You Are Here

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Big Reads Selection A 2024 NPR "Books We Love" Selection "Whoever you are, you will find yourself and your own world in the expansiveness of this collection." -Margaret Renkl, New York Times Published in association with the Library of Congress and edited by the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States, a singular collection of poems reflecting on our relationship to the natural world by fifty of our most celebrated contemporary writers. In recent years, our poetic landscape has evolved in profound and exciting ways. So has our planet. Edited and introduced by the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States, Ada Limón, this book challenges what we think we know about "nature poetry," illuminating the myriad ways our landscapes-both literal and literary-are changing. You Are Here features fifty previously unpublished poems from some of the nation's most accomplished poets, including Joy Harjo, Diane Seuss, Rigoberto González, Jericho Brown, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Paul Tran, and more. Each poem engages with its author's local landscape-be it the breathtaking variety of flora in a national park, or a lone tree flowering persistently by a bus stop-offering an intimate model of how we relate to the world around us and a beautifully diverse range of voices from across the United States. Joyful and provocative, wondrous and urgent, this singular collection of poems offers a lyrical reimagining of what "nature" and "poetry" are today, inviting readers to experience both anew.

Ada Limón is the twenty-fourth Poet Laureate of the United States and the author of The Hurting Kind, a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. She is also the author of five other collections of poems, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award, and the picture book In Praise of Mystery based on the poem engraved on NASA’s Europa Clipper. Limón is a MacArthur Fellow, the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was named a TIME Woman of the Year. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and American Poetry Review. She lives in Glen Ellen, California.

Foreword by Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress Introduction by Ada Limón   Carrie Fountain, You Belong to the World Donika Kelly, When the Fact of Your Gaze Means Nothing, Then You Are Truly Alongside   Joy Harjo, Eat  Kevin Young, Snapdragons      Eduardo C. Corral, To a Blossoming Saguaro  Diane Seuss, Nature Which Cannot Be Driven To      Victoria Chang, A Woman and a Bird Gabrielle Calvocoressi, An Inn for the Coven Khadijah Queen, Tower          José Olivarez, You Must Be Present Dorianne Laux, Redwoods      b ferguson, Parkside & Ocean Brandy Nālani McDougall, Dana Naone Hall, and No’u Revilla, Aia i hea ka wai o Lahaina? Ashley M. Jones, Lullaby for the Grieving Ilya Kaminski, Letters Carl Phillips, We Love in the Only Ways We Can Brenda Hillman, Unendangered Moths of the Mid-Twentieth Century Laura Da’, Bad Wolf Molly McCully Brown, Rabbitbrush Ellen Bass, Lighthouse Traci Brimhall, Mouth of the Canyon Jericho Brown, Aerial View Michael Kleber-Diggs, Canine Superpowers Monica Youn, Four Freedoms Hanif Abdurraqib, There Are More Ways to Show Devotion Cedar Sigo, Close Knit Flower Sack Carolyn Forché, Nightshift in the Home for Convalescents Analicia Sotelo, Quemado, TX Cecily Parks, Hackberry Danez Smith, Two Deer in a Southside Cemetery Paul Guest, Walking the Land Paisley Rekdal, Taking the Magnolia Matthew Zapruder, It Was Summer, The Wind Blew Prageeta Sharma, I am Learning to Find the Horizons of Peace Roger Reeves, Beneath the Perseids Kazim Ali, The Man in 119 torrin a. greathouse, No Ethical Transition Under Late Capitalism Rigoberto González, Summer Songs Adam Clay, Darkling, I Listen Camille Dungy, Remembering a Honeymoon Hike Erika Meitner, Manifesto of Fragility / Terraform Jake Skeets, In Fire Paul Tran, Terroir Jason Schneiderman, Staircase Kiki Petrosino, To Think of Italy While Climbing Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Heliophilia Jennifer L. Knox, Central Iowa, Scenic Overlook Alberto Rios, Twenty Minutes in the Backyard Patricia Smith, To Little Black Girls, Risking Flower Ruth Awad, Reasons to Live   Notes Acknowledgments