Task Force advances three finalists for 2025 St. Louis poet laureate

The St. Louis City Poet Laureate Task Force voted March 17, 2025, during a virtual meeting to advance three candidates — listed in the process as candidates 3, 4 and 5 — as finalists for the 2025 St. Louis poet laureate. The task force also voted to base finalist selection on five panel scores rather than six and agreed to conduct the finalist interviews in public.

The decision restores the city’s poet laureate program to a public appointment process and sets the next steps for scheduling interviews and notifying applicants. Task force members said they wanted transparency about the selection while balancing applicants’ sensitivity to candid reviewer comments.

During the meeting the task force discussed administrative details of the scoring and notification process. Members agreed to proceed using the top three numeric totals from the scoring spreadsheet and to make the finalist interviews open to the public. Staff member Christine (last name not specified in the transcript) will contact the selected candidates to schedule interviews and will also notify applicants who are not moving forward, with staff clarifying eligibility issues for applicants who live in St. Louis County rather than St. Louis City.

Members also debated whether to release the rubric or reviewer notes to applicants. Some members suggested sharing rubric scores but withholding reviewer identities; staff said they would check with the board attorney about redaction and disclosure. One task force member asked that notification for applicants who were not selected be held briefly in case one of the top three finalists becomes unavailable; other members agreed that holding notifications for a short time was reasonable.

The task force set its preferred interview days as the coming Monday and the following Monday, with a fallback day the following Wednesday, and directed staff to email candidates to schedule. The group discussed the subjective nature of evaluating artistic work but said resumes and writing samples helped the panel assess applicants’ potential for public programming across St. Louis.

Formal motions recorded in the meeting included approving a 30-minute recess, adopting five scores for finalist determination, and approving candidates 3, 4 and 5 as finalists. Each motion carried. Following the votes, the task force confirmed that interviews will be public and that staff will notify both finalists and applicants who are ineligible or not advancing.