LUIS Angel HERNANDEZ POET LAUREATE

The Luis Angel Hernandez Poet Laureate is an honorary two-year position awarded by Exchange for Change and O, Miami Poetry Festival to a poet incarcerated within the Florida Department of Corrections.   

The vision of the Laureateship is to increase the visibility of Florida’s prison population, drawing attention to the lives and living conditions of incarcerated people; advocate for widespread, cost-free humanities education and programs in carceral settings nationwide; change public perception about incarcerated people, and assert the basic humanity of all living beings. We hope it provides a model for others to replicate across the country. 

The contest is named in memory of Luis Angel Hernandez, an incarcerated Florida poet who fell in love with writing when he took his first Exchange For Change class in 2014. He passed away from cancer in 2018.

Responsibilities of the Laureate include writing commissioned poems for special occasions and events; promoting the work of other inmates; and acting as a representative for the incarcerated voice.

The laureateship is not a paid position; there is no monetary compensation, and it is not an endorsement of any behavior by the person, past, present, or future.

The first Poet Laureate, Eduardo “Echo” Martinez, held the position between 2019-2020.

The second Poet Laureate, Christopher Malec, held the position from 2021-2022.

For the next version of the collaborative poet laureate animation, our partners at Tropotrope: Arts Learning Lab are inviting all community members to animate one line of the at a time!