Poet Laureate – Connecticut

Rennie McQuilkin is Poet Laureate of Connecticut. He has taught English and Creative Writing at secondary schools including Phillips Academy (Andover), The Loomis-Chaffee School, and Miss Porter’s School. In 1992 he co-founded the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, which he directed for nine years at Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, CT. His poetry has appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, The American Scholar, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and many other publications. The author of thirteen poetry collections, he has received a number of poetry awards, including a fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the Connecticut Center for the Book’s Lifetime Achievement Award as well as its 2010 poetry award for The Weathering: New and Selected Poems. McQuilkin is currently the publisher of Antrim House Books. For over forty years, Rennie and his wife, the artist Sarah McQuilkin, have lived in Simsbury, where he is the local Poet Laureate.