Poetry and Animals

In this presentation designed for grades K through 12 (adaptable for different grade levels), Ann Fisher-Wirth will present engaging and accessible poems that grow from the ancient fascination that humans have with animals. She will encourage participants to talk about their own relationships with animals, and lead them through a writing exercise. Participants will leave with a poem of their own and a new understanding of ways in which we can honor and respond to the animals in our lives.

Speakers Expertise:

Ann Fisher-Wirth is the Mississippi Poet Laureate for the 2025-2029 term. Her eighth book of poems, Into the Chalice of Your Thoughts, is a poetry/photography collaboration with Wilfried Raussert and translations of the poems into Spanish by the Women in Translation collective (U Guadalajara Press, 2023). Her seventh book is Paradise Is Jagged (Terrapin Books, 2023). With Laura-Gray Street, she coedited The Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity UP, 2013) and Attached to the Living World: A New Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity UP, 2025). A senior fellow of the Black Earth Institute, Ann has had Fulbrights to Switzerland and Sweden; a Fulbright Specialist Award to lecture on ecopoetry at Cappadocia University, Turkey, was cancelled by the current State Department. She has had residencies at Djerassi, Hedgebrook, Storyknife, and elsewhere. She has received the 2023 Governor’s Award for Excellence in Literature and Poetry from the Mississippi Arts Commission, as well as three Mississippi Arts Commission Poetry Fellowships, the MS Institute of Arts Poetry Award, and fifteen Pushcart nominations. Ann retired in 2022 from the University of Mississippi, where she taught in the MFA program and directed the Environmental Studies program. Also she taught yoga at Southern Star in Oxford for many years.