Suban Nur Cooley, assistant professor in the Department of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University, has been named Lansing’s next poet laureate and will serve the greater Lansing region for the 2026-2028 term. She also is an MSU alum having earned her Ph.D. in rhetoric and writing from MSU’s Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures.
A storyteller and communications professional, Nur Cooley has more than a decade of experience creating and supporting poetry spaces in greater Lansing. She is a strong believer in poetry’s ability to connect people and communities and is embedded in the poetry scene around the region.
“I am deeply honored and excited to serve greater Lansing as its next poet laureate, not only because I love the written word but also because I deeply love this community,” Nur Cooley said. “Lansing has long shaped my personal voice and journey, and serving as poet laureate allows me to offer up that voice back to the city, connecting and conversing with others about what makes it so special: its people.”
The Lansing Poet Laureate Program aims to bring people together through poetry. It was launched in 2017 by the Lansing Economic Area Partnership and the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities Center for Poetry at Michigan State University. The program transitioned to the Arts Council of Greater Lansing in 2023, and it continues to expand its outreach by providing access to poetry and fostering community around the art of poetry.
“We are so proud to facilitate the Lansing Poet Laureate Program and welcome Suban to our growing list of Lansing poet laureates,” said Meghan Martin, Arts Council executive director. “This program is so important for our community as it offers opportunities for both emerging and experienced writers across the region to gather in community to explore the art of writing and performing poetry.”
As a community-minded scholar, Nur Cooley is driven by equity, reciprocity and a growth in empathy and understanding for one another and is consistently looking for opportunities to engage her research and classroom spaces with the world beyond it by focusing on issues pertaining to identity, culture and current events.
“As Lansing Poet Laureate and a faculty member in the College of Arts & Letters, my work is rooted in the belief that poetry is both an art form and a way of thinking — one that helps us understand who we are and how we belong to each other,” Nur Cooley said.
“At AAAS, we insist that Black Studies creates ‘technologies of living’ for Black people and Black futures — not only for survival, but into wellness. My work is grounded in that vision, using poetry to imagine and sustain those futures. Through this role, I hope to deepen connections between the university and the Lansing community through storytelling, culture and critical inquiry," she said.
In 2023, Nur Cooley received the Charles Kneupper Award for the article she wrote, “On Being and Becoming Black in a Globally Dispersed Diaspora.” This award, given annually, recognizes the article published in that year’s volume of Rhetoric Society Quarterly that the editorial board and the editor consider the most significant contribution to scholarship in rhetoric. All articles published in Rhetoric Society Quarterly are considered for this honor.
In 2021, Nur Cooley won the highly competitive James Berlin Memorial Outstanding Dissertation Award for her dissertation, Carrying Culture: Temporal and Spatial Constructions of Somalia Among Women in the Diaspora.
Nur Cooley also is the 2018-19 recipient of MSU’s TIAA Ruth Simms Hamilton Graduate Merit Fellowship. She used the $32,000 from that fellowship conducting research in Italy, Kenya, and her country of Australia. Through similar grants and fellowships, she was able to learn Swahili, a language commonly used in many African countries.
Prior to academia, Nur Cooley worked for many years as a journalist and communications professional for organizations like the Refugee Development Center, Habitat for Humanity of Michigan, Dart Container, and the Michigan League for Public Policy, to name a few.
The Lansing Poet Laureate Program is made possible by support from LEAP and management and oversight by the Arts Council of Greater Lansing. Laureates receive a $4,000 stipend for their work over the two-year term.
“The Lansing Poet Laureate Program, while existing in its space for purposes of contemplation, beauty and discovery in the world of poetry, also generates significant economic impact like notable national grants to support the arts coming into the region or many packed events with people collecting before and after to enjoy restaurants and drinks and so forth,” said Bob Trezise, LEAP president and CEO. “Poetry exists because it must, but it also has tremendous additional values to an economy — like all arts do."
As is tradition, the official “Passing of the Laurel” will mark the transition of the current poet laureate, Ruelaine Stokes, to the new laureate. The event, hosted each year by the RCAH Center for Poetry, takes place at 7:30 p.m. April 7 at The Robin Theatre.
To learn more about the Lansing Poet Laureate Program, visit the Arts Council of Greater Lansing website.
This story originally appeared on the College of Arts and Letters website.
