearly 30 years, she put writing on the back burner.
It was my husband who said to me, ‘You have to start writing again,’” Trimble shared. “He said, ‘Writers write. You’re unhappy, and you are never going to be happy unless you write poetry.’ And so, I started writing poetry.”
Along with her husband, she also got encouragement from colleagues and from a weeklong workshop she did with renowned writer Marge Piercy.
“She went through my poems, talked to me about them, and then she gave me the nod – ‘You’re a poet.’ That was all I needed and I haven’t stopped writing since.”
Poetry for the people
As poet laureate, Trimble hopes to use technology to help shine a spotlight on local talent.
“One of the things I want to do is create an electronic archive that chronicles the career of every poet in this state and that gives a sample of their work and their bio that will be easily accessible and free,” she explained.
The archive will then be promoted on platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
“The idea is to have a short interview of the poet, have the poet to present his, her or their work, and then to have a bio and some links where you can find more about this person,” she said.
But this will be just a small part of her duties over the next four years. Poet laureates are often asked to perform poetry and teach workshops across the state and are commissioned to write original work for special events. Even before being sworn as poet laureate, her spring 2026 schedule has already begun to fill up.
Trimble is ready for the busy season ahead and confident she’ll be able to balance it all with her role at Alabama State University.
“Anybody who knows me says I’m a workaholic, and I’ve always got 75 irons in the fire, so it’ll probably just feel like normal,” she said with a laugh.
Part of her role will also include bringing poetry into communities.
“Taking the poetry to the community is absolutely important, especially now,” she said. “We need poetry more than ever. I’m of the Walt Whitman philosophy that poetry is for the people.”
Trimble dismisses the idea that poetry is only for academics.
“Poetry was really a way of keeping history. It was a way of ritual,” she said. “Every culture has poetry, and the poetry in every culture almost is poetry for the people.”
She urges people who think poetry isn’t for them to give it a try anyway.
“There are lots of different types of poetry in the world,” she said. “Just like some people love mystery novels and some people love romances, you have to find the poetry that speaks to you and trust and believe there is a poet out there writing to you.”
Credit: Alabama News Service
