Jen Benka

Jen Benka is President and Executive Director of the Academy of American Poets, the largest member-supported organization for poets and poetry, and is the author of poetry collections and books. In the early 1990s, as Jen Benka was “coming into queer consciousness,” she felt like she didn’t have any role models to lead the way. Then, she came across June Jordan’s “Poem About My Rights.” “I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name. / My name is my own my own my own….” Those words, Benka says, “became a necessary, reaffirming mantra.” Poetry collections of Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde, talks by Leslie Feinberg and Kate Bornstein, and performance pieces by Holly Hughes were some of the other guides that helped her piece together her own identity. Since then, she has devoted her career to championing the importance of poets and poetry in our culture, a vocation she views as “a gift.” “I didn’t really choose my current field,” Benka says. “More like I fell into poetry like I fell in love.” From her view as an advocate for poetry, she is seeing more and more LGBTQ people fall in love with it, too. “People turn to poetry for a number of reasons, including insight and inspiration, and comfort in troubled times,” Benka says. “All to say, seemingly more people than ever are reading poems, and LGBTQ poets are helping to lead the way.” —SEJ